The projectification of work: An exploratory approach using the World Café method

Abstract

This paper presents and discusses the results of a World Café conducted to inform the development of a comprehensive theoretical, analytical and empirical framework for examining processes of projectification across diverse sectors. While the concept of projectification has gained increasing attention in organisational and management research, its conceptual boundaries, analytical dimensions, and empirical manifestations remain insufficiently explored. To address these gaps, we convened a structured World Café involving professionals, scholars, and persons with political-associative responsibilities from multiple fields, namely the arts, the social economy, research and development, and consultancy to collectively identify empirical priorities for studying projectification. The results highlight several key areas of concern for studying projectification across multiple dimensions: employment relations division of labour; forms of work coordination and the role of information and communication technologies (ICT); mechanisms of labour control; knowledge and skills; funding agendas and mechanisms; work-life balance and health impacts; and workspaces. Sectoral differences, but also similarities, emerged in terms of the dynamics, drivers, and perceived consequences of projectification, underscoring the value of context-sensitive yet comparable empirical approaches. Overall, the World Café outcomes offer rich empirical insights and a robust foundation for the subsequent stages of the research.