Docent lecturer - Project-based organizing for enabling socio-technical transformations

Rapid technological developments and vital societal challenges call for effective means of enabling sophisticated transformations, challenging existing modes of production and consumption, business practices, and regulatory approaches. Addressing these challenges often involves establishing a range of various temporary structures, including projects and other project-based forms of organizing. Driving such transformations, especially sustainability-related, is, however, sophisticated and requires complex long-term coordination efforts among diverse actors. The required multi-level efforts are scattered in time and space and require reconciling competing interests and logics. Moreover, project-based forms of organizing themselves experience complex internal dynamics and face organizational inertia. Effectively navigating through this complex landscape requires an in-depth understanding of various project-based forms of organizing, including their inherent limitations, challenges and potential outcomes. Drawing on examples from my own research, I will discuss what role different project-based forms of organizing can play in driving complex transformations, acknowledging their potential and challenges and reflecting on theoretical underpinnings.