The Mandate of Project Management Offices Beyond Organizational Boundaries—Still A Blind Spot for Organizational Design?

Abstract

Based on conceptual reasoning, combined with illustrations from the air cargo industry, this article proposes a gradual broadening of the concept of what project management offices (PMOs) are responsible for to provide added value to the collaborating organizations when planning for and executing interorganizational projects. Thus far, the ability of PMOs to support interorganizational projects and practices has been restricted—this goes for project management practice as well as a lack of concepts and theoretical reasoning from research in the domain of project studies. Against this background, this article distinguishes four types of PMOs and identifies promising organizational design elements pointing to functions and barriers, as well as to the interorganizational bridging practices of PMOs in support of their interorganizational responsibilities.

Keywords

interorganizational collaboration organization design project-based organizing project management office (PMO)project network organizational boundaries

Introduction

Although not at all a new phenomenon, organizing projects in today’s world increasingly transcends organizational boundaries (Jones & Lichtenstein, 2008). This is particularly true for all forms that call for interorganizational collaboration, irrespective of whether collaboration is required within the context of communities, crowds, alliances, networks, or platforms. In consequence, interorganizational projects have received considerable attention by scholars and practitioners in recent years (Lee-Kelley & Turner, 2017; Sydow & Braun, 2018). Thereby organizations, especially large corporations, are not only sequentially but often even simultaneously involved in several such projects, characterized by dual if not multiple project ownerships (Olsson, 2018) and calling for some kind of competent, boundary-crossing interorganizational multiproject or project portfolio management (Aubry & Lavoie-Tremblay, 2018; Martinsuo & Ahola, 2022; Unger et al., 2012).

Project management offices (PMOs) have spread in practice as an organizational entity that aims to improve the management of projects as temporary organizations (Lundin & Söderholm, 1995) and have kept scholars busy studying PMOs ever since (e.g., Braun, 2018; Hobbs & Aubry, 2007, 2010; Kerzner, 2003; cf. Darling & Whitty, 2016, for a review). Originally, PMOs were designed to support the management of the projects of one organization, not least by informing and training the organizational members involved in such projects—in particular, project managers—and by developing and diffusing important standards and regulations within the organization, as well as promising tools and practices. Toward this end, PMOs have either developed the required capabilities (often via so-called knowledge management) or focused on brokering respective relations with an organization (Pemsel & Wiewiora, 2013).

In any case, the purpose of PMOs is to play a key role in organizations by linking strategy to operations (Hobbs & Aubry, 2007). What is more, PMOs aim to coordinate tool use and integrate management practices throughout the organization, not least by providing appropriate training, consulting, mentoring, learning, and sometimes even staffing services (Dai & Wells, 2004). However, in the wake of the increased diffusion of interorganizational projects (IOPs) the focus on the projects or the project portfolio of only one organization as the project owner has become increasingly questionable—not only, but also in view of the mandate and/or the ability of PMOs to make practices binding across organizational boundaries.

In this article we not only problematize this unsatisfactory situation (Alvesson & Sandberg, 2023), but also give a short overview of the more recent developments in PMO practice and research and discuss the challenges that arise from interorganizational collaboration across organizational boundaries for traditional PMOs. Then we investigate how PMOs face interorganizational project work and detail the associated challenges of coordinating projects beyond organizational boundaries. The respective insights have, for the most part, been gained from theoretical reasoning based on the scholarly literature on PMOs and interorganizational collaboration. This mainly conceptual argument is, however, accompanied by illustrative evidence gained from semistructured interviews in the airline industry with experts and practitioners, specifically with a focus on IOPs in the field of air cargo (see Appendix). This methodology captures both the academic knowledge that has been accumulated on the past and current practices of PMOs, as well as the possible future design alternatives of this organizational form in light of the increased relevance of IOPs.

For our investigation we adopt an organizational design perspective that is informed by practice theory (cf. Feldman & Orlikowski, 2011; Nicolini, 2012), which we will present first. Practice theory has, in the meantime, gained momentum in project studies (Blomquist et al., 2010; Brunet, 2019; Clegg et al., 2018; Floricel et al., 2014; Lalonde et al., 2010; Manning & Sydow, 2011; cf. Lundin et al., 2015, pp. 225–230). What is more, as long as it follows a tall rather than flat ontology (Seidl & Whittington, 2014), practice theory is quite akin to the pluralistic framework proposed by Aubry and Lavoie-Tremblay (2018) that combines contingency theory, the historical approach, and social theory, to capture organizational design not only as an entity, but also as a process.

In what follows, we will first introduce a practice-based perspective on organizational design before looking closer at the boundaries of current PMO design. Based on theoretical reasoning, the section thereafter contains the tentative development of a typology of PMOs, capturing the extent of their interorganizational mandate. These considerations are challenged and supported by illustrative evidence from the expert interviews mentioned. Thereafter, the focus shifts to the specific functions of PMOs in interorganizational settings, as well as to the challenges and barriers that emerge and need to be overcome when these are fulfilled in practice. The article ends with a discussion and conclusion regarding future directions PMO research should probably take.

Theory: Organizational Design as a Practice

Organizational design as a practice and a theoretical lens has been considered one of the cornerstones of management and organization research for decades. More recently, the value of organizational design seems to have been rediscovered not only by management and organization researchers (Dunbar & Starbuck, 2006; Puranam et al., 2012; Van de Ven et al., 2013) but also by project scholars (e.g., Aubry & Lavoie-Tremblay, 2018; Aubry et al., 2022; Fu et al., 2022; Miterev et al., 2020). In this latter, much more specialized discourse, the definition of Greenwood and Miller (2010) seems to be preferred, probably because of their link to strategy or strategizing, which has also become increasingly significant in project studies (Clegg et al., 2018). These authors define organizational design as targeting “the structures of accountability and responsibility used to develop and implement strategies, and the human resource practices and information and business processes that activate those structures” (Greenwood & Miller, 2010, p. 78). As goes for all definitions of organization design, this understanding relates to the fundamental design principles of organizing, in other words differentiation and integration (Lawrence & Lorsch, 1967). With an increased focus on process and practice, however, it becomes expedient to add the role of more or less socially embedded organizational actors and thus account—despite the focus of design theory on intentional actions—for the emergence of unintended consequences under conditions that even “knowledgeable actors” (Giddens, 1984) cannot fully oversee. Thereby, practices also entail more or less creative activities focusing on the generation and acceptance of useful novelty, often with the help of role models (by champions) or promoters (e.g., Cirella & Murphy, 2022; Klein et al., 2015). What is more, one should also think about process by not only considering the initial design of an organization or project, but also its continued updating, in other words, organizing efforts toward improving organizations and their subsystems (Dunbar & Starbuck, 2006), including PMOs. In consequence, the practice of managing projects and organizations, including PMO practice, should be captured as a process. And, as we will argue later, an integrative, multilevel process perspective is made possible by studying practices with the help of structurationist ideas (cf. Giddens, 1984; Manning & Sydow, 2011).

In such a renewed tradition, PMOs would be considered as being an outcome as well as a medium of organizational (re-) design, today often aiming at the constitution, that is the production, reproduction, and eventual transformation of structures that may or may not provide the agility that is increasingly called for (e.g., Marnewick & Marnewick, 2022). On the level of the organization, PMOs traditionally offer a centralized design alternative, and practices that can constructively support projects typically run in a decentralized manner. Thereby, PMOs should increase the professionalization of project management and ultimately enhance project performance (e.g., Dai & Wells, 2004; Marnewick & Marnewick, 2022).

In addition, a PMO, often considered to be an organizational innovation in its own right (Hobbs et al., 2008), may be utilized as an integrative vehicle at the front end of the innovation process (Artto et al., 2011). Moving in the same direction, Pellegrinelli and Garagna (2009) conceptualize PMOs as being agents that implement change and are thereby a potential source of novelty; they believe PMOs are able to gain legitimacy by responding to required changes, allowing the organization to explore new strategic directions and priorities. PMOs that remain stable (while being successful in the dissemination of tools and expertise) may, however, even jeopardize their own existence over time if they are not adapted to changed circumstances. Once established and professionally managed, PMO design may contribute to designing—on a more microlevel—single organizational or interorganizational projects.

The effectiveness of PMOs in supporting project organizing cannot therefore be taken for granted. Quite the contrary, more recent empirical studies seem to show that, in many cases, the effect that PMOs have on organizational performance or value creation seems to be quite limited, if not even counterproductive (Darling & Whitty, 2016). In light of this record, PMOs have more often than not actually either been changed substantially or even shut down after experimenting with their approach for a couple of years (cf. Bredillet et al., 2018). In consequence, it is increasingly difficult to talk about PMOs as being a unitary organizational design that supports project-based organizing. For over the years, as will be shown in the following section, several design alternatives have emerged. Critics may even argue that the whole idea—in other words of supporting and improving project-based organizing with the help of PMOs on both the project and organization levels—may have been watered down.

PMO Designs: Development of Organizational Practices and Boundaries

Empirical studies in fact show an increasing variety of PMO forms, for instance, concerning the decision-making authority and staffing of such entities (Hobbs & Aubry, 2007) or their engagement in supporting not only project management but also project portfolio management, if not globally, then at least regionally (Aubry & Lavoie-Tremblay, 2018; Müller et al., 2013; Unger et al., 2012). The development of PMOs in organizations should be viewed in its historic context, since they have coevolved with their organizational setting and also involve episodes of creative destruction, leading to further organizational transition (Aubry et al., 2008).

Although the process of being designed seems usually to be characterized by some kind of incubation period following some standardized template, the actual development of such organizational units is, as more recent studies have shown, likely to follow fairly idiosyncratic trajectories (Aubry & Lavoie-Tremblay, 2018; Müller et al., 2013). In a study of 17 PMOs, Aubry and colleagues (2010) showed that once PMOs had been set up, most even went through a kind of double transformation: “The first transformation emerges from the acknowledgement of a lack of project management standardization; multiple ways of managing a project coexist within the organization” (Aubry et al., 2010, p. 774). The second transformation, by contrast, occurs when the organization becomes increasingly dissatisfied with this over-standardized support more often than not imposed on project managers with the help of formalized rules and practices; then tensions arise, and the work of the PMO is increasingly questioned. If PMOs continue to exist under these circumstances, they tend to adopt a more flexible and participatory approach. In other cases, Aubry and colleagues noted the adoption of a more flexible agile approach from the start, in light of changing conditions inside and outside the organization. Nevertheless, none of the PMO developments followed the classic life cycle model, which, despite its potential invalidity, still receives attention in the literature on organizational design (e.g., Hill, 2004, for information system research).

The initial enthusiasm regarding the potential of PMOs in practice as well as in research has, in the meantime, given way to a more realistic appreciation of their ability to link strategy and operation better via projects (and thus to add value), acknowledging that it may frequently be necessary to substantially adapt the organizational unit in question (Aubry et al., 2010; Bredillet et al., 2018; Dai & Wells, 2004; Hobbs & Aubry, 2007). Even more complexity is at stake where large organizations run more than one single PMO and operate several PMOs with heterogenous tasks on different organizational levels. Tsaturyan and Müller (2015) studied the governance of such multiple PMO structures and propose a four-dimensional framework considering structural, procedural, relational, and regulative features. Overall, they identify the relational and regulative dimensions as being crucial for integrating multiple PMOs in an overarching governance mode.

Despite such probably necessary organizational adaptations, a certain demise of PMO enthusiasm is to be noted. This may be caused, at least in part, by the fact that more and more projects are of an interorganizational nature and require multiparty involvement in the collaboration, rather than attention by one organization only and its PMO. As stated earlier, this interorganizational dimension may in consequence be calling for the significant adaptation, if not transformation, of PMO practice—and for a new way of theorizing (Sydow & Braun, 2018).

Early work with this broadened focus unearthed the flow of project management knowledge across projects and into the level of networked relationships (Brady & Davies, 2004). Müller et al. (2013) propose a three-tiered knowledge governance structure that relies not only on PMO members in their vital role for knowledge transfer, but also on previous collaborators as a knowledge source. Their study proposes that PMOs act as facilitators on the intracluster, intercluster, and organizational levels. Pemsel and Wiewiora (2013) go even a step further and show how PMOs act as knowledge brokers in project-based organizations. The knowledge brokering roles can vary, depending on the type of learning involved, whether it is experiential, deliberate, or internally focused (Hadi et al., 2022). The authors therefore differentiate among the bottom-up, top-down, and horizontal knowledge-brokering roles of PMOs. In any case, PMOs seem to take on a mediating role in the transfer of knowledge among projects, as is also shown in a case study of five PMOs by Tshuma et al. (2022). Despite all attempts to organize and professionalize knowledge governance with the help of PMOs, it transpires that informal routines and practices foster the actual knowledge-sharing behavior and thus play a crucial role (Martinez Sanz & Ortiz-Marcos, 2020), most likely also when the sharing of knowledge has—as in the case of collaborative IPOs—to cross organizational boundaries.

These studies, which are still mainly geared toward the flow and management of knowledge within and across projects within one organization, point to the assumption that not only a multilevel approach to PMOs is needed, but also a more processual, perhaps practice-based understanding of the relationships and modes of interorganizational governance. Such a theoretical adaptation or innovation seems to be particularly urgently required considering major transformation projects, popular not least in the wake of economic crises, digitalization strategy, and other grand challenges (Davies et al., 2023). Due to the complexity and uncertainty involved, dealing with such challenges requires collaboration not only within, but also across IOPs (Aubry & Lavoie-Tremblay, 2018; Gray & Purdy, 2018). Thus, previous research leaves this question open: To what extent should such collaboration be supported by PMOs? In the existing base of literature, little attention has been given to this particular interorganizational dimension.

Working Toward a Genealogical Typology of PMO Designs

The emergence of PMOs and their increasingly differentiated designs can be viewed as an evolutionary process. Hill (2004) has differentiated gradual stages that correspond with specific PMO capabilities. At the entry stage, solitary projects and single project managers simply track the process of a project, whereas at the state of full maturity, PMOs are seen as being centers of excellence, even taking care of multiple programs with a high strategic impact on the entire organization. Hobbs and Aubry (2008) differentiate among three PMO levels, yet without building on the maturity concept. Based on empirical data, they differentiate among (1) PMOs consisting of multiple projects and project managers acting upon considerable authority when decision-making, (2) PMOs with a small number of projects and either no or only a few project managers with limited decision-making authority, and (3) PMOs with few project managers and a mandate for most of the organization’s projects based on moderate decision-making authority.

Bringing together such insights into PMO development, but also bearing in mind the extent of responsibility and control that is available, we propose an interorganizational perspective on the mandate of PMOs with four distinct types. These types are theoretically grounded, but do not typically reflect the development of a particular PMO over time as an organizational unit that supports the projects of a focal organization.

Type I: A PMO with a solely intraorganizational mandate. Most PMOs have been designed to deliver value internally in various respects, be it standardization, qualification, or portfolio management. Actors from collaborating organizations are simply not perceived as being relevant stakeholders for the PMO, even though the management practices introduced, standardized, and trained may well consider the fact that clients and suppliers, perhaps even competitors, are involved in the project—though not in their role as (co-) project owners. Reasons for this limited responsibility and accountability can be manifold, such as the complexity due to different project management standards across different organizations, but also differences in organizational structures, processes, and culture. Moreover, PMOs are typically run as internal cost centers and provide services to whoever pays for staff and utilities. In complex interorganizational arrangements, the question arises regarding who is to pay for the PMO as an organizational unit or for its services based on (then no longer really) internal prices.

Type II: A PMO with an intraorganizational mandate and small experiments with external partners. When they are engaged in projects characterized by significant interorganizational collaboration, PMOs increasingly recognize the importance and potential to reach beyond organizational boundaries. First experiments take place, for example hosting knowledge-exchange events internally related to IOP management practices, perhaps even inviting external project partners to participate in the introduction, standardization, and training of such practices. This is the first logical step toward centralizing some of the intelligence and practice that has hitherto been enacted by means of ad-hoc coordination, as it is usually applied when organizations initially collaborate.

Type III: A PMO with singular, established activities in interorganizational settings. As PMOs move further down the road of supporting interorganizational collaboration, they set up more intense coordination at the network level and start, for example, to consider the relevance of interorganizational project networks (Oliveira & Lumineau, 2017), project network organization (Manning, 2017), or simply project networks (Windeler & Sydow, 2001). This can be the interorganizational agreement upon specific project management standards, such as those from Project Management Institute (PMI), Prince, or International Project Management Association (IPMA), for example, to make collaboration smoother and more efficient and increase the mutual understanding across organizational boundaries. Additionally, the PMO may be used as a vehicle to stimulate innovation at the interorganizational nexus, for example, between the owner and operator organizations. Specifically, a study by Sergeeva and Ali (2020) in the context of Transport for London demonstrates that PMOs may play a role coordinating and stimulating both innovation across organizational boundaries and change through identifying and spotting opportunities for interorganizational innovation. In this regard, with the help of interorganizational routines, the PMO enables a flow of knowledge among project participants, programs, and portfolios.

Type IV: A PMO embedded in interorganizational relations. A PMO that is fully embedded in an interorganizational context has, in the end, to be jointly run and sponsored by the participating organizations. In such an ideal case, boundaries between a typical PMO and a so-called network administrative organization (NAO)—as for instance in the Star Alliance Network—may blur (Braun, 2018). What is more, such an NAO may develop into an embedded PMO as much as an embedded NAO and, because of its involvement in interorganizational issues, may acquire properties of an NAO. Apart from this, Type IV seems still to be fictitious for many organizations engaged in IOPs, not least because of the apparent necessity to establish and run it jointly. However, not every collaborating partner in an IOP or even project network may we willing or able to join such an endeavor. In project management research, this advanced type of an interorganizational PMO has thus far only been touched upon by a very few studies regarding knowledge transfer and management (Müller et al., 2013; Hadi et al., 2022; Tshuma et al., 2022), while closer coordination in terms of standardization, qualification, joint portfolio management, and the respective relevance of these for collaborating across organizational boundaries have not yet been further investigated.

Bringing the Typology Into Context

The four types can be regarded as reflecting different sets of activities and responsibilities for which PMOs take a mandate. The development across the different types should not per se be theorized as trajectories (cf. Oliveira & Lumineau, 2017) for which the transition from one type to another needs to be thought about. Specifically, not every organization that has decided to build up a PMO and engages in IOPs is likely to undertake a journey from Type I to Type IV. It also does not mean that Type IV is more effective, efficient, or more mature than the others. Instead, most PMOs in practice may still fall under Type I and perfectly match the requirements of the parent organization with its focus on the IOPs owned by this very organization. Instead, the argument goes that if PMOs have to act in interorganizational settings, it will become necessary to take care of managing these relationships and, to do so, Types II, III, and IV are more likely provide a more fertile structural ground. Some kind of development from one type to another may occur in practice (Figure 1) yet typically not unfolding as a linear process.

Figure 1.

Development of PMO types and intensity of network management.

Beyond the theoretical reasoning that has led to the four types described above, over a dozen semistructured interviews have been conducted between 2021 and 2023 with professionals in the air cargo industry (see Appendix). This field is particularly suited for such research as it is characterized not only by much (horizontal) collaboration among competing airlines but also by intensive (vertical) collaboration with clients, suppliers, and different kinds of service providers. This makes the air cargo industry a fruitful and exemplary research context for our purpose, providing illustrative evidence to underpin the theory-building ambition of the article. The interviews have been transcribed verbatim and inductively coded along these three themes: scope of PMO mandate, functions of the PMO, and barriers and challenges to the PMO. Against this background, the interviews have been used as illustrative evidence to substantiate and contextualize our theoretical reasoning. For example, based on our explorative interviews, we learned that the role of the initiator of a PMO has a substantial impact not only on its starting point but also on its further development. In one case we observed that a PMO was founded by a professional association at the industry level in a region and was thus established as a Type IV without involving the other types first. This shows that PMOs may develop along different trajectories and potentially also in iterative, intricate, and recursive ways.

Based upon conceptual reasoning and accompanied by the interviews in the air cargo industry, we further explore the possibilities and difficulties in designing PMOs for interorganizational contexts. The focus, thereby, is on coordination or governance challenges and solutions.

Challenges of Interorganizational Collaboration for Designing Embedded PMOs

While the diversification of PMOs is increasingly being noted, respective research tells us little about the challenges with which these entities are confronted when they are involved in supporting or even controlling IOPs. Even research that looks at large organizations with multiple PMOs and adopts a relational perspective has thus far overlooked the importance of collaborating in IOPs for designing PMOs (Müller et al., 2013).

For designing and managing a PMO that takes effect across organizational boundaries, an increasing number of quite specific functions should be fulfilled, often recurrently (i.e., as practices) relating to the interorganizational level or, in many cases, to that of the network (cf. Sydow et al., 2016). These functions are selection, regulation, allocation, and evaluation. In the following section, these theoretically grounded functions are applied to the context of embedded PMOs that can support fulfilling them, drawing from the interview data that was inductively coded along (1) these four functions, (2) barriers at the interorganizational nexus, and (3) practices applied to bridge the organizational boundary. Starting with the four functions, our results reveal:

1. Selecting partners for collaboration. The selection practice that can be supported by an embedded PMO is concerned with two major questions. First, on the individual level, the question of who should be part of the PMO team has to be decided. If the PMO acts across organizational boundaries, its staffing should not be reduced to personnel from the initiating organization alone. Instead, it should also contain employees from external or—more precisely—network-internal partner organizations. In the air cargo industry, such a PMO is operated by the regional industry association already mentioned and staffed with employees from some of its member organizations. For example, the current head of the association was transferred from one of the large airline companies. After the elapse of his five-year appointment, he will return to his previous department in the dispatching company. Second, on the organizational level, the PMO may support the process in which companies and other organizations are selected to collaborate in the IOPs. Thus, the support of the selection practice, which also comprises de- and re-selection decisions, prepares the PMO embedded in interorganizational relations for fulfilling the other management functions by means of respective practices. As for the abovementioned PMO, it also transpired that a well-thought-out support of selection practice is quite important for ensuring an appropriate composition or mixture of project (network) partners. As a matter of fact, the existing set of partners sends a strong signal to potential future partners. In our case, a strong focus on cargo firms not only attracted additional businesses with a similar focus (e.g., providers of logistic services) but also prevented other firms (e.g., airlines with a focus on passage) from joining the network.

2. Regulating interorganizational collaboration. The embedded PMO may support the process of setting up formal regulations as well as establishing or legitimizing informal rules. For example, the PMO may help to prepare for the important questions: How should the collaboration of project partners be organized and by what kind of contract or other formal governance mechanism? And what mode of communication and interaction should be adopted in the project or project network setting? One of the PMOs in the air cargo industry we came across, for example, set up rules for membership that required participating organizations to pay an annual fee to cover the ongoing activities of the embedded PMO. Moreover, they agreed formally to minimum commitments, that is, the partners were obliged to remain as active members engaging in working groups and other activities across organizational boundaries. In addition to the formal rules, informal rules were also developed. For example, in the context of one of the air-cargo PMOs, the initiation of new projects always goes along in practice with an on-site visit; in other words, the potential project partners visit one of the logistic sites that is relevant to the project to get a better sense and understanding of the problem.

3. Allocating tasks, resources, and responsibilities. The embedded PMO may also support the process in which tasks are distributed among the participating organizational members. Thus, the PMO needs to have a good overview of the capacities and capabilities of its interorganizational partners and act as a matchmaker, at least supporting the process of bringing together partners (including the respective personnel) with complementary skills and assets. In terms of resources, the PMO may also act as a fundraiser aiming to acquire specific financial and non-financial resources for the project needed for explorative activities at the interorganizational level, thus supporting the resourcing of networked activities (see Auschra & Sydow, 2023). For example, in the aviation industry, a so-called Digital Factory has been set up with the help of what may come close to an embedded PMO. As part of this activity, interorganizational teams are staffed to work on a minimum viable product (MVP) within 12 weeks. Thus far, 30 projects have been initiated based on this program and they receive subsequent funding and resourcing from the interorganizational partner organizations. With regard to responsibilities, it is important to clarify the mandate of the embedded PMO. This is quite a challenging task, as responsibilities may well be contested among the organizational members who first set up the embedded PMO, because the tasks, resources, and responsibilities of the PMO have changed or even expanded over time.

4. Evaluating interorganizational collaboration. Each organizational member will ask the self-evident question as to whether its own commitment to an embedded PMO will really pay off financially and whether or not the interorganizational arrangement is fair from a member perspective in terms of input and output (Ring & Van de Ven, 1994). In this case, evaluation plays a role at the level not only of the single organization and the project (or project portfolio) but also of the embedded PMO, that is, on the network level (Provan & Sydow, 2008). More specifically, questions may have to be answered such as: How can the value of PMO services be measured and made visible in an interorganizational context? Or should the embedded PMO be kept rather lean to give preference to autonomous and decentralized management on the project level? And what role can or should the PMO adopt in such evaluation processes? Our interviews in the air cargo industry have revealed, for example, that system performance is a very relevant indicator for the organizational members. Thereby, the participating organizations take on the perspective of the end customer (typically, in this case, the airlines) to evaluate whether an activity initiated by the PMO is able—or not—to further leverage the performance of the system or the partners. Included in this measurement are several indicators, such as time, money, and volume, but also qualitative indicators such as customer satisfaction. An embedded PMO may support such an evaluation practice.

The four specific support functions of a PMO may be either centralized in one of the participating organizations or, similar to an NAO, as a joint organizational entity of more or less all the collaborating organizations or performed in an even more decentralized way such as in a shared governance mode (Braun, 2018). While the latter two forms certainly give more responsibility and ownership to the participating organizations, they also require much more interorganizational coordination, if not collaboration. In this respect, the specific functions may or may not be formalized. For instance, certain rules, such as membership conditions, services, and fees typically require some formalization, whereas other practices might be enacted in a much more informal manner.

In the execution of the four specific functions, the support of managing across organizational boundaries requires extensive nexus work (Long-Lingo & O’Mahony, 2010) that comprises brokering not only in terms of communication acts but also regarding social integration. Respective potential barriers have been coded in the qualitative interview data as well. In these cases, organizational actors applied manifold bridging practices to solve issues that appeared in the collaboration process. Table 1 provides an overview of typical barriers occurring at the interorganizational nexus and practices that emerged in the context of the air cargo industry to bridge organizational boundaries more effectively, underpinned with illustrative quotes from field interviews. It is essential to note that the interview data have not only been inductively coded and, thereafter, grouped into the four functions. Rather, the practices have been—following an abductive rather than purely inductive approach (Sætre & Van de Ven, 2021)—distinguished beforehand but interpreted in their very context. Specifically, the illustrative quotes in the right column of Table 1 provide a narrative of a PMO practice that is then paraphrased as a “bridging practice” and interpretated vis-à-vis the respective interview context that is captured by the column “barrier at the interorganizational nexus.”

Table 1.

Barriers and Bridging Practices in the Execution of Interorganizational PMO Functions

Interorgani-zationalPMO Function	Barrier at the Interorganizational Nexus	Bridging Practice	Illustrative Evidence
Selection	Alignment of interests and attention	Defining spaces for experimentation	"We have developed our so called ‘"Digital Factory,” which is a methodology where our partners develop MVPs within a 12-week time period in a standardized process. Thereby the potential of an external ecosystem for innovation is leveraged” (I–2).
	Deficits in project management skills and professionalism	Task-specific matching of large and small enterprises leveraging their project management competencies	"If you have large corporations, such as XY airways with a global structure and the project is important enough, then the headquarters can push it through backed-up with methodology. On the contrary, other partners, such as small family-owned trucking companies, work very hands-on but without a specific project management approach” (I–6).
Regulation	Lack of leadership in setting up rules and stardards at the interorganizational level	Taking initiative for leading standardization process by focal organization	"In most projects, our company tries to implement our project management standard (closely related to PMI). This entails status reports, planning templates etc. Typically this works very well and our project partners are even happy to know there is one standard at all which they can follow” (I–4).
	Messy responsibilities and unclear communication channels	Making individual boundary spanners accountable for tasks and processes	"Is there someone who […] on a regular basis informs the teams, requests status updates, brings in new ideas? […] If there is someone who pushes things, that will improve the chance for success” (I–7).
Allocation	Different project management standards and training	Centralization of repetitive processes	"It does not make sense to provide the same project management training to 300 members of staff. We therefore apply some centralized planning that is executed once the order is placed” (I–4).
	Complexity due to variety of subunits and organizational contexts	Cascadic planning and implementation	"In the large business units such as ground handling, trade and leasing management, aviation and terminal management several thousand employees are affected. They have specific project management units that are deeply embedded in the processes of their units and have contextual knowledge about the specifities” (I–2).
Evaluation	Large number of projects and comprehensiveness of data	Dedicated project portfolio management function at the interorganizational level	"We have implemented the role of a project portfolio manager who is responsible for monitoring all joint projects as well as the pipeline of new topics. Once a month, this person spends an hour with each partner to go through the list together” (I–4).
	Extensive project management methodology destroys motivation	Accepting dichotomy: volunteers’ intrinsic motivation versus contracted work	"It's not so much a matter of methodology but rather of motivation. Each time we had topics that were relevant but lacked the personal intrinsic motivation of the participants, these activities failed. There are activities with 300 feedback rounds and 50 participating organizations that require considerable staying power and you cannot rely on volunteers who do that on a goodwill basis alone” (I–6).

Discussion and Conclusion

The design of PMOs has changed quite significantly over the past two decades, involving and creating not only increased structural complexity and diversity but also providing more services to project management practitioners. However, given the importance of IOPs and the support this particular form of temporary organization deserves, the design of PMOs may not yet have been developed far enough. In particular, their present design may fall short with respect to PMOs embedded in interorganizational collaborations. If this relational embeddedness and the increasing number of not only intra- but also of interorganizational projects is to be taken seriously (Sydow & Braun, 2018), a better understanding of the challenges IOPs pose on PMOs seems to be called for.

In this article, we tried to answer the question: How do PMOs face interorganizational project work and the associated challenges of coordination beyond organizational boundaries? We did so by distinguishing four types of PMOs, whereby Type I represents a very typical one that can be found across various organizations and industries caring for the professionalization and standardization of project management internally, in other words, within the organization that is the project owner. By contrast, Type IV depicts an idealized PMO that is fully embedded in and adapted to the challenges of interorganizational relations. With an increasing focus on the interorganizational dimension, we have highlighted the growing range of distinctive interorganizational functions and practices. Drawing from research on interorganizational relationships and networks, the theoretically grounded functions of selection, regulation, allocation, and evaluation (Sydow et al., 2016) are set in the context of PMOs that are typically tasked not with carrying out, but with supporting the execution of these functions. The theoretical arguments have been illustrated with some examples from the air cargo industry, specifically when it comes to the possible future of PMO designs that focus more on the support of IOPs. These observations have shown that, by now, most PMOs may have most likely moved beyond having a focus on the projects of one organization (Type I), yet they are still not fully embedded (Type IV) but rather somewhere in between (Type II or Type III).

Thus, the time seems ripe for advancing not only PMO practice, but also PMO research to leverage further potential by taking into account the increased role of IOPs involving at least two project-owning organizations. While we were only able to outline the principal direction the development of PMOs might possibly take in practice and research, the possibilities and limitations of PMOs embedded on an interorganizational basis most certainly deserve more scrutiny, not least with regard to different types of IOPs. For the more PMOs are given a mandate at the interorganizational level, the more subsequent and specific questions may arise that have not been addressed in this article.

In fact, the specific research design of this article, drawing from conceptual reasoning and illustrative empirical evidence, entails limitations such as potential perception biases by the coauthors and calls for attempts to strengthen its external validity, which should be part of future research. This entails, first, questions of governance, for example: Who is to take control of the PMO? Should either one focal organization take the lead, or several organizations run it in a shared governance mode, or should the PMO be located within an (industry) association, for example, as an NAO (Braun, 2018)? Moreover, the question of funding arises. As in this case several organizations receive support and services from the PMO, they may in turn take on the responsibility for providing resources. Embedded PMOs could, and from our perspective should, be considered and studied as one possibly important development to which research into the design of IOPs and PMOs must respond, specifically regarding their increasingly networked governance and management (Wang et al., 2023). Moreover, the growing body of research on knowledge brokerage and knowledge transfer in and by PMOs may benefit from more awareness of the interorganizational dimension as well. Specific roles, types of knowledge, and mechanisms geared toward knowledge management by PMOs may thus be revisited and adjusted (e.g., Pemsel & Wiewiora, 2013; Hadi et al., 2022; Tshuma et al., 2022). Moving in this direction, the interorganizational functions and practices set forth in this article provide additional orientation toward defining which of the PMO support tasks become relevant as projects cross organizational boundaries.

The theoretically pluralistic framework developed by Aubry and Lavoie-Tremblay (2018) refers to sensemaking (Weick, 1995) to capture current practice and even entails a multilevel process approach, yet the authors do not address the interorganizational level explicitly. We therefore suggest an even more integrative approach to research on PMOs—one that is informed by practice theory that considers sensemaking as only one (though admittedly important) dimension of agency. Adopting an approach that focuses on practices, or on practiced design and redesign, considers, in the case of Giddens’ (1984) theory of structuration, for instance, not only the structures of signification and legitimation (rules), but also the domination (resources) of the IOP, the organizations involved, and the organizational field in which they are embedded. Such a practice-based multilevel approach would not only provide a processual understanding of the co-constitutive development of PMOs and their organizational and interorganizational contexts but, in addition, be more integrative. Thereby, structure and agency—as implicated in practices—would be considered as a duality rather than a dualism (Giddens, 1984). As such, it would provide important answers to present governance and design challenges posed by IOPs, which not only require more collaboration across organizational boundaries but also involve tackling increased institutional complexities—complexities that may grow even bigger when wicked problems or grand challenges are addressed and not only organizational but also national boundaries are crossed (Fu et al., 2022).

Toward this end, research from a practice-based perspective would, however, require a more detailed accounts of events, actions, and practices within and across embedded PMOs (for instance, with the help of organizational and interorganizational ethnography), which we were unable to deliver with our more exploratory than explanatory study. The enhanced focus on PMOs embedded in interorganizational relations is nevertheless by no means a call for boundaryless PMO mandates. But it is high time that, in light of the increasing importance of IOPs and other, related forms of temporary organizing (Bakker et al., 2016), project practitioners and project researchers no longer merely detect and reflect on respective design voids but should also envisage organizational designs that capture what PMOs are and should be in charge of beyond organizational boundaries.

Footnotes

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

ORCID iD

Jörg Sydow

Author Biographies

Timo Braun is a Professor of Project Management and Digital Transformation at the Faculty of Mechanical Engineering at University of Kassel, Germany, where he is building up a new department. He has been on the editorial boards of the Project Management Journal^® and the International Journal of Project Management. His research has been published in most of the leading project management journals as well as in the British Journal of Management, Journal of Professions and Organization, International Journal of Human Resource Management, Scandinavian Journal of Management (among others). Moreover, with J. Lampel, he co-edited a special issue of Research in the Sociology of Organizations (2022) on Tensions and Paradoxes in Temporary Organizing (Emerald). Along with J. Sydow, R. Lundin, and E. Ekstedt, he received a major PMI Research Grant in 2018 to investigate how digitalization affects project management within the construction industry. For further information visit http://uni-kassel.de/go/pmdt He can be contacted at timo.braun@uni-kassel.de

Jörg Sydow is a Professor of Management and Chair for Inter-firm Cooperation at the School of Business & Economics at Freie Universität Berlin, Germany. He was a founding co-editor of two leading German journals, Managementforschung and Industrielle Beziehungen – The German Journal of Industrial Relations and is currently one of the Senior Editors of Organization Studies and the Project Management Journal^®. He served on the editorial boards of many leading academic journals including not only Organization Studies but also Organization Science, Academy of Management Journal, Academy of Management Review, and Journal of Management Studies. In 2019, along with H. Berends, he co-edited a volume of Research in the Sociology of Organizations on Managing Inter-organizational Collaborations – Process Views (Emerald). In 2018, along with T. Braun, he was awarded the Global Research Award der International Project Management Association (IPMA). Since 2021 he has been an Honorary Member of the European Group of Organization Studies (EGOS). For more information please visit http://www.wiwiss.fu-berlin.de/en/fachbereich/bwl/management/sydow/index.html He can be contacted at joerg.sydow@fu-berlin.de

Appendix. Overview of Interviews Conducted in the Air Cargo Industry

Expert	InterviewDuration	Area	Position	Experience in the Field
I_1	45 min	Air cargo industry cluster	Managing director	More than 25 years
I_2	45 min	Airline, cargo unit	Unit manager	More than 10 years
I_3	60 min	Air cargo software supplier	General manager	More than 25 years
I_4	45 min	Technology supplier	Business development manager	10 to 15 years
I_5	60 min	Logistics services	Senior consultant	10 to 15 years
I_6	60 min	Airport, cargo unit	Senior innovation manager	More than 25 years
I_7	45 min	Railway logistics	Stakeholder manager	More than 25 years
I_8	60 min	Airline network	Former middle manager	More than 25 years
I_9	60 min	Integrated logistics provider	Senior manager	10 to 15 years
I_10	35 min	Logistics inhouse consulting	Senior consultant	5 to 10 years
I_11	40 min	Business process conculting	Consultant	5 to 10 years
I_12	75 min	Airline logistic outsourcing partner	Senior manager	More than 10 years
I_13	60 min	Professional project management association	Head of interest group	More than 25 years

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