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PROJECT-BASED ORGANIZATIONS AND KNOWLEDGE WORK 119

organizations, which creates what we have called ‘learning boundaries’; that is
boundaries between learning that happens at one level (e.g. during knowledge
creation in projects) and learning at other levels (e.g. following routines that stan-
dardize organizational processes). While organizations have recognized that this
is a problem, the mechanisms that have been introduced to try and facilitate this
knowledge exploitation from projects are not always very effective. We identified
three particular issues that help to account for this – because sometimes little
collective knowledge is created because of the way tasks are divided up; because
sometimes those involved in projects do not realize that there is or that they could
usefully use knowledge that has been produced in previous projects; and finally
because often the knowledge that is codified from projects is product (what was
produced) rather than process (the processes that accounted for the creation of
this product – whether successful or unsuccessful) knowledge, which is actually
less useful, given that projects are often focused on developing unique products.
These problems related to the exploitation of knowledge arising from proj-
ects become even more acute in contexts where the knowledge is not just
potentially useful, but essential, for example in complex project ecologies which
demand high levels of interactivity among projects. In such contexts, reciprocal
approaches to managing interdependencies between projects are more likely to
be successful. However, we also examined the reasons why it is often difficult to
manage interdependencies more reciprocally, in particular because of the short-
term need to maximize the return from the IP that is produced in a project and
because of the power dynamics that complicate all kinds of inter-organizational
relationships. The opportunity to explore these issues is provided below in the
two cases that are described.

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