Projects and Institutions: Towards Understanding their Mutual Constitution and Dynamics

Abstract

Institutions are long-term and stabilizing mechanisms of social interaction that provide much of the groundwork for projects as temporary systems. Due to amassed change ambitions in contemporary projects, not least reflected in their increasing complexity, such systems to a greater extent revolve around processes of institutional change. This development sparks scholarly inquiries emphasizing the need for better understanding the linkages between projects and institutions, and how projects cope with and trigger institutional change. This introductory paper seeks to provide a background and backdrop to the study of the interlinkages between projects and institutions – to demonstrate how they are mutually constituting each other. However, this paper also points to various problems associated with them and the process in practice, and what problems require particular scholarly attention. Further, we discuss how the papers of this special issue inform a revised research agenda for the study of projects and institutions, and how they help us better understand some of the identified challenges.