Projectified Politics – Temporary Organisations in a Public Context

The ‘project’ as an organisational ideal type has become a symbol for the acceleration of social problem solving and intervention. Within some policy fields, for instance European regional development policy, the project organization is the prime component for policy implementation. Some voices have argued that the project as such has become a post-bureaucratic symbol of adaptability and contingency considered to be a superior way of reacting to unanticipated and irregular situations (Heckscher & Donollon, 1994; Lundin & Söderholm, 1995; Clegg & Courpasson, 2004; Sjöblom, 2009). However, not only projects, but many other novel forms of organising public policy demonstrate this temporality. Policy programs, networks, partnerships, local action groups, and contractual forms of cooperation operate within (more or less limited) time frames. Consequently, politics is becoming increasingly ‘projectified’. Thus projectification, stands for a fundamental development towards just-in-time planning and execution. Based on a hyper-rational interpretation, temporary organisations constitute vehicles for flexible, fast and innovative problem solving and intervention. Simultaneously, they challenge the need for policy continuity and sustainability in a way that gives every reason to emphasize the temporal dimension of current organisational solutions, in empirical as well as theoretical respects. Empirically speaking there are functional, political, as well as symbolic drivers behind the proliferation of project organisations in the public sphere (cf. Jensen et al., 2013). In a functional sense projectification is largely a consequence of the imperative for strategic change that has characterised public sector reform policies in recent decades. Temporary organizations, particularly projects, are expected to offer more flexible and efficient alternatives to the traditional bureaucratic forms of organising the public sector. Many reforms and policies are launched by means of time-limited legislation and funding. Projects are to an increasing extent the organising form for development work, crossagency arrangements and joint actions in and between permanent organisations. They are e.g. major instruments for implementing the structural fund policies of the European Union. As a concept project management corresponds extremely well to the quest for flexibility and effectiveness of the New Public Management paradigm. In more general terms it is evident that the changes in the aftermath of NPM have had considerable bearing on the ways in which time-frames are constructed in public policies (cf. Pollitt, 2008; Abrahamsson & Agevall, 2010: 37 ff.). Projects are expected to accelerate the decision-making processes and increase the problem-solving capabilities of the executive systems. They manifest intentions and ambitions, and provide means of organising vested interests, stakeholders and expertise on a just-in-time basis. They are promises for nonbureaucratic forms of organising bureaucratic entities. Consequently, ‘the proStefan Sjöblom Stefan Sjöblom, Swedish School of Social Science, University of Helsinki stefan.sjoblom@helsinki.fi