Abstract

     Although the management of mergers and acquisitions (M&As) and of projects are connected in practice, they remain disjoined in academia. In this paper, we conceptually bridge the literature on projects and M&As to discuss the transitory nature of organisations by mobilising the concepts of project, programme, and portfolio as alternative modes of organising M&As. As a project, the managerial effort in M&A focuses on completion on time and budget. As a programme, M&As are managed as complex processes of convergence between organisations. As a portfolio, M&A management is part of the ongoing integration efforts within organisations that have grown via M&As. Our contribution to project studies is to position projects, programmes, and portfolios as modes of organising, hence, not as phenomena but as managerial choices used to shape strategic change initiatives, such as M&As. We conclude with implications beyond project studies, thereby drafting a project-based theory of the firm.

Introduction

     Project, programme, and portfolio are established vehicles for managing strategic change (Pellegrinelli, 1997; Geraldi & Söderlund, 2012; Martinsuo & Hoverfält, 2018). Initially, the terms project, programme, and portfolio were used interchangeably, causing confusion and debate about their differences, similarities (Pellegrinelli et al., 2011), and practical implementation (Pellegrinelli et al., 2007). This confusion has been followed by conceptual discussions both in the academic (Maylor, Brady, Cooke-Davies, & Hodgson, 2006; Lycett et al., 2004; Artto et al., 2009) and practitioner literature (PMI, 2017; OGC, 2011), which eventually led to a clear distinction between these three modes of organising project-based work. This has also encouraged the correct classification of a certain phenomenon as a project, programme, or portfolio, and managing it accordingly (Lycett et al., 2004; Maylor, Brady, Cooke-Davies, & Hodgson, 2006).

Discussion: contributions, limitations, and research avenues

     We have offered a conceptualisation of projects, programmes, and portfolios not as a type of work to be conducted, but as ideal typical modes of organising. Accordantly, we argue that a manager could choose to manage the same M&A initiative as a project, a programme, or a portfolio, therefore organising the ensuing activities accordingly, resulting in the strategic initiative being shaped into a project, a programme or a portfolio by managing it as such. Therefore, project, programme, and portfolio become a managerial choice, with implications for the acquisition and the involved organisations in the long term.

     Following Zahra and Newey’s (2009) modes of theorising at the intersection of disciplines, our work offers four contributions. The first two are contributions to the connected research fields. First, to project studies, we propose an alternative perspective of projects, programmes, and portfolios as modes of organising. Second, to M&As, we offer an alternative view of M&A management as an organisation in its own right. Third, our bridge offers possibilities for a theoretical contribution to organisation studies in general, namely the contours of a project-based theory of the firm. Our final contribution is our illustration of theorising at the intersection between research fields. The next sections discuss each of these contributions, boundary conditions, and implications. We conclude with a call for more inter-disciplinarity in organisation and management studies.