Changing a project-based industry: The role of project work

This study examines the role of projects in producing institutional change within a project- based industry. By drawing findings from extensive longitudinal fieldwork from a national infrastructure and construction industry of a Northern European country, we will show how project alliancing was legitimized as a new organizing form to deliver complex infrastructure projects. We adopt an institutional work perspective and theorize on a novel concept of project work as a distinct form of work aiming to meet project-specific goals but also to produce change in the permanent institutional structures of the organizational field. However, we also show that institutional change can be achieved only by combining different kind of actions or forms of work throughout a long period of time.