Project Ecologies: A Contextual View on Temporary Organizations

The notion “project ecology” provides a conceptual framework for analyzing projects from a contextual view. In short, project ecologies denote a relational space which affords the personal, organizational, and institutional resources for performing projects. This relational space encompasses social layers on multiple scales, from the micro level of interpersonal networks to the meso level of intra- and inter-organizational collaboration to the macro level of wider institutional settings. Moreover, it unfolds a complex geography, which explicitly is not reduced to local clusters but also extends to more distanced individuals and organizations or a-spatial institutions. One of the main fields in which the contextual view generated new insights is the topic of project-based learning. Through their trans-disciplinarity and transience, projects appear as a most pertinent form for creating knowledge in the context of application.