Motivation of young project professionals

Martina Huemann and Ruth Lechler examine what motivates young project professionals from Generation Y to work on projects. Generation Y has unique preferences when it comes to work, highly valuing flexibility, growth opportunities, and engaging in meaningful tasks. They argue that projects provide an appealing work environment that aligns with the career aspirations of these professionals. Drawing upon self-determination theory, they share their research findings and introduce the Model of Young Project Professionals’ Motivation. Within this model, four sets of motivators are identified: learning and development, creating and delivering, relating and connecting, and working autonomously. Closing the chapter, we provide practical recommendations for organizations to attract and retain young project professionals, focusing on creating an environment that supports these motivators

Design Thinking in projects

Today’s projects need to solve wicked problems. The solution is often unclear to the project owner which makes it hard to explain to the project manager what the project outcome should be, a reason why agile project approaches have become more and more applied in practice. Ruth Lechler, Martina Huemann, and Patrick Lehner introduce Design Thinking as an agile project approach to develop products and services in co-creation with end users. The approach best fits projects when the solution or even the problem is not well known yet and innovation desired. This chapter discusses Design Thinking as a process, toolbox, and mindset and encourages its application in projects. Benefits and challenges of Design Thinking are provided

Design Thinking in projects

Today’s projects need to solve wicked problems. The solution is often unclear to the project owner which makes it hard to explain to the project manager what the project outcome should be, a reason why agile project approaches have become more and more applied in practice. Ruth Lechler, Martina Huemann, and Patrick Lehner introduce Design Thinking as an agile project approach to develop products and services in co-creation with end users. The approach best fits projects when the solution or even the problem is not well known yet and innovation desired. This chapter discusses Design Thinking as a process, toolbox, and mindset and encourages its application in projects. Benefits and challenges of Design Thinking are provided

The project-oriented organisation through the lens of viable systems

Organisations are increasingly implementing projects to respond to growing complexity and changes in their environments. Such organisations are referred to as project-oriented organisations. This organisation type has been described with regard to value-based, people-based and structure-based competencies. To strengthen the theoretical underpinning of the competence model of project-oriented organisations, we adopt the cybernetic perspective of viable systems developed by Stafford Beer. We conceptually derive survivability, sense-making and futureability as central competencies of viable systems and relate them to such organisations. In doing so, the paper strengthens the theoretical understanding of project-oriented organisations and contributes to a simplification of the model of viable systems. From a practical perspective, we empower organisations to increase their viability by leveraging their viable competencies

Looking beneath the tip of the iceberg : the two-sided nature of chatbots and their roles for digital feedback exchange

Enterprises are forecasted to spend more on chatbots than on mobile app development by 2021. Up to today little is known on the roles chatbots play in facilitating feedback exchange. However, digitization and automation put pressure on companies to setup digital work environments that enable reskilling of employees. Therefore, a structured analysis of feedback-related chatbots for Slack was conducted. Our results propose six archetypes that reveal the roles of chatbots in facilitating feedback exchange on performance, culture and ideas. We show that chatbots do not only consist of conversational agents integrated into instant messenger but are tightly linked to complementary front-end systems such as mobile and web apps. Like the upper part of an iceberg, the conversational agent is above water and visible within the chat, whereas many user interactions of feedback-related chatbots are only possible outside of the instant messenger. Further, we extract six design principles for chatbots as digital feedback systems. We do this by analyzing chatbots and linking empirically observed design features to (meta-)requirements derived from explanatory theory on feedback, self-determination and persuasive systems. The results suggest that chatbots benefit the social environment of conversation agents and the richness of the graphical user interface of external applications

The project-oriented organisation through the lens of viable systems

Organisations are increasingly implementing projects to respond to growing complexity and changes in their environments. Such organisations are referred to as project-oriented organisations. This organisation type has been described with regard to value-based, people-based and structure-based competencies. To strengthen the theoretical underpinning of the competence model of project-oriented organisations, we adopt the cybernetic perspective of viable systems developed by Stafford Beer. We conceptually derive survivability, sense-making and futureability as central competencies of viable systems and relate them to such organisations. In doing so, the paper strengthens the theoretical understanding of project-oriented organisations and contributes to a simplification of the model of viable systems. From a practical perspective, we empower organisations to increase their viability by leveraging their viable competencies

The need for purpose motivating project professionals to work on projects

THE NEED FOR PURPOSE MOTIVATING PROJECT PROFESSIONALS TO WORK ON PROJECTS The need for purpose motivating project professionals to work on projects (1) Deckblatt_Dissertation_ab_01.03.2025 (1) Dissertation_Lechler_final_review-neu (2