A project management office as a project organization’s strategizing tool

Abstract

Organizations are increasingly searching for ways to create value and enhance competitiveness. One way to increase the value contribution of an organization’s assets is to establish a project management office (PMO). A PMO orchestrates an organization’s assets by creating coherence between the assets and the organizational strategic goals; however, selecting consistent PMO processes that match the context to maximize value creation remains challenging. In a similar vein, the changing rate of operational environments affects the chosen roles’ and processes’ value contribution that creates extra challenges for PMO professionals.

The project management is an interdisciplinary research field and to avoid getting stuck with the theoretical and analytical siloes, which limit to look for new horizons the author utilizes two central theoretical concepts as the organizational contingency theory and the dynamic capability view. These theoretical perspectives provide structure, rationality, and guidance for building a fresh perspective of a PMOs purpose as a project organization’s strategizing tool. Then this dissertation shed light on the process how the PMOs orchestrate organization assets and increase organization competitiveness. Finally, this dissertation introduces two novel methodologies for defining and measuring fitness between the PMO roles, contextual variables measured with organizational value contribution.

This dissertation is divided into two parts. The first part gives a general overview of the relevant literature, the research design and the conclusions of the study. The second part comprises the four Publications.