"It's about time" - for Environmental Management to team up with Project Management

Book chapter, 2005

Drawing on a qualitative case study, organizational and social mechanisms that influence the interplay between environmental management and project management are studied. Findings show the existence of built-in tensions in the relationship between how the environmental work respectively how the project is organized and managed. An effect from these tensions is that organizational units within the corporation, due to isolation, partly strive towards different goals. This way of organizing also restrains the environmental organizations ability to communicate environmental information as well as the project organizations ability to handle environmental issues properly. It is concluded that top management need to support the establishment of communicative communities of practice by offering arenas where members from the two units can team-up. It would also be recommended that researchers within environmental management cooperate with researchers on project management to achieve a wider understanding on how to handle negative effects from these tensions.