The Politics of Projects in Technology‐Intensive Work

• Date: 01 March 2016
• Published date: 01 March 2016
• Author: Johann Packendorff,Svetlana Cicmil,Damian E Hodgson,Monica Lindgren
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/ntwe.12062

New Technology, Work and Employment 31:1

ISSN 0268-1072

Introduction

The Politics of Projects in Technology- Intensive Work

Projects represent the habitual context for much of the labour associated with

new technology; across a range of industries, the development and implementation

of new technology is typically organised as a project, planned and controlled by

project managers and project management methodologies, and often subject to

project management technologies which monitor and report on progress against

a schedule and a plan. Projects are the standard, even universal mode of organ-

isation used to develop, enhance, implement or deliver new technologies through

a time- bounded collective endeavour (Morris, 1997). The creation of the latest

Xbox or PlayStation blockbuster, the design of the latest iPhone or the implemen-

tation of a global ERP system typically relies upon practices, language, tools and

methodology associated with the burgeoning field of project management. Indeed,

in many technical fields it is difficult to differentiate management as an institution

from project management. For many technical experts across a range of industries,

engaging in project work is inevitable if they want to exercise their expertise,

and project management represents the only alternative career ladder to ever-

increasing technical specialisation (Causer and Jones, 1996; Fincham, 2012). Adopting

project management, as a role or as a set of responsibilities alongside technical

work, frequently requires technical professionals to learn and embrace a detailed

set of project management methodologies for planning, monitoring and control

of their own work and that of others, enshrined in globally standardised project

management bodies of knowledge. Moreover, the enactment of project management

frequently relies heavily on various technologies to enact control, from the original

Gantt charts to PERT, CPM and other, more recent, sophisticated packages for

planning and control of projects (such as Primavera, Microsoft Project, even

PRINCE2) (Metcalfe, 1997; Hodgson, 2002).

Only recently has research paid serious attention to the political consequences

of project work; the pressure of precarious and discontinuous employment (Koch,

2004; Green, 2006; Rowlands and Handy, 2012), the intensive (often technologically-

enabled) surveillance and control of project work (Metcalfe, 1997; Araujo, 2009;

Gleadle et al., 2012), the multiple demands of multiproject work and leadership

(Garrick and Clegg, 2001; Zika- Viktorsson et al., 2006), the transfer of organisa-

tional and managerial responsibilities onto individual workers (Hodgson, 2002),

the implications of such conditions for work–life balance and gender discrimi-

nation (Lindgren and Packendorff, 2006; Styhre, 2011; Lindgren et al., 2014) and

the disciplining effects of project management as a career and profession (Barrett,

2001; Marks and Scholarios, 2007; Fincham, 2012; Paton et al., 2013). These and

similar themes have been explored in some depth over 15 years in a series of

workshops and publications associated with the Critical Project Studies movement

(Hodgson, 2002, 2004; Cicmil and Hodgson, 2006; Hodgson and Cicmil, 2006,

2016; Cicmil et al., 2009).

In this themed section of New Technology, Work and Employment (NTWE),

we build on this work to explore key issues relating to the impact and implica-

tions of project work in technology- intensive settings. The special issue addresses

five interconnected themes; control, career/professionalism, identity, inequality and

vulnerability.

© 2016 John Wiley & Sons Ltd Introduction 1