Wärtsilä ́s Strategic Project Management : The Role of Global Presence in Strategy Implementation

Abstract

Purpose: The purpose of this study is to examine the role of global presence as a strengthening factor for achieving strategical goals through project teams. It looks at the inter- organisational framework for complex projects and their resource allocation requirements.

Framework: The study combines field from project management in servitization with elements from the resource-based view (RBV). The structures project management firm operate in a broken into their building blocks and trends towards human centred practices are derived. In a next step, research on capabilities are relevant for project work analysed and a framework that combines the fields is introduced.

Methodology: The empirical research is conducted as multiple case study, consisting of 3 embedded cases. The date was gathered through 21 semi-structured interviews, the analysis followed an abductive approach.

Findings and Contributions: The findings were similar across cases. Global presence takes in an important role in complex projects as it provides the base that allows for capability exchange across teams. It is particularly important when expertise and experience is indispensable. Closely linked to relational practiced, presence allows to build trust, stability during change and local expertise. However, internal process improvement and exchange across internal teams were found to be more important than increasing resources as capability for complex projects are time-consuming to build up and cannot easily be replicated.