Oil And Water: A Qualitative Study Of Project Management Professionals’ Experience Delivering High Value Capital Infrastructure Projects Within an Operational Organisation
Large, complex operational organisations often deliver capital projects as part of their overall business strategy. In many cases, these organisations will establish a project group to enable delivery of these projects. The project group will generally consist of project management professionals hired for the duration of the project (Andersen et al., 2007; Ershadi et al., 2021; Thiry & Deguire, 2007). Typically, these project teams lean heavily on their operational colleagues and the organisation’s internal corporate services to support project delivery. There is a large body of research investigating collaboration and collaborative behaviours between stakeholders in project management, however, the common focus is collaboration between external stakeholders, e.g. contractors, designers, and consultants (Hällström, 2024; Moradi et al., 2022; Vosman et al., 2023; Wei et al., 2022). Little research has been conducted to understand the collaborative behaviours of cross-functional teams within a single organisation, when a project team is focused on project delivery, and requires the support of their operational colleagues focused on running operations and the organisation’s business as usual. This dissertation includes a review of project management literature, including research on high-performing teams, collaboration, and collaborative behaviours. This study investigates the perceived enablers and barriers for project delivery teams to engender productive collaboration with their operational peers in the delivery of capital projects. Qualitative data was collected via an online survey of project delivery professionals currently involved in the delivery of a high value capital project within a large, complex operational organisation. Twenty project management professionals completed the survey, providing written accounts of their experiences delivering capital projects within an operational organisation, and their perceptions of what they consider the barriers and enablers to intraorganisational collaboration. A thematic, reflexive analysis of the data was conducted, analysing the accounts of enablers and barriers, and separately identified distinct negative and positive themes. Through further synthesis of the themes three key factors were commonly perceived to enable successful collaboration these were leadership, trust, and relationships. The participant examples showed that the absence of these factors created a negative barrier to collaboration. There are three key findings from this study of project delivery professionals’ experience of collaborating with their operations peers. First, operational organisations must invest considerable forethought when establishing project teams, ensuring strong leadership at the helm. Second, organisations must communicate project and organisational goals across the business and include operational teams, this will aid in establishing trust and transparency from the outset. Finally, early engagement between working groups is essential, as this enables relationships to be established and trust to build. Detailed recommendations for practice are developed. Further research is recommended of intraorganisational collaboration for complex operational organisations delivering large capital projects. With particular emphasis in the strain on project professionals working in an operational organisation and the operations perspective on collaboration with project delivery teams.
Networked Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations