Abstract
This article has three main objectives: (1) to present Monique Aubry’s professional trajectory, (2) to describe her intellectual legacy, and (3) to reveal her craft and work values. The first two sections are narrated by Monique in her own voice. The third part is based on conversations between Monique and Viviane Sergi, her colleague, collaborator, and friend, which took place in May and June 2023, while writing the other parts of this article.
Introduction
This article gives me the immense privilege of engaging in a retrospective of my academic work. It is a rare opportunity to have the time and space to reflect on the road one has traveled. Looking back, especially in the context of this special issue, has given me the occasion to reflect on my personal journey as connected to the research I have been conducting for over 20 years. I hope that presenting the path I have followed––the choices I have made, the objects I have studied, and the values I have tried to uphold in the process––may be useful to other researchers and may inspire younger scholars.
Professional Trajectory
Being an IT Practitioner and a Project Manager
One thing should be stated at the outset: I have not spent my entire professional life in academia. In fact, I came to academia after having held various positions in different sectors and spending several years in organizations. Being a professor has therefore been a second career for me, one I have found particularly fulfilling. This is not to say that my previous professional roles did not stimulate me; on the contrary, as I will discuss, all my experiences shaped the researcher I would later become, both in terms of objects of inquiry and values. But as I began to reflect on my academic trajectory and professional experiences, I could not help but return to my personal roots. As is often the case, when one looks at the path one has traveled, intimate connections not apparent at the time become visible, and the resonance between one’s personal and professional lives becomes perceptible. This is why, before getting to the heart of the matter––my research––a few words about the early stages of my life are needed.
I was born in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. Three things stand out from my youth and early professional years: (1) my attachment to the countryside, (2) the values of my generation and (3), my interest in emerging and seemingly futuristic technologies (at the time, this is how computers were considered!). These three specificities have followed me throughout the years and are still very much present today.
My parents were the first of their generation to live in the city. However, my roots are not solely urban; although we lived in the city, we weren’t too far from the countryside. Some of my family members were farmers and I loved––and still do to this day––the countryside, especially the farming side of it! Every summer, I would spend a few weeks at my uncle’s farm, helping to feed the calves, collecting fresh eggs, or picking wild strawberries or raspberries. I have fond memories of the simple pleasures I shared with my cousins. The time spent on my uncle’s farm also taught me that we often had to make (in the sense of bricolage) our own solutions to solve problems––and that we could come up with good but affordable solutions. Currently, I live in a 200-year-old country house surrounded by large gardens. In the countryside, I learned the value of hard work, the importance of respecting natural rhythms, and that patience and care can produce beautiful results.
I’m also part of the Baby Boomer Generation and I share the values that animated my generation, at least in its youth! We believed in an open world, where peace and love would prevail and where there would be no limits to individual and collective aspirations. At the same time, in Quebec, the Révolution Tranquille (the Quiet Revolution) was going on, transforming society in a radical and durable way. This significant social transformation of the francophone society toward a solid affirmation of its identity also influenced me. There was a form of idealism in this period; but combined, these broad cultural trends have shaped my general humanist orientation in life. Part of this idealism relates to my bachelor studies in humanities, where I was one of the young intellectuals making and remaking the world every day. My commitment to humanism stems from these studies.
At the same time, in the early 1970s, information technology (IT) was just emerging in large organizations such as telecom providers and banks. I started my professional life there, in an IT department of a large organization; working in machine language on a first-generation computer, I discovered the essence of these technologies. This experience fascinated me. To this day, when I think of this experience, I remember the rigor and cold rationality of machine data processing. This experience has stayed with me and, even today, it remains in my mind, even as we are witnessing another wave of significant changes, those brought about by robotics, big data, and artificial intelligence (AI).
Box 1. A detour by the south of France
In the mid-1970s, I spent a year in France to return to a dream I had during my bachelor’s studies. I was accepted at the University of Aix-en-Provence (currently Université Aix-Marseille-3) to study archaeology. What interested me were the artifacts left by our ancestors as traces of their everyday activities. These traces talk about these distant people, what they did materially. Today, I see in my early interest in traces a connection with my qualitative approach to research and with my interest in practices and in socio-materiality. This was the first break in my career: I was out of work for about 1½ years and returned to an IT position after these university courses.
In the late 1970s I had a second break in my professional career, with the birth of my two children. This period was very demanding. I experimented with other types of work. I became a beekeeper, volunteered in my village putting in place a children’s garden and a gardening association, and taught at primary and secondary schools. I appreciated that period as it offered time to think about what I’d want to do when I would return to normal work.
During that period, further IT developments happened, gaining more and more applications in the business side (both in the front and back offices). With more IT business applications, their organizational integration became a key issue. This gave rise to new occupations in enterprise architecture, systems, data, and technology architecture. I joined these groups for a few years and liked working on these architecture issues. I think that was where I first realized I had an interest in organizing in the context of large organizations. I had the chance to work in Tunisia for a few months in the early 1990s with this exact mandate: that of organizing architectures at the Banque de l’Habitat (a bank). With this technological change came another significant transformation: the introduction of project management practices and the involvement of users within development and implementation. It was during that time, in the 1990s, that project management became its own field of expertise. After a short period as a database administration manager, I moved from IT to project management, participating in the implementation of the first project management office (PMO) for a bank.
Box 2. Working as a woman in a male-dominated field
I must add a word about the male culture in IT at the time. The MeToo movement has made me aware of just how this affected my experience. It was only recently that I realized the impact of the sexism I encountered. The negative impact I suffered was not on my career in general, which has been quite good, but on my confidence in some of the jobs I took and my career path in general. For example, I was the only woman on a managerial team. This context was particularly difficult given the boy’s club atmosphere: sexual jokes in meetings, denigration, disparaging comments about women, and so forth. Working daily in this atmosphere took its toll on me, to the point where I began to show signs characteristic of people who experience harassment. My voice trembled when I spoked; my boss blamed me for this situation.
While I was struggling with this situation, positions became available in the newly created PMO. I jumped at the opportunity and embarked on a project management career. It was a natural progression as I had already been involved in many IT projects. It was also easy because there was a better gender balance, making the work environment respectful and fun. Moreover, the vice president responsible for the PMO was a woman who was very sensitive to gender issues. In project management, I never encountered the harassment culture I had left; temporary teams might not allow for its development. I’m not saying that it does not exist in project management, but I think moving from one project to the next makes it less conducive to this sort of behavior. I’m glad that today we talk more openly about harassment, and that real efforts are deployed to ensure gender equality and, more generally, to foster diversity in project management.
Yet, in terms of research, we still know very little about gender issues in project studies (Geraldi & Söderlund, 2018). The very few studies we have attest to the enduring inequalities that persist among project managers (see Greer & Carden, 2021). This highlights the need to better document these issues. We should follow the traces of researchers such as Janice Thomas who was a trailblazer in studying gender issues in project management (e.g., Buckle & Thomas, 2003; Thomas & Buckle-Henning, 2007). Going one step further, project management scholars could take inspiration from the richness of perspectives developed in gender studies to shed light on and develop a better understanding of gender issues in the context of projects.
My first experiences in the PMO were formative, but rife with issues and questions; these questions galvanized me to enter a graduate program in project management. During this period, I earned a master’s degree in project management in the program offered at UQAM. This program was a pioneer in the field of project management. I had the opportunity to enroll part-time and complete my degree through evening courses, which attracted practitioners like me who wanted to develop their knowledge and skills. My practical experiences and intellectual development both fueled my passion for managing projects, which has never subsided in me. In fact, the master’s thesis only stimulated a deep curiosity for inquiring into projects. Not long after I completed my master’s degree, I decided to embark on obtaining a PhD and entered the joint doctoral program in administration that exists in Montreal’s four universities (UQAM, HEC Montreal, McGill, and Concordia).
From that point on, without realizing all it might entail, and without planning where it could lead me, I began an academic career. My time as a PhD student offered me several opportunities, including meeting with great scholars who influenced not only my journey as an academic but who also shaped my understanding of the world. Through crucial readings and meetings with these scholars, I found some answers to the fundamental questions I had during my career as a project manager and other positions in PMOs.
Becoming a Scholar
As a practitioner, I had always evolved in large organizations. When I undertook my doctoral studies, I realized the questions that nagged at me and the issues that interested me were all related to the environments of large organizations (including bee colonies!) and to the challenges of managing several hundred projects at once.
Denis Thuillier was my doctoral supervisor. He was very much oriented toward economic theories such as transaction costs theory. In the early stage of working toward my PhD, I read most of the classics in economy such as those of Coase (1993) and Williamson (Williamson & Masten, 1999). Reading Coase was especially intriguing, with his reflection on the raison d’être of firms (Coase, 1993). I imagined him arriving in the United States around 1930 from his native England and asking himself: Why do so many firms exist? What fascinated me was that a simple and trivial question could lead to the development of a grand economic theory. Coase developed the transaction costs theory and received the Nobel Prize in economics in 1991. In this context, I started my PhD with an economic mindset and a clear positivistic positioning, convinced I would find out indicators and criteria to evaluate the performance of PMOs.
However, this economic and positivistic mindset began to crack quite quickly as I was going through my doctoral courses. It started with my first course, which was on the firm–social environment interface. The course was led by UQAM professor Jean Pasquero, who was specialized in ethics and social responsibility. The more I read about social theories, the more doubts I had on the potential of economic theories to capture the complexity and richness of transversal relationships found in project management contexts. My first doubt concerned economic assumptions (such as homo economicus), which did not feel appropriated to the inquiry I wanted to conduct inside organizations. My transformation continued as I took a summer course on qualitative methods. At the time, this course was given by Ann Langley (e.g., Langley, 1999), at HEC Montreal, and it was considered by doctoral students as the best course in the joint program on qualitative methods. Ann was not only teaching methodology she was also cultivating our minds, inviting us to adopt an attitude of curiosity and discovery throughout the crafting of our research questions and data collection strategy. With Ann, I discovered theoretical and methodological alternatives I was not aware of that could be relevant to studying projects. Her comments on the essays I wrote for this course simply opened me up to new possibilities.
This course consolidated a significant change in how I conceived my doctoral research. I came to criticize explicitly the economic perspective for being oriented toward more traditional viewpoints, for example, rational decision-making, positivism, and limited cause-and-effect relations. From my own experiences in organizations, I knew that humans and social interactions were at the center of all decision-making activities and generated effects like paradoxes, tensions, conflicts, and so forth. Reading Christophe Midler’s (1993) book L’Auto qui n’existait pas was eye opening, as I recognized in it a better description of how projects unfold over time, following nonlinear sequences and marked by abrupt shifts and crises. This description resonated with my experience much more than any of the other project management best practices books I had read. I am not saying that economic theories are to be avoided—I’m convinced we need a variety of perspectives to better understand our complex organizations. However, this transformation taught me a key lesson: the value of experimenting with perspectives. Putting economic theory to work in a doctoral essay made me realize its limits for the study of complex interactions and inspired me to explore other disciplines and other methodological approaches more closely aligned with what I wanted to study.
I really don’t know how I managed it, but I succeeded in persuading my doctoral supervisor and committee to let me move away from my initial anchoring in economic theories in my thesis to instead ground my research in social theories. I had discovered actor–network theory (ANT) (e.g., Callon, 1986), which shed a very different light on PMOs. The story of PMOs this theory told had little in common with transaction costs theory; what ANT exposed related very much to my own experience in the management of projects. Combined with the influence of Ann’s seminal contribution on process research (her 1999 article, Strategies for Theorizing from Process Data) had on me, I had become convinced that research on PMOs called for a longitudinal approach. Once made, this double transformation––both theoretical and methodological––felt good and right. Not only did it feel relevant in terms of research and with my practical experiences, it was also aligned more closely with my values. It was clear at the time, and almost 20 years later, this impression remains intact: Meeting Ann during my PhD studies was a major intellectual turning point, both for my doctoral thesis and my outlook on the world.
Ultimately, my thesis’s reorientation is also the story of my own transformation. Looking back, I believe an important intellectual change was required on my part, internally, to move from the professional to the academic world. Beyond changes in positioning, I needed to learn to operate at a higher level of abstraction; I also had to spend time mastering theories and learning to apply them to understand organizational phenomena. This transformation took time and happened throughout the first years of my PhD studies. It should also be made clear that although this happened through individual reflection and effort, it also rested greatly on the rich conversations with colleagues and the discussions and debates in seminars, colloquia, and conferences. Getting a PhD––like doing any research, at any stage of one’s career––does not happen in a vacuum. Right from my entry into the PhD program, I seized all the opportunities to engage in academic conversations.
Box 3. Remaining closely connected to practitioners
At this point, I must say a word about my tight association with the professional world. As I am telling this story of intellectual transformation, it should not be understood as if I left the professional world. In Montreal, the PMI Montreal Chapter was at the time (and still is) the only professional association related to projects. In the 1970s, both PMI standards and the master’s degree program in project management at UQAM were in development and there were close relationships between both organizations; the first director of the university program was a member of the PMI Board of Directors. Furthermore, students in this graduate program were invited to join the PMI Montreal Chapter, which I joined while completing my master’s thesis and I subsequently took on different roles in the chapter. From my point of view, my main contribution was to build and launch a community of practice on PMOs. This idea had been suggested by Daniel Forgues, an architect and a professor at ETS (a Montreal engineering school), and together we laid the foundations of this community with other colleagues from Montreal. Daniel’s main interest was to know more about learning mechanisms in such a community of practice (e.g., Who talks the most? Who shares knowledge?), whereas my main interest was to learn about PMOs.
When I began my PhD studies, I stayed involved in the PMI Montreal Chapter and the community of practice. For approximately four years I led this group, and it played a key role in my research. It offered me the possibility to stay in touch with practitioners’ issues, which allowed me to maintain my practical acumen. Furthermore, it provided me with a community of engaged practitioners, who were also interested in contributing to knowledge. This community of practice was thus a good setting to investigate the nature and functions of multiple PMOs, a project I pursued with Brian Hobbs, a professor and member of my thesis committee. We developed and tested a questionnaire for this project, the first of its kind. More than 500 people from all over the world participated in our study. This study influenced my PhD thesis; it also gave rise to my very first paper on PMOs (Hobbs & Aubry, 2007).
Because of the involvement of practitioners in my research and because it was fundamental for me to conduct research that would speak to practitioners, it was quite natural for me to share my academic work in professional conferences (e.g., the PMI Montreal Chapter annual Symposium) PMI® Global Congress and meetings. I have always seen knowledge dissemination as integral to my job as a researcher and have made a point to keep my ties with practitioners. In parallel to sharing research results as my various projects were completed, I have served on the PMI Standards Member Advisory Group for four years and was also involved in the Steering Committee for Research Informed Standards.
Staying connected with practitioners has been a source of stimulation and a methodological choice. Indeed, Van de Ven’s Engaged Scholarship (Van de Ven, 2007), an approach to research that resonates with my concern for practice and relevance for practitioners, has shaped my research career. While it is stimulating to conduct studies in close collaboration with practitioners, it is no easy endeavor to develop focused and rigorous academic research from very concrete problems. It has been demanding but it has also been very rewarding to do so.
I wish to express my profound gratitude to practitioners for their engagement in the advancement of scientific knowledge oriented toward solutions to their problems.
In my thesis, I adopted a full qualitative approach for two reasons. First, after discovering qualitative research, I realized these approaches corresponded to how I conceived research. They were more in line with my identity of being an artisan at work—one who enjoys being close to people and practice. Second, following the quantitative study on PMOs we concluded that its research objectives––categorizing PMOs and establishing causal relationships among activities performed in PMOs with their performance––had not been reached. Furthermore, we concluded that it was not possible to categorize PMOs. Our findings on performance showed a very different pattern than what we expected: there was neither a significant cause-and-effect relationship between each PMO’s activity nor with their characteristics with project performance. I could have been discouraged by these conclusions, but it was quite the contrary. This stimulated my curiosity and highlighted the need to understand the major factors that influenced PMO performance. Conceiving the PMO as a fixed entity did not allow to fully capture or understand their dynamics. Doing so required a longitudinal approach. Hence, rather than continue the kind of quantitative research we had used, I proposed a research design based on case studies of 11 PMOs in four organizations. I mainly collected data through interviews (n = 60), but also developed questionnaires, which I interpreted within a qualitative frame. For the analysis, I worked with grounded theory based on the work of Strauss and Corbin (1998).
Box 4. Summary of my thesis (inspired from Aubry, 2007, p. 15)
In the early 2000s, project management was enjoying a remarkable boom. This situation was reflected in organizational structures. However, project management research suffered from two problems: (1) the absence of theoretical foundations and (2) the lack of empirically validated models.
My thesis proposed a conceptual framework combining three key elements: (1) the innovation system, (2) the PMO, and (3) the organizational performance. The PMO is understood as a component of a larger system—the social innovation system. Actor network theory enabled me to understand the PMO as the construction of a network of actors whose legitimacy is acquired through translation activities. I addressed the question of the PMO’s organizational performance by drawing on the competing values framework, which recognizes the existence of contradictory values within organizations.
The resulting conceptual framework accounted for temporality and paradoxes—two emerging concepts in management and organization studies at that time. Interviews revealed that changes of PMOs were frequent, and events were their modus operandi. The interview guide referred to PMOs as “fixed entities,” whereas interviewees rather talked about changes and transformations. I hence adapted my inquiry to what seemed the most important to these PMO situations, namely changes, which became the heart of my contribution. I mobilized the concept of transition to capture change; in later research projects, I would discover process studies and would explicitly adopt a process perspective.
Starting to Branch Out: Multiplying Collaborations
In 2006, a year before my thesis defense, I was hired to work in the project management group in what is now the department of management at UQAM. I remember the immense workload I had during this period, finalizing the thesis while integrating into a new position. In 2007, with the thesis defense behind me, I became free to develop new research projects, specifically collaborating, which was something I truly wanted to do. The opportunity to forge my own collaborations occurred quickly, with an offer from Anders Söderholm to pursue the study on PMOs at Umeå University in Sweden, a project I had already begun with Thomas Blomquist and Ralf Müller. In 2008, I spent three very pleasant months at Umeå. This experience provided me with several opportunities, most notably the chance to learn more about the Scandinavian School of Project Studies (e.g., Sahlin-Andersson & Söderholm, 2002) in a direct fashion––that is, by meeting with many of the researchers who were contributing to it, including Anders Söderholm and Markus Hällgren. I also discovered the practice turn to project management (e.g., Blomquist et al., 2010), which resonated with my natural interest in what practitioners do and face daily. What is the practice turn? How does it change our research strategy and the dissemination of findings to practitioners? These were some of the questions I was pondering at that time. The conversations and discussions with my Swedish colleagues at Umeå provided me with so much new knowledge and ideas. They had a fantastic routine, meeting one hour every week to talk about research. Members of the group took turns proposing a recent paper to read and discuss at the meeting. Everyone had to read and comment. These meetings were so generative!
Also of great interest in the practice turn I discovered in Sweden is the active role of practitioners in the integration of knowledge from research. As in Schön’s (1983) reflexive practitioners’ concept, in the practice perspective practitioners are not considered as empty pots to be filled with knowledge that only researchers would have, but rather as active learning actors making sense of research findings through their own experience. Given its potential for research, collaboration with practitioners, and even with education, the practice perspective became a cornerstone in my academic trajectory.
This research stay at Umeå also allowed me to discover the tradition of fika, a social institution in Sweden. Taking a break from work, sharing coffee, cake, or fruit, and talking with colleagues proved to be very stimulating. I could talk about my dissertation’s data and, for example, Ralf would share his experiences in various organizations in Europe. What emerged clearly from this reinvestigation of my research was just how constant organizational changes were in PMOs. This shifted the work we began from this observation: our focus became more on change itself rather than on PMOs as such. To capture and address change, we needed to adopt a process approach. Process studies are well established in organization studies and project management alike but at the time they were fairly new (Van de Ven & Poole 1995’s article was key in popularizing them). Opting for a processual approach to PMOs led us to theorize PMO as in transition. This simple result has been important for practitioners because, at that time, changes in PMO strategy and organization were often associated with badly structured PMOs (e.g., Hatfield, 2008). Finally, a third collaboration on PMOs, with Ralf and a new collaborator, Johannes Glückler, a social geographer from the University of Heidelberg, Germany also began during that time. These new projects and new collaborators launched my research program.
Overall, looking back on my professional trajectory, one can see an eclectic personality—going from technology to archaeology to beekeeping, then back to technology and project management, and ending up in academia. While it may not be apparent, there is a clear thread linking these bifurcations together. In my trajectory, some decisions derived simply from the way I was looking at life as a young person (e.g., traveling and studying in the south of France), but others were made as I looked for the best answer to the situation (e.g., beekeeping). Following my dreams and interests and adapting to circumstances can explain my trajectory but being confident in following my intuition and my resilience have also been key.
Major Research Projects and Contributions
Before going into more detail about collaborations within my major research projects, I must mention that extraordinary collaborations also occurred within the research project management community. For example, being an editor and senior editor for Project Management Journal® (PMJ) came with strong relationships with other editors and the editor-in-chief, Hans Georg Gemünden, at that time. It was also a fantastic school to learn about the publishing business. Also, I experienced a similarly strong collaboration during my four years in the organizing committee in the European Academy of Management—Project Organising Strategic Interest Group. I can only encourage colleagues to participate in such activities—they are worthwhile for our research community and contribute to our individual learning about the processes behind conferences and publications.
I also want to highlight that, throughout my academic career, I have always made time to supervise students. This work also has a collaborative dimension and has been quite rewarding. I especially enjoyed those moments when students discover something new from their own research, when they experience some sort of eureka moment! The sparkle in their eyes has always been a real joy to witness. I have tried to create a space for open intellectual discussions—a kind of intellectual club—with doctoral students. Both the students and I have appreciated these shared moments.
My research projects can be organized around six key themes, deriving from their main research object. While there are overlaps among themes, each one constitutes a unique research object and can be understood in relation to my personal story, as described above. I now summarize each of these themes, with a short description emphasizing the main collaborators and the impacts of these research projects. I have adopted a slightly different structure for themes as they are all different, and I wanted to highlight different aspects in each of them.
My research started around PMOs, and PMOs have remained at the heart of my projects for over 20 years. Over time, my research object has evolved from conceiving PMOs as a fixed organizational object to viewing them as in constant evolution. The very first research questions I pursued with Brian Hobbs and the community of practice on PMOs at the PMI Montreal Chapter (cf. Box 3) were related to learning about the nature of a PMO: what is it and what does it do? While this initial project did not fully reach its objectives in terms of categorization, we nonetheless found something rather interesting: four so-called soft behaviors, which explained nearly 50% of project performance: (1) collaboration with other project participants, (2) recognition of the PMO’s expertise, (3) PMO’s mission is well understood, and (4) support from upper management. We grouped these four behaviors under the label “PMO embeddedness.”
Results from this first PMO research gave rise to my thesis, which was followed by the collaboration with Anders, Ralf, and Tomas. Our mixed-methods study led us to uncover three patterns of transition. From interviews, we were able to classify changes in two main domains: structural characteristics and PMO roles and functions. We used questionnaires to explore the main drivers leading to a PMO change. These three main drivers were associated with internal context: (1) new vision and/or strategy of the executive team, (2) broad organizational reorganizing, and (3) unsatisfactory project performance. This study confirmed our assumption that changes in a PMO are not signs of failure, or bad management practices, but normal responses to a context that also changes. Our research allowed us to identify the main reasons for PMO changes as well as their impacts. This research provided empirical evidence to modify the discourse on a PMO change from being perceived as a form of failure to denoting adaptation and innovation.
A fourth project in this research program touched upon the concept of community of PMOs and took the form of a collaboration with Ralf and Johannes Glückler. The impetus for this research came from a conference I was asked to lead in the United Kingdom to the invitation of the Department of Work and Pension under the title of “Community of PMOs.” In this research, we surveyed four communities of PMOs in four organizations in North America, Europe, and Asia. The results showed a deceivingly low level of sharing among PMOs. Specifically, very few of the PMOs we studied were identified as partners, where knowledge flowed naturally among members (Aubry et al., 2011). This research made visible a paradox concerning knowledge sharing in the context of PMOs. Despite the popularity of the concepts of community of practices and community of PMOs throughout organizations at the time, and despite recognition of the importance of knowledge sharing, not much action was taken in PMOs to engage in this activity. Our research aimed to encourage PMOs to practice knowledge sharing.
I want to mention one final collaboration on this theme. The collaboration with Barbara Unger and Hans Georg Gemünden, in the context of Barbara’s thesis, took place at the Technical University of Berlin in 2011. We worked together on the portfolio management office in light of my previous research, which had not addressed the different levels of PMOs, such as portfolio, directly (Unger et al., 2011).
This theme emerged from my different studies on PMOs, evolving from its original concerns specific to PMOs, to addressing dimensions of organizational structure and governance. This topic was developed mainly in relation to new research on major transformation projects in the healthcare system in Quebec. Main collaborations on this theme were with Mélanie Lavoie-Tremblay, Marie-Claire Richer, and Guylaine Cyr. We also welcomed Sofia Pemsel, from the Copenhagen Business School, as a postdoctoral researcher involved in our project. This research offered us the opportunity to study PMOs in connection to the broader issue of organizational design. Empirically, we followed three major transformation projects in three university hospitals occurring in parallel in Montreal. These transformation projects occurring during the same period and in the same region and same institutional context, offered a good setting to study isomorphism. Conversely to our expectations, we found different project organizations that, despite their differences, reached comparable performance. We hence proposed a conceptual framework to better understand how this isomorphism operated with institutionalist forces, along with equifinality (multiple ways to attain comparable outcomes).
A major theoretical outcome from this research was to introduce the concept of organizational design in project studies to integrate different terms used to describe structures specific to project context such as a project-based or project-oriented organization, a matrix organization, and so forth. This allowed us to establish connections between research in project management and in management and organizational design. I believe these connections enrich both fields of research: theoretically, the research adds to the study of projects and PMOs, and empirically, it diversifies the objects studied by organizational design researchers. Moreover, in a later collaboration with Magali Simard and Danielle Laberge, we explored the significance of three tightly related concepts: (1) governance, (2) organizational design, and (3) governmentality and suggested a framework to delineate them and acknowledge their interfaces.
This research rested on a collaborative approach, among others by including one PMO director in the research team. Unlike other sectors, the healthcare sector is used to working with researchers; the contact with research participants was easy and friendly. The close collaboration we developed with the research participants facilitated our understanding of the actual difficulties of organizing for projects in public organizations. Furthermore, this collaborative research design also implied we would transfer most of the knowledge generated by the research to the participating organizations, which we did. These collaborations with colleagues in healthcare were rich and fruitful for both parties. On the healthcare side, they benefited from project management knowledge and for those of us in project management, we learned about the complexity in dealing with major projects in a context as specific and complex as healthcare.
The topic of megaprojects was widely discussed at ESG UQAM, dating back to the collaboration between Roger Miller and Brian Hobbs on large international research projects on megaprojects. It is thus not surprising that I became interested in this theme. The current Quebec Directive sur la gestion des projets majeurs d'infrastructure publique [Framework on the Management of Major Public Infrastructure Projects] (Gouvernement du Québec, 2016) is inspired by Miller’s research on megaprojects and research from Norway and the United Kingdom. Major collaborations on this theme took place with my former doctoral students: Maude Brunet, Hicham Rahali, and Sanaa El Boukri. In their doctoral thesis, each adopted a different perspective on megaprojects but all shared an interest in a practice-based approach. Maude focused on governance; Hicham, on risk management; and Sanaa, on stakeholders’ social complexity. Working with them has been a tremendous source of stimulation and learning for me.
This theme also includes several research–action interventions with government departments and other public organizations in Quebec. Very often, problems related to governance in the context of projects were at the heart of the intervention with multiple facets. I put together a team with diverse expertise (e.g., economists, contract specialists, engineers, project management, human resources) to understand the complex nature of problems related to projects in the public context and provide them with recommendations that have the potential to solve problems in a broad systems view. This led to great collaboration within the team and with public sector practitioners at all levels of management. It also influenced, to a certain extent, the delivery of projects in the Quebec public sector.
Still connected to megaprojects, I joined my colleague Serghei Floricel in the research on complex projects. This research adopted a process perspective to study the development phase of such projects (their front end). We showed that this development phase is animated by a dynamic movement of convergence and divergence among the different stakeholders. In line with the fundamental idea of a process perspective, we have shown that taking temporalities into account in the study of megaprojects can be fruitful in making their trajectory visible over time.
That the topic of benefits management attracted my attention is somewhat a natural development for me, with my previous interests in organizational design and project governance. The impetus to engage in this research came from a conversation with a practitioner. Certified as an expert in benefits management, she was responsible for benefits management implementation in her organization. But after a few years of efforts, she was disappointed with the results; despite known best practices, no significant enhancement had been achieved in benefits management in their project portfolio. Following our conversation, we decided to launch a research project that would focus on her organization. This project gave rise to one of the best research journeys I have ever had with Viviane Sergi and Sanaa El Boukri. Instead of exploring the technical aspects of benefits management, we built on the practice perspective and aimed to better understand how benefits management was practiced concretely by practitioners along the project life cycle. Three other organizations participated in this qualitative research. Findings were surprising, as research participants mentioned several elements that were absent from the literature on benefits management such as emotions, rhetoric, progressive amnesia of business benefits, and so forth. Our research was awarded the Project Management Journal® Paper of the Year Award for 2022.
When looking back on their careers, most researchers will mention that serendipity plays a part in how specific topics and objects come into the research portfolio. This is exactly the case for this theme, which I never planned to study. In 2006, I was teaching a course on project planning and control in the project management program at UQAM. The teaching material was in line with rational planning and control tools and techniques, but this material led me to experience a form of cognitive dissonance. Based on my own experience as a project manager, I knew that anticipation is always constructed and that what unfolds rarely follows any plans. This raised an issue for me: how could I teach planning and control techniques knowing that planning is a socially constructed practice influenced by practitioners’ values? During the same period, on a drive from Montreal to our country house, I heard a radio interview with the captain of a scientific expedition in the Antarctic who had just survived a huge storm. This interview was my lightbulb moment: expeditions might be a good example to learn about planning and controlling in action, particularly in demanding and changing environments.
A few months prior to this, I met with Pascal Lièvre, whose expertise was exactly on extreme situations. What sounded like a good teaching example was intriguing and prompted me to contact him. From our exchanges, we developed a collaboration on extreme situations, which quickly involved other researchers from his network. The empirical context we focused on was an expedition in the Antarctic.
Our study findings show that planning is of prime importance in this extreme context. Weeks, months, or even years can be devoted to planning such expeditions. In our case, planning lasted two years. This phase served to accumulate a maximum of information on several topics: climate, geography, potential material issues, and so forth. However, as we revealed, when the expedition began, the plan was not treated as a fixed or rigid calendar of activities, rather it became a resource for action. 1 The captain and his crew adapted the plan they had polished over two years to seize opportunities and adapt to unexpected bad weather situations.
This research led to the organization of colloquia. One of them was held in Cerisy, an exceptional site for intellectual activity in France. The study of expeditions generated several publications, among others, conference papers, articles, a special issue of Project Management Journal®, and two books (originally in French, then translated into English). Moreover, this theme has been quite influential beyond the field of project management and has developed in recent years, notably with the work of Markus Hällgren, Linda Rouleau, Marc de Rond, and Geneviève Neukirch (see, for example, Hallgren, 2007; Hällgren et al., 2018; Neukirch et al., 2018).
Temporalities and time-space should be viewed as transversal concerns that have animated me throughout all my projects. Both themes emerged from my very first research on PMOs; from there, they only grew in importance as I progressed in my career. My initial recognition of the importance of time––which has pushed me toward process studies––was consolidated through conversations with Jean-Pierre Boutinet, Viviane Sergi, and Olivier Germain. These conversations truly allowed me to understand the richness of these dimensions. Reflecting on their importance also opened me up to a different form of research, a form I was looking for without necessarily knowing it: research that would be sensitive to history, pay careful attention to what individuals really do and feel, and that would take into consideration the space in which activities occur. Through my different projects, I gradually came to more and more embrace a process ontology for which “temporality, activity, and change […] are the ontologically, or at least, hermeneutically, most salient dimension of the real” (Rescher, 1996, p. 32). If this concern for temporalities and time-space can be perceived––albeit to varying degrees––in all my research projects, it is most visible in two special issues to which I have contributed. The first issue was edited with Olivier Germain in International Journal of Managing Projects in Business and situated at the intersection of entrepreneurship and project management (Germain & Aubry, 2019). The second issue was edited with Viviane Sergi and Lucia Crevani and was specifically on the process studies of project organizing in Project Management Journal® (Sergi et al., 2020). Both special issues promoted alternative theoretical and methodological approaches; moreover, both adopted a critical stance and called for a renewal of research within project studies. Indeed, in my opinion, the articles published in these special issues contributed to showcasing the potential of less common perspectives to increase our understanding of organizational phenomena.
Where I Am Now
The collaboration with Pascal Lièvre on extreme situations offered me the opportunity to learn about the re-emergence of pragmatism but, at the time, we did not explore its potential. I now understand that pragmatism could have been highly relevant to my research objects to theorize complex project situations such as major projects problems or organizational design and governance issues. For me, exploring pragmatism is the extension of the practice perspective and paradox theory on which I have built in recent years. There are two principles of pragmatism that I particularly value (Lorino, 2018). First, pragmatism suggests a triadic understanding of problematic situations. Considering a solution to a problem is not enough (action–reaction). A third element, social meaning, is also at work in searching for a solution. Social meaning process includes knowledge from the past, emotions, and so forth. In pragmatism, social meaning fully participates in imagining solutions. In my research on theme 2—organizational design and governance—problems arise often at the interface between the permanent and temporary organizations on project decisions. In this context, decisions often impact the organizational power system; individuals may feel a loss in their influence or power. Searching for a solution should include these human and social meanings. The second is non-dualism. Here we can see a connection with paradox theory (see Smith & Lewis, 2011), which suggests that in the face of paradoxical situations, “both/and” thinking is possible, which calls for dialogue and trade-offs in decision. In megaprojects (theme 3), tensions among stakeholders are normal, for example, when an environmental problem arises. The owner might push to proceed with the project as planned; conversely, an environmental coalition might push to change the project plan or even stop the project. Influenced by pragmatism and other perspectives, we can frame the search for solutions as a form of managerial action aiming for a solution that will satisfy both parties.
These two very short examples do not do justice to pragmatism’s potential in our field, which remains vastly untapped (for a notable exception, see Lalonde et al., 2010). Hopefully, they will intrigue a few researchers in project management to delve into this rich philosophical tradition. Furthermore, while this essay is oriented toward research, evoking the practice perspective and pragmatism also has ramifications for education in our field. It has become commonplace to evoke the rising uncertainty and turbulence of our world; still, it does not mean there is no element of truth in such affirmations. Especially when it comes to educating and training project managers, we need to help them develop their capacity to face uncertainty, ambiguity, and complexity while involved in delivering projects. Connected to the perspectives that have inspired me, the most important competencies that practitioners should develop are, in my opinion, reflexivity and the capacity to make sense collectively of events as they happen, whether planned or unforeseen. In my teaching, I have thus attached great importance to developing such competencies in students by striving to place them close to real situations experienced in a variety of contexts and projects. This choice can be understood as a pedagogical and a theoretical commitment, both rooted in the recognition that rich knowledge and understanding can be derived from focusing on actual situations and practices. My connections with practitioners were also beneficial for my teaching activities; I often invited people I knew to attest to the reality of project management and all its complexities. This is not the only approach that can help foster students’ reflexivity and capacity for making sense collectively, but it has been my favorite because each connection has enriched me.
The Craft of Monique’s Work
Box 5. Viviane’s experience working with Monique
I met Monique in 2004 in Ann Langley’s qualitative methods class. However, it wasn’t until I joined her department in 2012 that we began to discuss research more actively. Collaborating with Monique and, more generally, working alongside her at UQAM, has been a great source of stimulation. Beyond her scholarship, I have always been impressed with and inspired by her positive energy, curiosity, and humility. These qualities make it a true joy to work with her. I feel privileged to have had the opportunity to collaborate with her.
There is an intimate connection among Monique’s personal qualities, her theoretical and methodological affinities, her main research themes, and the way she practices research. This final section, composed of edited conversations we had, showcase how Monique views and practices research. The conversational format can bring to life the person who is interviewed. Given the attention that Monique has always paid to relationships, dialogue, and reflexivity, we felt that this conversation format well embodied what has been and remains important to her.
I have been inspired by Foucault, who, in his writings, shares his methodological path as he goes on presenting the results of his analyses. This path is far from clear, and we see him expressing doubts while at the same time trusting his intuition to pursue his inquiries. In research, I have tried to cultivate a similar attitude, and this is something I strongly believe in: the importance of listening being in tune, both with people and ourselves. Listening carefully to what people tell us, what we observe, and paying close attention to what we perceive, to our intuitions and our doubts as our research projects are ongoing, can lead to surprises and discoveries. But we need to be open to embrace these changes! Also, when it comes to research, I have always enjoyed the oscillation between the discomfort I experience when I’m collecting and analyzing data and the satisfaction I feel when progress is made.
Frankly, I would not have progressed in my academic career without all the collaborations I have had the chance to establish. I have collaborated with many colleagues in project management but have never limited myself to our field. I have particularly enjoyed being able to meet people with whom I could pursue interdisciplinary research projects, including researchers in social geography and nursing. I include the master’s and doctoral students I have supervised in my collaborations. Working with these students has really been great! I like to see my role with students as that of a guide, accompanying them as they progress; supervising has allowed me to keep learning about new topics and perspectives. I take the opportunity of this conversation to warmly thank all the people with whom I have collaborated and still do.
However, dissemination is a form of communication in itself and differs from academic presentations. I have always invested efforts in translating the results of my research projects for practitioners to ensure that what I present makes sense for them. I start by placing myself in the shoes of the people with whom I will engage in a dialogue, and I imagine how what I’m presenting could be interpreted.
I remember the first study on PMOs, where we found great variety in their forms and functions. Before we even began to present our findings, I imagined myself as a practitioner. What question would these findings raise? The first question that came to mind was: “How does this impact how my PMO works?” Thinking about it, it became clear to me that, in fact, in the case of the PMO, we were referring to a global concept of organizational design, a concept that goes beyond the PMO but that includes it. The objective here, is to sensitize practitioners to the importance of their work in the design of PMO as integrated to the wider organizational design. What was interesting with this example––and that I have also experimented with other research projects––is that the work of translating findings for practitioners sparked my theoretical reflection. It is from that point that we started to explore more explicitly the literature on organizational design.
This example highlights something that has always been very important to me: the fact that research and practice are not disconnected. I have gained so much by staying in touch with practitioners, and I recommend to all researchers to walk across what is sometimes presented as an incommensurable divide.
Finally, my academic career began late, and I do not regret all my previous professional experiences. If I had started earlier, maybe I could have developed more collaborations and deepened my knowledge on many more topics. But these experiences have made me sensitive to the day-to-day problems people in organizations face, which I have always found of the utmost importance for research in our field. I cannot stress enough how mutually beneficial nurturing these relationships with practitioners can be, both for us as researchers and as a field.
I hope this article will inspire everyone to reflect on their own journey and engage in what makes sense for them. Not everyone has the same will and energy; however, there should be room for everyone in the world of research, as every personal trajectory brings its originality and, hence, can generate stimulating insights.
In conclusion, I want to thank the funding organizations whose financial support has facilitated many of my collaborations. In alphabetical order, these are the Canadian Health Services Research, the Canadian Institutes of Health Research, Project Management Institute (PMI), the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, and Sweden’s Wicktromska Foundation. And, finally, I would like to warmly thank Viviane for accompanying me on the adventure of developing this article. We have worked in a collaborative relay mode that gave us the necessary flexibility and time for thinking, while making writing enjoyable.
Footnotes
Notes
Correction (May 2024):
Article has been updated to correct the title and subject heading.