MGTS7527 Chap.2 Projects Inside the Permanent Organisation
Projects Inside the Permanent Organisation
A temporary team inside a lasting organisation
Week 2 treats every project as a temporary organisational arrangement created by a permanent one.
Lundin and Söderholm's four concepts of time, task, team and transition explain what makes it temporary, while the permanent organisation supplies strategy, funding, staff, authority and governance and later receives the deliverable, the new capability and the responsibility for running it.
Where the friction comes from
The relationship creates predictable tensions: project priorities against operational ones, temporary authority against permanent authority, short-term delivery against long-term value, and innovation against established routines.
This chapter works them through an original case, a regional water utility replacing household meters, and shows how each tension becomes a warning sign for the plan.
Context changes the right answer
Organisational context covers strategy, governance, structure and culture inside the sponsoring organisation; institutional context covers the regulative, normative and cultural-cognitive influences outside it, following Scott (2014).
The chapter ends with the role of projects across sectors, from construction to government and events, and with the questions a critical review should ask about who benefited and who carried the cost.
Using the case method
The chapter's worked case is a template for any analysis question: name the permanent organisation and the temporary team, say what each provides and receives, then test the four tensions and the institutional influences against specific facts.
Analysis that names people, budgets and decisions earns more than a list of concepts.
What this chapter covers
- 01
Temporary and permanent ways of organising
- 02
Time, task, team and transition
- 03
What each side provides and receives
- 04
Four tensions between project and organisation
- 05
Projects inside business practice
- 06
Organisational and institutional context
- 07
Regulative, normative and cultural-cognitive influence
- 08
How success differs by sector
Worked example · free
What a permanent organisation lends and receives in a mobile-app project
- 1Provides: strategic direction, funding, staff and expertise, authority and governance, technology and facilities.
- 1Returns: the app itself, organisational change in how members bank, and new knowledge about digital delivery.
- 1After closure the credit union owns ongoing operations and support, cybersecurity and the expected benefits.
- 1It also inherits remaining risks and lessons learned, so these must be handed over explicitly before the team disbands.
Key terms
- Temporary Organisation
- A project set up for a limited time to finish one task or make one change.
- Permanent Organisation
- The lasting organisation that hosts both projects and day-to-day operations, built to run with no set end date.
- Institutional Context
- The wider formal and informal environment of laws, standards, norms and beliefs around a project.
- Organisational Context
- The conditions inside the sponsoring organisation: its strategy, governance, structure and culture.
Projects Inside the Permanent Organisation FAQ
Why can a project not succeed on its own?
Because it depends on the permanent organisation for staff, funding, authority and decisions, and must hand its output back to people who will run it. Projects struggle when staff are withheld, sponsors decide slowly, or the team builds something operations cannot maintain.
What are the four tensions between a project and its organisation?
Project against operational priorities, temporary against permanent authority, short-term delivery against long-term value, and innovation against organisational routines. Each shows up as competition for staff, decisions or acceptance, and each needs managing rather than wishing away.
What do regulative, normative and cultural-cognitive mean?
They are Scott's three kinds of institutional influence. Regulative means formal rules such as laws and policy; normative means professional expectations such as standards and codes of ethics; cultural-cognitive means shared, taken-for-granted beliefs and community expectations.
How does success differ between sectors?
Construction looks for safe, compliant and operational assets; technology for adoption, functionality and security; healthcare for patient outcomes and staff acceptance; government for public value, equity and accountability; events for safety, audience experience and fixed-date delivery. The same plan can succeed in one sector and fail in another.
Assessment move
Pick one organisation you know and one project it ran. Write the four tensions as four short sentences about that project, then add one regulative, one normative and one cultural-cognitive influence on it. If any sentence could describe every project, rewrite it with a specific detail.
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