Successful project portfolio management beyond project selection techniques: Understanding the role of structural alignment 14页

ELSEVIER： International Journal of Project Management

Abstract
Project portfolio management (PPM) is a commonly employed technique to align a project portfolio with strategic goals. Prior research has
mainly regarded PPM as a methodology to optimize the overall benefit of a project portfolio. While adequate project selection techniques are
certainly important, we argue that successful PPM – and consequently effective strategy implementation – depends on an organization's structural
alignment with the needs of PPM. Based on three cases in the German construction industry, we study the effects of fundamental strategic changes
on the project selection and organizational structure. From our case analysis, we develop a substantive theory to explain how the criteria, used by a
company to choose and evaluate its projects, influence the company's structure through the information requirements created by such criteria. To
assess whether our theory is in line with accepted schools of thought on organizational design, we integrate it with existing organizational theories.
Our contribution is twofold. First, we offer a substantive theory that integrates strategy implementation, organizational information processing, and
structural adaptation. Second, we introduce a new antecedent of successful PPM, namely structural alignment, thus introducing a new perspective
on PPM beyond mere project selection techniques.

Keywords: Strategic project portfolio management; Contingency theory; Theory of organizational information processing