Understanding competencies in project-based organizations: a multilevel and global perspective

In Project Based Organizations (PBOs) where firms conduct the majority of their activities in project mode and/or privilege the project dimensions over functional dimensions, there is an increasing interest in the critical competencies to manage. PBO is recognized as a learning organization and competence is appreciated as a key factor for project effectiveness. In this paper, we propose to improve the understanding of critical competencies in PBOs by highlighting a new perspective. Indeed, we propose to articulate two usually disjoined perspectives of competencies: the levels of competencies (individual, collective, and organizational) and the types of competencies (functional and integrative). Based on a multiple case study within four PBOs operating in different sectors (IBM, Hewlett-Packard, Arkopharma, and Temex), our results reveal the relations between levels and types of competencies. We thus develop a multilevel and global perspective of competencies in PBOs. This perspective also highlights a new reading of the collective level of competence in so far as we consider the coexistence of individual functional competencies and organizational integrative competencies at the heart of the emergence of the collective project team competence. By grounding our perspective in the multilevel and global perspective, we believe that the literature and managers would benefit from a holistic insight into the critical competencies in PBOs.