Team Composition and Project-Based Organizations: New Perspectives for Human Resource Management

Over the past few decades, the increasing significance of “projectification” (Lundin & Steinthorsson, 2003) has generated considerable interest in project-based organizations (PBOs), in terms of both academic contributions and general attention. Literature development has been accompanied by the promotion of “projects as means through which to organize workflows across multiple industries” (Maoret, Massa, & Jones, 2011, p. 428). Drawing from different management subfields, including project management, strategic management, innovation, organizational theory, and social networks, scholars have proposed different approaches to the study of PBOs, resulting in the proliferation of multiple perspectives. Maoret et al. (2001) attributed this proliferation to two main theoretical views. The first view considers PBOs as either temporary, that is, formed to accomplish a specific purpose (DeFillippi & Arthur, 1998), or more stable (Whitley, 2006). The second stream of literature focuses on the concept of latent organizations (Scott & Einstein, 2001; Starkey, Barnatt, & Tempest, 2000). This literature includes variations on themes, such as project ecologies (Grabher, 2004), project networks (Jones, 1996; Manning & Sydow, 2007; Soda, Usai, & Zaheer, 2004; Sydow & Staber, 2002), and social networks (Ferriani, Cattani, & Baden-Fuller, 2009; Uzzi & Spiro, 2005), which focus on the enduring relationships among team members over the duration of the project.