Projectification and Conflicting Temporalities in Academic Knowledge Production

The project format has become a standard and self-evident way to organize research work in today's accelerated university context, leading to the projectification of science. This paper argues that the project format is not a mere technical organizational tool, but that it challenges and reshapes research practices and ideals. The project format is embedded in a specific temporality which is called project time. The key characteristics of project time are scrutinized by distinguishing it from process time, which refers to the internal organizational logic of research. In addition, project time is examined through Barbara Adam's theorizing on the commodification, control, compression and colonization of clock time. In the last part of the paper, temporal conflicts in project-based research are examined empirically by drawing upon interview material with Finnish academics working in the social sciences

Projectification of the Firm : the Renault Case

Many industrial firms are implementing fundamental changes in their organizations to increase the efficiency of their product development processes. Here we focus on the relations between project management models and the permanent organization and processes of the firm. The case of the French firm Renault is being studied. This firm implemented a transition, from a classical funtional organization in the 1960's to project coordination in the 1970's and autonomous and powerful project teams since 1989. Such advanced project management has deep and destabilising effects on the other permanent logics of the firm (task definitions, hierarchic regulations, carrier management, functions and suppliers relationship). Therefore a phase of "projectification" is now under way to adapt these permanent processes to the new context.project management, organization, organizational learning, automobile industry.

Projectification of the European Union and its implications for public labour market organisations in Poland

This article contributes to the understanding of the changes that projectification — strongly reinforced by the European Union (EU) — causes in public labour market organisations in Poland. The introduction of project work to the hitherto hierarchical organisational structures found in public organisations influences them. There is, however, a research gap on how changes at the macro level affect individual public organisations and how these organisations change due to the introduction of project work into their structures. The purpose of this paper is to illustrate changes in Polish public labour market organisations caused by projectification. The author draws on a set of quantitative and qualitative data that include a survey conducted in 57 public local organisations as well as interviews conducted at 10 public offices at local and regional levels. A sequential mixed methods approach was used. The results indicate that projectification due to the EU caused changes in organisational structures of public organisations and influenced the selection of the projects. In particular, the findings relating to projectification of the EU and its impact on public labour market institutions in Poland deepen previous research by identifying the specific changes occurring at the level of individual public organisations. These changes are diverse in nature, yet the most important of these relate to the adaptation of organisational goals to the objectives of the grant applications as well as to the changes in organisational structures. The study also illustrates that while EU-funded projects are almost always completed on time, do not exceed their budgets, and achieve the indicators of the EU programs, such projects do not always provide the value that a local community would expect. Therefore, there is a need for the EU to not only assess project success on time, cost and quality measures, but also to assess project success on local impact and value created for stakeholders.

On the dimension of subspaces with bounded Schmidt rank

We consider the question of how large a subspace of a given bipartite quantum system can be when the subspace contains only highly entangled states. This is motivated in part by results of Hayden et al., which show that in large d x d--dimensional systems there exist random subspaces of dimension almost d^2, all of whose states have entropy of entanglement at least log d - O(1). It is also related to results due to Parthasarathy on the dimension of completely entangled subspaces, which have connections with the construction of unextendible product bases. Here we take as entanglement measure the Schmidt rank, and determine, for every pair of local dimensions dA and dB, and every r, the largest dimension of a subspace consisting only of entangled states of Schmidt rank r or larger. This exact answer is a significant improvement on the best bounds that can be obtained using random subspace techniques. We also determine the converse: the largest dimension of a subspace with an upper bound on the Schmidt rank. Finally, we discuss the question of subspaces containing only states with Schmidt equal to r.Comment: 4 pages, REVTeX4 forma

Crossing innovation and product projects management: comparative analysis in the automotive industry.

Projectification and platform approaches have been two main transformation trends implemented by industrial firms during the1990s. For those firms, innovation management no longer deals with introducing radically and totally new products, but rather withapplying innovative features within a regular stream of products and platforms. This paper proposes an analytical framework thatcan address the resulting interplay between innovative features and new products. This framework relies on the concept of innovationlife-cycle management (ILCM). The paper presents the early results from the comparison of five case studies from three OEMs.Organizational learning; New product projects portfolio; Innovation management; Automotive industry; Comparative analysis.

Toward a precarious projectariat? Project dynamics in Slovenian and French social services

Project organization is used extensively to promote creativity, innovation and responsiveness to local context, but can lead to precarious employment. This paper compares European Social Fund (ESF)-supported projects supporting ‘active inclusion’ of disadvantaged clients in Slovenia and France. Despite many similarities between the two social protection fields in task, temporality, teams and socio-economic context, the projects had different dynamics with important implications for workers. In Slovenia project dynamics have been precarious, leading to insecure jobs and reduced status for front-line staff; in France, by contrast, projects and employment have been relatively stable. Our explanation highlights the transaction, more specifically, the capacity of government agencies to function as intermediaries managing the transactions through which ESF money is disbursed to organizations providing services. We find that transnational pressures on the state affect its capacity as a transaction organizer to stabilize the organizational field. In Slovenia, transnational pressures associated with austerity and European Union integration have stripped away this capacity more radically than in France, leading to precarious project dynamics and risk shifting onto project workers

Projectification of the Firm : the Renault Case

Many industrial firms are implementing fundamental changes in their organizations to increase the efficiency of their product development processes. Here we focus on the relations between project management models and the permanent organization and processes of the firm. The case of the French firm Renault is being studied. This firm implemented a transition, from a classical funtional organization in the 1960's to project coordination in the 1970's and autonomous and powerful project teams since 1989. Such advanced project management has deep and destabilising effects on the other permanent logics of the firm (task definitions, hierarchic regulations, carrier management, functions and suppliers relationship). Therefore a phase of "projectification" is now under way to adapt these permanent processes to the new context