To get a manuscript accepted always create a very special feeling inside of me. A feeling of delightful anticipation mixed with trepidation and a feeling of finality. Now it will soon be out there, in all its ‘glory’ and with all its flaws visible. Now it is also up to the unknown reader to decide if this is to cherish or disregard. My (or rather, our) job is done!

This time it is a conceptual/theoretical paper, which is written together with Rolf A. Lundin and Anders Söderholm, that got accepted. The manuscript is entitled ‘Researching Projects and Theorizing Families of Temporary Organizations‘, and the outlet is Project Management Journal.

The paper is influenced by the notion of family resemblance in a Wittgenstein meaning. Based on the many positive comments we received from presenting an previous version of the manuscript at EGOS 2014, I really hope it will be well received by the project community.

Abstract
Following the contemporary development where most temporary, focused, and organized endeavors can be regarded as a project and studied as a temporary organization, we here ask how these concepts can be defined without hindering pluralism in understanding, development, and theorizing? Based on the notions of family resemblance – the idea that it is not a specific trait, but a variety of traits that are shared by some, but not all, members of a family – we propose a new dynamic framework that we believe is useful in order to advance studies of projects and temporary organizations towards more opportunities for rigorous theorizing.

To reference
Jacobsson, Mattias, Lundin, Rolf A., and Söderholm, Anders (2015), “Researching Projects and Theorizing Families of Temporary Organizations”, Project Management Journal, Vol. 46, No. 5. pp. 9-18.

The full paper can be downloaded here.