Exercising Agency

'Strategy happens via projects. How strategy drives project initiation is a missing link in understanding between strategy-formulation and project-management. This study uses real-life experiences to theorise this process. Organisations and processes are important, but much is about individuals, their personality and their sense of agency. A very useful book for both academics and students who want to understand project initiation in practice, and practitioners who want to understand rigorously how to make decisions better.' Terry Williams, Hull University Business School, UK 'Want to have a serious impact on your business? This book gives you a path to becoming an "agent for the right change"; leading decision-makers to identify projects that are worth doing and are likely to be successful. What a rare skill that is - incredibly important for you and the people you work for.' Dave Garrett, CEO, ProjectManagement.com 'Exercising Agency should be a required text in MBA schools and advanced project management training the world over. With a large proportion of all organizational work taking place in projects, we do a woefully inadequate job of preparing executives to select and initiate valuable projects. A work of unique breadth and depth, this book delivers a cogent review of relevant project and strategy literature supported by detailed original research that provides solid practical advice to those charged with making difficult project initiation decisions.' Janice Thomas, Athabasca University, Canada 'This book should be on the must-read list of every academic and reflective practitioner engaged in project organising work. Its emphasis is on how agency and rules influence decision making, at the project initiation stage, significantly shaping project delivery success or failure. It provides a much needed reference and in-depth treatment of how decisions about the purpose of projects are crafted. It provides new empirical evidence that is convinci