EDITORIAL

In June 1993, I attended a conference in Vienna, Austria, Management by Projects in Practice. This conference was organized by Project Management Austria, led by Roland Gareis. It built on the INTERNET expert seminar held in Zurich, Switzerland, in March 1989, and the INTERNET International Congress held in Vienna 15 months later.

These two conferences had management by projects as their theme. The central thesis was that management by projects will become the new general management. Through the 1990s and into the 21st century, project- based management will sweep aside traditional func- tional line management, and (almost) all organizations will adopt flat, flexible organization structures in place of the old, bureaucratic hierarchies. This year’s confer- ence was held to review progress made towards this vision over the last three to four years.

The answer is that significant progress has been made. New organization structures are replacing the old, and organizations (in both the public and private sectors) are making significant improvements in productivity as they replace the old role cultures with flexible, customer-ori- ented ones. The new organization is flat and flexible, with a core group of managers setting the strategy, and the remainder of the organization forming itself into virtual teams to meet customers’ changing requirements. A speaker from IBM described how they have adopted this approach in their European headquarters, and achieved IO-fold reductions in manpower in some areas. In his opening address, Roland Gareis said the matrix organization is dead, and is to be replaced by flexible networks. My own view is that the matrix is a special type of network, but many other types are now being adopted.

The conference was very successful. I came away with

many new ideas, and a feeling of being part of a young vibrant subject. However, I also had a sense of unease.

I have a vision that project-based management will be a tool that all managers will need to have in their kitbags, alongside some of the traditional tools, such as financial management and marketing skills. Managers will use project-based management as a vehicle for introducing strategic change, and for winning and main- taining competitive advantage. Other people share this view: project-based management is now a compulsory part of the MBA curriculum at both Henley Manage- ment College, UK, and Cranfield School of Manage- ment, UK. This conference showed that this vision is now widely accepted.

So why the sense of unease? It is this: as project-based management becomes all of general management, it ceases to have any identity of its own; as it takes over everything, it becomes nothing. Financial management and marketing retain their identity. They are tools that general managers use; they are not general management. But after Vienna I was left wondering what the identity of our subject is? Why will people read this journal? What, specifically, will they expect to find in it that they will not find in journals on more general management subjects?

I am reminded of a poem by W. B. Yeats:

Turning and turning in the widening gyre The falcon cannot hear the falconer; Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold

Is project management losing touch with its heart, and should we welcome it?

Rodney Turner Henley Management College

UK

Vol 11 No 4 November 1993 0263-7863/93/040195-O 1 0 1993 Butterworth-Heinemann Ltd 195