The project (management) discourse and its consequences: on vulnerability and unsustainability in project‐based work

• Author: Svetlana Cicmil,Johann Packendorff,Monica Lindgren
• Date: 01 March 2016
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/ntwe.12058
• Published date: 01 March 2016

58 New Technology, Work and Employment © 2016 John Wiley & Sons Ltd

New Technology, Work and Employment 31:1

ISSN 1468-005X

The project (management) discourse and

its consequences: on vulnerability and

unsustainability in project- based work

Svetlana Cicmil, Monica Lindgren and

Johann Packendorff

In this paper, we examine how the discourses related to project-

based work and management are drawn upon in the organis-

ing of contemporary work, and the implications they have for

project workers. We are interested in how project workers and

projectified organisations become vulnerable to decline, decay

and exhaustion and why they continue to participate in, and so

sustain, projectification processes. The critical perspective taken

here, in combination with our empirical material from the ICT

sector, surfaces an irreversible decline of the coping capacity of

project workers and draws attention to the addictive perception

of resilience imposed on and internalised by them as a condition

of success and longevity. Under those circumstances, resilience is

made sense of and internalised as coping with vulnerability by

letting some elements of life being destroyed; thus re- emerging

as existentially vulnerable rather than avoiding or resisting the

structures and processes that perpetuate vulnerability.

Keywords: critical sustainability, projectification, vulnerability,

project-based work, resilience.

Introduction

In this paper, we examine how the discourses related to projects and project

management are drawn upon in the organising of contemporary work, and the

implications they have for project workers. Inspired by some critical debates around

vulnerability and resilience from current research broadly related to ecological

crisis and sustainability, we analyse the consequences of the prevailing project

rationality in the form of projectification processes (Midler, 1995; Cicmil et al.,

2009b; Packendorff and Lindgren, 2014).

Projects have emerged as a central aspect of organisational life in recent decades

(Ekstedt et al., 1999), supported by a well- established set of Systems Theory-

derived, ICT- mediated, managerial tools and well- organised professional

communities (Hodgson and Cicmil, 2007). The discourse of projects and project

Svetlana Cicmil (svetlana.cicmil@uwe.ac.uk) is director of doctoral research at the University of the

West of England, Faculty of Business and Law, Bristol, UK. Monica Lindgren (monica.lindgren@indek.

kth.se) is professor of Industrial Economics and Management at the KTH Royal Institute of Technology,

School of Industrial Engineering and Management, Stockholm, Sweden. Johann Packendorff (johann.

packendorff@indek.kth.se) is an associate professor in Industrial Economics and Management at the

KTH Royal Institute of Technology, School of Industrial Engineering and Management, Stockholm,

Sweden.

© 2016 John Wiley & Sons Ltd Project discourse and its consequences 59

management (PM) has grown strong and is present in all sectors of society, de-

fining desirable ways of working and living as well as articulating the character

of successful and effective social interaction in modern capitalism (Chiapello and

Fairclough, 2002; Clegg and Courpasson, 2004). It centres around the proclaimed

need for rational planning and control in order to secure successful delivery of

intended outcomes—promoting the project as the entity of interest, with its ef-

fectiveness as the main ambition, and instrumental/prescriptive rationality as the

way to create new knowledge (Morris, 2013). As such, it appeals to organisational

decision makers globally.

During recent years, the project management discourse has been subject to a

series of critical studies scrutinising the greyer and oppressive aspects of the

discourse as well as its consequences (cf. Hodgson, 2002; Buckle and Thomas,

2003; Lindgren and Packendorff, 2006; Cicmil et al., 2009b; Paton et al., 2013;

Lindgren et al., 2014). These studies have clearly exposed some potentially un-

sustainable aspects of project- based work for organisations and individuals such

as stressful work situations, internalisation of project management models and

tools, subjugation to unrealistic plans and deadlines and a focus on each indi-

vidual project rather than on organisational and individual long- term coping with

a project- based work- life. As a product of technological, social, economic and

political forces and human agendas, project basing changes the relationships people

have with work, life and co- workers (Hodgson and Cicmil, 2007; Lindgren et al.,

2014; Lundin et al., 2015; Peticca- Harris et al., 2015).

In this paper, we suggest that project discourses may have more far- reaching

existential consequences for project workers and their organisations than this. As

noted e.g. by Chiapello and Fairclough (2002) and Araújo (2009), a work- life framed

as consisting of temporary assignments, temporary relations and recurrent perfor-

mance evaluations may also be a work- life in which nothing is stable, nothing and

no one is reliable, in which professional reputations, performances and senses of

personal worthiness are repeatedly challenged and may be lost. Project- based work

can create conditions that are hard to cope with, hard to justify, hard to control—

despite the grand promise of project management to deliver the reasonable, the

rational and the controllable. A critical concept of vulnerability, as suggested in some

emerging sustainability research (Grear, 2011; Fineman and Grear, 2013) offers an

appealing theoretical platform for the argument that the processes of global capi-

talism that underpin the contemporary world order (projects and projectification

being one of its products) not only expose us to external environmental risks and

insecurities (Kirby, 2011; Rajan, 2011) but inevitably involve us, as more or less

powerful co- constructors, in conditions in which our very being is seen as under

constant threat (Skoglund, 2015). By invoking the discursive notion of project man-

agement in daily work, we may not only involve ourselves in potentially harmful

working conditions, we may also live and work as if past achievements, relations

and performances can never be relied upon in the future. Our capacity for resil-

ience—i.e. handling or living with this vulnerability without complete breakdown—

will thus be central for understanding the consequences of the project discourse.

We are intrigued by how project workers and projectified organisations become

vulnerable to decline, decay and exhaustion. Why do they continue to participate

in, and so sustain, projectification discourse and processes? What resistance and

which restorative actions may be possible? We suggest that projectification is a

complex ethical problem with consequences for long- term sustainability of organ-

isations and society. It may expose workers, individually and collectively, to vul-

nerable situations that might in the long run consume available resources and

diminish their adaptive capacity rendering the organisation unsustainable.

Our aim in this paper is to argue that the discursive projectification of work-

life may not only expose people to unsustainable working conditions in terms of

deadline stress and overload but also contribute to their declining senses of pro-

gress, hope and personal worthiness—that is, their existential vulnerability. We

also suggest that this gives rise to a specific neoliberal notion of resilience, which