Human Resource Management in the Project-Oriented Organization

Book excerpt: Organizations regularly assume that the culture, values, dynamic and organization of their temporary project organizations are merely a smaller version of the original parent. Given that project organizations are made up of people and teams drawn, in most cases, from outside and inside the parent, these assumptions are nonsensical. But they do explain why the HR function finds it difficult to adapt to the project environment. Martina Huemann's research in Human Resource Management in the Project-Oriented Organization, offers insight into an approach that is designed to align HR to the needs of the project organization, in terms of management structure, reward, recruitment and performance systems. The text analyses how the modern HR organization stacks up alongside the temporary organization that is the project, to identify the HR constraints and needs of the project organisation and offer a model of project-oriented HRM. Professor Huemann had a deep interest in how and why change processes come into existence and how to design and enable them. In her book she endeavors to bridge theory and practice, strategy and operations.