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In an increasing number of industries firms need to customize their products and undertake innovation to be competitive (Hobday, 1998). Innovation is paramount mostly for Western firms, which have been forced to outsource manufacturing operations, due to the increasing competition they face from Asian, low-cost firms (Davies, Brady, Prencipe, & Hobday, 2011). These firms have started adopting more flexible organizational forms to achieve innovation. Such flexible organizational forms are named project-based organizations, and are those organizations that bring together new and different resources and knowledge for specific productions through projects (Gann & Salter, 2000; Hobday, 2000). In a project the client has the opportunity to participate actively in design activities, increasing the opportunities of personalization (Hobday, 2000).
Key Terms in this Chapter
Economies of Repetition: execution of an increasing number of similar projects more efficiently and effectively ( Brady & Davies, 2004 ; A. Davies & Brady, 2000 ).
Routine’s Performative Aspect: the particular actions executed by particular actors in a particular iteration of the routine ( Feldman and Pentland, 2003 ).
Role Structure: a mechanism that enables the members of a group to figure out all the roles of the group and cover any role that is uncovered and to undertake the actions ascribed to it ( Weick, 1993 ).
Project-Based Organization: organizational form that assembles and coordinates knowledge and resources to provide and services though projects ( Hobday, 2000 ).
Routine’s Ostensive Aspect: the abstract representation of the routine, namely the abstract sequence of actions that make the routine up ( Feldman and Pentland, 2003 ).
Routine: A recognizable pattern of interdependent actions, which recurs over time and involves multiple actors (Nelson and Winter, 1982; Feldman and Pentland, 2003 ).
Project: an organizational arrangement to realize a result, with a defined time frame for starting and completion (Cattani, Ferriani, Frederiksen & Taube, 2011 AU28: The citation "Cattani, Ferriani, Frederiksen & Taube, 2011" matches the reference "Cattani et al, 2011", but an accent or apostrophe is different. ).