چارچوب توسعه شایستگی مدیریت پروژه در محیط کسب و کار متلاطم
کد مقاله | سال انتشار | تعداد صفحات مقاله انگلیسی |
---|---|---|
3057 | 2006 | 16 صفحه PDF |
Publisher : Elsevier - Science Direct (الزویر - ساینس دایرکت)
Journal : Technovation, Volume 26, Issues 5–6, May–June 2006, Pages 723–738
چکیده انگلیسی
Today's turbulent business environment characterised by uncertainty and inability to predict the future is extremely challenging, and thus requires the development of new competences. Especially within project management, competence development is one of the critical success factors. Competence development is seen as a critical success factor ensuring companies' competitiveness. Learning organisation, organisational learning, organisational culture, knowledge management and project management laid the foundation for the project management competence development (PMCD) framework introduced in this paper. The most essential features for organisations to update competences are presented. The proposed framework has been in use in Nokia case unit since year 2001 with good results. However, further studies are needed to create an evaluation method to provide a means to measure the impacts of the framework and develop it further.
مقدمه انگلیسی
1.1. Background and purpose of the study Today's business environment is quite dynamic. Companies that are willing to survive in competition must react to the changes quickly. These changes are numerous and challenges to re-engineer or adapt with continuous improvement are numerous, too. According to Nyhan (1998) competence development is seen as one of the critical strategic factors ensuring companies' competitiveness. Competence is difficult to ensure, because it is distributed in several levels of the company. Examples of these levels are strategic or operative, and technological or business competence. However, winning corporations must acquire these competences. In high clock speed industries, where product life cycles are relatively short, this acquisition process is even more complex, because the content of the competence may not be known long beforehand. These edge conditions have given rise to much discussion (e.g. Ivergard, 2000) about how to gain these competences and create organisational and learning environments, such as learning organisations, which foster employees' skills and sense of initiative and responsibility. Latest management and leadership literature (e.g. Sydänmaanlakka, 2003, Ivergard, 2000 and Laughton and Otteweil, 2003) stresses the managers/leaders role in this kind of challenging environment, i.e. business competence management inside the organisation. Common answers to meet these challenges are learning organisation, new ways of doing things, teamwork, communications, focus, and self-management. The organisation's role is to provide conditions to ensure this kind of competence development (Senge, 1994, White et al., 1996 and Goldberger, 1999). However, the method required to make learning more concrete is not yet defined very accurately. Today's telecommunications business is extremely challenging. So-called disruptive technological changes (Christensen, 1997) alter the industry and require development of new competences. The clock speed of the disruptive technological or other changes seem to increase more than in traditional industries. This also means that clock speed is higher and business cycles in telecommunication industry are shorter. This means that these business cycles are becoming one of a kind or unique. Uniqueness is also typical of projects. Additionally, project management competence consists of knowing the project environment, project management skills, leadership skills, and personal growth. Furthermore, Cavaleri and Fearon (2000) propose that project management structures provide a natural home for organisational learning. Project-oriented business management is one approach to manage turbulent business. For the future challenges managers need better knowledge of project management, better understanding of the project orientation in business and the turbulence (uniqueness) of the environment they are working in. As a consequence of the above, the purpose is to point out that competence management is becoming more and more critical in today's turbulent business environment. Therefore, the main target of this study is to present a project management competence development (PMCD) framework for today's turbulent telecommunications business environment where disruptive technological changes occur. The main idea of PMCD framework arises from the turbulent business environment and the project-oriented business. 1.2. Implementation of the study The aim of this study is to point out that competence development is becoming more and more critical in today's turbulent business environment. This study utilises definitions and views of competence (e.g. Hamel and Prahalad, 1994, Ivergard, 2000, Sydänmaanlakka, 2003 and Drejer and Riis, 1999). Theories of organisational learning (Argyris and Schön, 1978 and Kolb, 1984), enablers for creating learning organisation (Senge, 1994), views to organisational culture (Schein, 1992), and knowledge management theories (Kolb, 1984 and Nonaka and Takeuchi, 1995) are the foundation for this study. Turbulence in telecommunications business and accelerating product creation cycle times add further challenges to project management. Then, together with practice and theories, Project Management Institute (PMI) (2000) project management knowledge areas create the foundation of the framework. This study has four main phases in order to construct a competence development (PMCD) framework for project-oriented operations: – A theoretical foundation for competence development was created from the literature (see Section 2). Project management knowledge areas were reviewed in order to get profound understanding of the competences needed in unique setting of activities (see Section 2). – Features of business environment of the target company were studied, where the need for project management orientation was clearly identified (see 3.1 and 3.2). – Construction of the project management competence development (PMCD) framework (see Section 3.3). – Evaluation of the framework in practice (see Section 3.4) and comparison to parallel work. This study utilises the principles of the constructive research method, i.e. constructing the PMCD framework. It can be located into the normative area of business studies comprising of a theoretical findings and empirical reflections. It is thus characterised as modeling, prescriptive, or recommending, not verifying explicit hypothesis. This research uses the qualitative approach, and as typical for constructive research, it is interpretative. For interpretative research, a given amount of subjectivity needs to be approved—interpretation is somewhat subjective in nature (Kasanen et al., 1991).
نتیجه گیری انگلیسی
The need for synergy of technological and human capabilities is based on the distinction between the ‘old world of business’ and the ‘new world of business.’ Within this view, the ‘old world of business’ is characterised by predictable environments, in which the focus of goals and actions is on prediction and optimisation-based efficiencies. This is the world of competence-based ‘information’ as the strategic asset and the emphasis is on controlling the behavior of organisational agents toward the fulfillment of pre-specified organisational goals and objectives. In contrast, high levels of uncertainty and inability to predict the future characterise the ‘new world of business’. Use of the information and control systems and compliance with pre-defined goals, objectives and best practices may not necessarily achieve long-term organisational competence. So-called disruptive technologies can have great effect, as changes, on projects even in implementation phase. This is the world of ‘re-everything,’ which challenges the assumptions underlying the ‘accepted way of doing things’. This world needs the capability to understand the problems afresh given the changing environmental conditions. The focus is not only on finding the right answers but also on finding the right questions. Competence management focuses on ‘doing the right thing’ instead of ‘doing things right’. To remain aligned with the dynamically changing needs of the business environment, organisations need to continuously assess their internal theories of business for ongoing effectiveness. That is the only viable means for ensuring that today's ‘core competences’ do not become ‘core rigidities’ of tomorrow. Project orientation gives automatically a flexible standpoint to the deliveries, which means that the environment is understood beforehand as dynamic. If we look at this from the competence point of view, it gives us a valid standpoint, because competence is also seen as dynamic in nature and acquisition process has to be kept ongoing all the time. PMCD framework was created to develop project management competences in a systematic and sustainable way. It is a framework and tool for learning and a process for developing competences. As a comparison, Söderlund (2004) presents business, project and technological competence as strategic competences of the firm. He further breaks down the project competence framework as project generation, project organising, project leadership and project teamwork emerged in a grounded theory analysis. PMCD framework agrees with these, but is more like a platform for developing competence. Jafaari (2004) has made a study of competences for professionals on project management. In his study, he classifies three categories for competences: technical competences (26%), management competences (43%) and soft competences (31%). Modules inside PMCD framework fit to the classification of Jafaari (2004). This is easy to say, because the exact competences needed seem to be somehow situational and have to be defined more accurately on organisational level. Identified on a study (Fong and Chan, 2004) of project managers in UK, on-the-job experience and on-the-job training are the most effective sources of knowledge for the development of project managers. They also noticed that, experiential learning is the most prevalent and effective mode of skill development. The experiential learning of project managers is predominantly at work, active, with others, self-initiated, job-centred, competitive and self-directed. These are the principles that PMCD framework follows. Based on parallel studies (Jafaari, 2004, Fong and Chan, 2004 and Söderlund, 2004) PMCD framework can be considered valid. Practical experiences and feedback give valid and appropriate foundation for the PMCD framework. However, the framework needs continuous evaluation and reflection to and from the ever-changing environment, because the original core of the framework was to develop and update competences continuously. In addition to current evaluation methods, there are future development challenges: how to evaluate the impacts of the framework, how to create and follow-up career/competence development path, what are the working methods, etc. Finally, the validity, utility, and usability are defined in the name of practical business results—the PMCD framework fulfills these conditions if it can produce competences that can help a company to prosper.