Too Much of a Good Thing? The Antecedents and Consequences of Social Capital in Project Management Offices (PMO)

Companies invest in project management disciplines to add value, advance strategies, and increase competitive advantage. Mature organizations are adding Project Management Offices (PMO) to provide additional support to increase the likelihood of project success. If PMO’s are the solution to the problem, then why are the outcomes still problematic? We seek to address this research question by utilizing social capital theory to theorize on the impacts of PMO social capital on PMO performance. Further, we delineate the impacts of PMO characteristics on social capital and the moderating role of PMO culture on performance. This study seeks to extend the existing project management literature and has significant implications for research and practice

Stakeholder Orientation as a Predictor of Project Success

Annually, companies are losing billions of dollars due to projects failing, and the trend is not improving. Many factors can contribute to the failure, but stakeholders are a common denominator (Keil et al., 1998; Kappelman et al., 2006; Williams et al., 2012). Project studies have evaluated stakeholder relationships (Mazur et al., 2014; Wang & Huang, 2006) and stakeholder groups and engagement (Jenkin et al., 2019). Stakeholder relationships, particularly project sponsors and executive sponsors, have influenced project outcomes. These studies focused on the interaction between stakeholders and the project team. Stakeholder theory is the premise that an organization exists to provide value to its stakeholders (Freeman, 1984). Stakeholder orientation is a subset of stakeholder theory in which stakeholders exhibit decision-making values that consider the customer, competitor, employee, or shareholder (Duesing & White, 2013; Yau et al., 2007). These vital stakeholders bring a competency to the team that goes beyond interacting with the project team. Stakeholder orientation theories have focused on CSR (Cheung et al., 2018; Erdiaw-Kwasie et al., 2017), but we are interested in the management side (Greenley & Foxall, 1997). The emerging research stream links stakeholder orientation to organizational performance (Brulhart et al., 2019; Vaitoonkiat & Charoensukmongkol, 2020). Our study seeks to understand the effects of stakeholder orientation on project performance using project sponsors and executive sponsors as our study group. We theorize that the stakeholders possessing a higher level of strategic orientation towards customers, competitors, employees, or shareholders will positively influence project performance. Additionally, we posit that stakeholders with a higher strategic orientation toward customers and employees will achieve higher customer project performance measures. In contrast, we posit that stakeholders with a higher strategic orientation towards competitors and shareholders will achieve higher financial project performance measures. Project performance measurements vary widely amongst the academic community. The traditional measures of efficiency (time, scope, budget) focus on internal standards for which the project manager is accountable. Our stakeholders have broader management accountability for performance beyond these ‘triple constraints.’ Organizational performance metrics include internal and external constructs, leading toward the organization’s effectiveness. Recently, project studies have expanded their measurements beyond efficiency to effectiveness measures (Iriarte et al., 2020). Project sponsors and executive sponsors are accountable for internal and external outcomes. This study\u27s project performance measurement will use financial (return on investment, business benefits) and customer (quality, functionality, performance) constructs. This study contributes in three ways. First, it aims to extend the project management literature by providing divergent views of stakeholders beyond their interaction with the project team. Second, practitioners can leverage this information to identify stakeholders with a higher level of stakeholder orientation to minimize one of the common denominators that plague projects moving us away from ‘doing things right’ to ‘doing the right things.’ Finally, this study applies organizational management theories to project studies, opening new application avenues for both disciplines

An Analysis into the Effectiveness of Aircraft Maintenance under the Combat Wing Structure

Organizational structure builds the foundation from which organizations operate. To gain full potential of structural efficiencies in the current operating environment, public and private firms are continually modifying their organizational structure. The U.S. Air Force is no different and underwent its most recent reorganization in the fall of 2002 replacing the post-Gulf War format of the previous decade. Air Force leadership needs to understand how well the current structure is performing at achieving its intended objectives. This research investigates the effectiveness of the recent change to Air Force organizational structure on aircraft maintenance performance through an analysis of aircraft maintenance metrics. To observe effects both within and across the Air Force, four years of data were analyzed from three F-16 units and three KC-135 units representing two of the significant Air Force Major Commands. The analytical methods used for this research include testing assumptions of normality and variance of sample data, homogeneity of variance and comparison of means, weighted factoring, and trend analysis using linear regression to determine the overall effectiveness of the combat wing structure. Results of this analysis allowed the researcher to postulate an answer to the overall research question. This answer and other associated findings can assist Air Force leaders in understanding how to enhance operational performance

Where the granular flows bend

Based on IMaX/Sunrise data, we report on a previously undetected phenomenon in solar granulation. We show that in a very narrow region separating granules and intergranular lanes the spectral line width of the Fe I 5250.2 A line becomes extremely small. We offer an explanation of this observation with the help of magneto-convection simulations. These regions with extremely small line widths correspond to the places where the granular flows bend from mainly upflow in granules to downflow in intergranular lanes. We show that the resolution and image stability achieved by IMaX/Sunrise are important requisites to detect this interesting phenomenon.Comment: Accepted for the Sunrise Special Issue of ApJ

Magnetic loops in the quiet Sun

We investigate the fine structure of magnetic fields in the atmosphere of the quiet Sun. We use photospheric magnetic field measurements from {\sc Sunrise}/IMaX with unprecedented spatial resolution to extrapolate the photospheric magnetic field into higher layers of the solar atmosphere with the help of potential and force-free extrapolation techniques. We find that most magnetic loops which reach into the chromosphere or higher have one foot point in relatively strong magnetic field regions in the photosphere. $91$ of the magnetic energy in the mid chromosphere (at a height of 1 Mm) is in field lines, whose stronger foot point has a strength of more than 300 G, i.e. above the equipartition field strength with convection. The loops reaching into the chromosphere and corona are also found to be asymmetric in the sense that the weaker foot point has a strength $B < 300$ G and is located in the internetwork. Such loops are expected to be strongly dynamic and have short lifetimes, as dictated by the properties of the internetwork fields.Comment: accepted for ApJL Sunrise special issue, 8 Pages, 4 Figure

Detection of large acoustic energy flux in the solar atmosphere

We study the energy flux carried by acoustic waves excited by convective motions at sub-photospheric levels. The analysis of high-resolution spectropolarimetric data taken with IMaX/Sunrise provides a total energy flux of ~ 6400--7700 Wm$^{-2}$ at a height of ~ 250 km in the 5.2-10 mHz range, i.e. at least twice the largest energy flux found in previous works. Our estimate lies within a factor of 2 of the energy flux needed to balance radiative losses from the chromosphere according to Anderson & Athay (1989) and revives interest in acoustic waves for transporting energy to the chromosphere. The acoustic flux is mainly found in the intergranular lanes but also in small rapidly-evolving granules and at the bright borders, forming dark dots and lanes of splitting granules.Comment: Accepted on ApJ Letters as part of the special Sunrise issu

Mesogranulation and the solar surface magnetic field distribution

The relation of the solar surface magnetic field with mesogranular cells is studied using high spatial (~ 100 km) and temporal (~ 30 sec) resolution data obtained with the IMaX instrument aboard SUNRISE. First, mesogranular cells are identified using Lagrange tracers (corks) based on horizontal velocity fields obtained through Local Correlation Tracking. After ~ 20 min of integration, the tracers delineate a sharp mesogranular network with lanes of width below about 280 km. The preferential location of magnetic elements in mesogranular cells is tested quantitatively. Roughly 85% of pixels with magnetic field higher than 100 G are located in the near neighborhood of mesogranular lanes. Magnetic flux is therefore concentrated in mesogranular lanes rather than intergranular ones. Secondly, magnetic field extrapolations are performed to obtain field lines anchored in the observed flux elements. This analysis, therefore, is independent of the horizontal flows determined in the first part. A probability density function (PDF) is calculated for the distribution of distances between the footpoints of individual magnetic field lines. The PDF has an exponential shape at scales between 1 and 10 Mm, with a constant characteristic decay distance, indicating the absence of preferred convection scales in the mesogranular range. Our results support the view that mesogranulation is not an intrinsic convective scale (in the sense that it is not a primary energy-injection scale of solar convection), but also give quantitative confirmation that, nevertheless, the magnetic elements are preferentially found along mesogranular lanes.Comment: Accepted for publication in ApJ Letters, 16 pages, 5 figure

Transient thermal analysis during the ascent phase of a balloon-borne payload. Comparison with SUNRISE test flight measurements

The thermal design of stratospheric balloon payloads usually focuses on the cruise phase of the missions, that is, the floating altitude conditions. The ascent phase usually takes between 2 and 4 h, a very small period compared to the duration of the whole mission, which can last up to 4 weeks. However, during this phase payloads are subjected to very harsh conditions due mainly to the convective cooling that occurs as the balloon passes through the cold atmosphere, with minimum temperatures in the tropopause. The aim of this work is to study the thermal behaviour of a payload carried by a long duration balloon during the ascent phase. Its temperature has been calculated as a function of the altitude from sea level to floating conditions. To perform this analysis it has been assumed that the thermal interactions (convection and radiation) depend on the altitude, on the environmental conditions (which in turn depend also on the altitude) and on the temperature of the system itself. The results have been compared with the measurements taken during the SUNRISE test flight, launched in October 2007 by CSBF from Fort Sumner (New Mexico)

First high-resolution images of the Sun in the 2796 \AA{} Mg II k line

We present the first high-resolution solar images in the Mg II k 2796 \AA{} line. The images, taken through a 4.8 \AA{} broad interference filter, were obtained during the second science flight of SUNRISE in June 2013 by the SuFI instrument. The Mg II k images display structures that look qualitatively very similar to images taken in the core of Ca II H. The Mg II images exhibit reversed granulation (or shock waves) in the internetwork regions of the quiet Sun, at intensity contrasts that are similar to those found in Ca II H. Very prominent in Mg II are bright points, both in the quiet Sun and in plage regions, particularly near disk center. These are much brighter than at other wavelengths sampled at similar resolution. Furthermore, Mg II k images also show fibril structures associated with plage regions. Again, the fibrils are similar to those seen in Ca II H images, but tend to be more pronounced, particularly in weak plage.Comment: Accepted for publication in The Astrophysical Journal Letter