Understanding Your Project Organization's Character

Participants from 175 different Norwegian projects described the organizational cultures of both their most recent projects and their organizations. Their descriptions are based on a typology distinguishing between power, role, task, and person cultures, as outlined and developed in Harrison (1972) and Handy (1986). This study demonstrates that projects are more task culture-oriented than their base organizations. Further, hierarchical elements of the project must be eliminated for a project to move closer to the prevalent task culture. A stronger task orientation improves the chances of staying within the project budget.