Contribution of Project Management Offices to Organizational Capacity for Change in Context of a Major Transformation in Health Care

Purpose:

The management of change, its implementation as well as the sustainability of the implemented change has been an ongoing challenge for managers (Soparnot, 2011).  The capacity to cope with dramatically altering contextual forces has become a key determinant when it comes to organizational survival (D’Aveni, 1994).  As stated by Meyer and Stensaker (2006), there is a wide agreement in the current literature that organizations are required to develop their capacity for rapid adaptation, innovation as well as flexibility (Levinthal and March, 1993; Pettigrew and Whittington, 2003; Van den Bosch et al., 1999). It is important to explore change capacity as it contributes to an organization’s ability to successfully implement and sustain change (Scholten, 2012). Soparnot (2011) offered in the first instance, that the change capacity is the ability of the organization to produce solutions that respond to environmental evolution and/or organizational evolution and to implement these change processes successfully within the organization. Careful preparation is required in order to drive change in an organization (Soparnot, 2011). ). In health care, many organizations are going through major transformations and implementing project management office (PMO) to build organizational capacity to cope with the changes (Biron et al., 2012; Aubry et al., 2014). However, there are significant gaps in our understanding of the contribution of PMOs to organizational capacity for change in context of a major transformation in health care. The overall purpose of the study was to understand the contribution of PMOs to organizational capacity for change in context of a major transformation in health care. This paper reports on the study findings that explored PMOs contributions among PMO members, directors and healthcare team members.

Methods:

Given the recent emergence of PMOs in healthcare, the case study methodology constituted an appropriate mode of inquiry that permitted the use of multiple sources of evidence to describe a case (Yin, 2009). A descriptive multiple case study design was used (Yin 2009).  The portion of the study reported here involved 72 individual interviews with members of PMOs, senior management direction and health care professionals involved in working with the PMOs within each case. The study was conducted in three university-affiliated teaching hospitals in one Canadian province. The data were collected from February 2013 to February 2014.

Results: Most of the participants identify the PMO’s contribution to organizational capacity for change as providing expertise and support, listening concerns to mobilize, maintaining communication, engaging people and involving leaders. Participants described that PMOs improve their knowledge and skills to lead change and their decision-making process.

Conclusion: The study showed that the PMOs can help develop healthcare providers’ and managers' change capacities in context of a major transformation in health care. The PMOs, which aimed to support healthcare providers and managers implement and sustain changes, appeared to have been successful in developing change capacities that can migrate throughout the organization.