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Abstract

Project managers in interorganizational projects face paradoxes arising from competing demands from the parent and project organizations. Through a longitudinal research approach of eight infrastructure operation and maintenance projects across two case studies, we explore how project managers navigate these paradoxes through formal and informal collaboration. The study finds that public project managers practice contractual wiggle room to informally negotiate with private project partners, and that a formalization of collaboration risks disrupting well-functioning informal practices. These findings highlight the importance of recognizing the role of informal collaboration and ensuring procurement strategies remain adaptable to project-level conditions.

Keywords

interorganizational projects interorganizational collaboration contractual wiggle room negotiation paradox practice approach public procurement

Introduction

Project managers face tensions between actions that are rational for the individual project and those deemed legitimate by the parent organizations (Engwall, 2003). This challenge is amplified in interorganizational projects, where legitimacy is defined by multiple parent organizations with conflicting strategies, priorities, and expectations (Artto et al., 2008a). These tensions arise not only from formal contractual documents but also from situational, operational, and relational realities encountered during strategy implementation. Balancing these competing demands requires project managers to align the strategies of each parent organization with the dynamic needs of the local project organization. Thus, project managers are subject to competing demands that they must enact and respond to, as these are constitutive elements of their organizations (Gaim et al., 2018).

Public procurement in the European Union amounts to approximately €2 trillion annually, corresponding to about 14% of the gross domestic product of the EU’s member states (European Court of Auditors, 2023). Public procurement is not only a significant economic activity but also a key mechanism through which public services and infrastructure are delivered. Through the procurement of work, public actors increasingly rely on interorganizational projects to deliver public value. This reflects a broader societal trend, where we now live in a project society (Lundin, 2016), in which interorganizational projects involving public clients and private suppliers have become a cornerstone (Hodgson et al., 2019). It is therefore of both societal and scholarly importance to deepen our understanding of the everyday work of public and private project actors.

Public organizations’ procurement strategies, such as bid evaluation methods, collaborative tools, and production requirements (Eriksson, 2010), are responded to by bidding suppliers through their pricing. The measures that would be legitimate for the project managers to undertake are thus specified in the project’s contractual documents. Although project organizations and project managers, particularly in collaborative interorganizational projects, may influence the specifications to some extent, these documents are primarily formulated by the parent organizations. When implemented in the complex local context of a project, these contracts give rise to paradoxes (van Marrewijk et al., 2008).

Paradoxes are defined as “persistent contradictions between interdependent elements” (Schad et al., 2016, p. 6), and “projects are scenes of paradoxes” (Gaim et al., 2022, p. 410). Project management has been identified as a paradoxical profession (Rowe et al., 2024; Sabini & Alderman, 2021), with both public and private project managers playing key roles in addressing paradoxical situations (Szentes & Eriksson, 2016). Practices deemed legitimate by parent organizations may conflict with those needed at the project level, triggering paradoxes (Qian, 2024). However, despite recognition of paradoxes in project management, there is a lack of understanding about what types of competing demands that project managers face from parent and project organizations in interorganizational projects.

Prior research links the management of paradoxes to collaboration (Szentes, 2018; Gaim et al., 2022), but the specifics of how project managers collaborate to address organizational paradoxes remain unclear. Therefore, the purpose of this study is to understand how public and private project managers collaborate to respond to the paradoxes they face when balancing the competing demands of parent and project organizations. The following research questions guided our empirical study:

What paradoxes do public and private project managers experience as they navigate competing demands from the parent and project organizations?

How do project managers respond to these paradoxes through collaboration?

To explore these questions, we draw on two longitudinal case studies comprising eight operation and maintenance projects with the Swedish Transport Administration (STA) as the public client and private contractors as suppliers. These projects represent three distinct contractual approaches: traditional operation and maintenance contracts and two successive stages in STA’s relational contracting development aimed at fostering collaboration.

Combining a practice approach (e.g., Feldman & Orlikowski, 2011; Jarzabkowski et al., 2021) with paradox theory (e.g., Abdallah et al., 2011; Smith & Lewis, 2011), we investigate how public and private project managers respond to organizational paradoxes through everyday collaboration. Applying a practice approach allows us to focus on the situated, microlevel activities of project managers, while paradox theory enables us to conceptualize the persistent and contradictory tensions that arise in balancing parent organizations’ strategic intentions with local project settings. Our units of analysis are paradoxes as the competing demands from parent and project organizations, and the collaborative practices that project managers use to respond to these. Our level of analysis is the project level, where both paradoxes and collaboration unfold.

Our findings show that public project managers use contractual wiggle room to informally negotiate with private project managers in response to paradoxical demands. However, when the public client introduced a new contract with formal collaboration mechanisms, these informal practices were disrupted. These findings contribute to the literature on interorganizational project collaboration, paradoxes in project-based contexts, and collaborative public procurement.

Theoretical Background

We will begin by examining the theoretical foundation of our study, structured around three key areas. First, we discuss public sector project organizing, providing contextual background and highlighting how projectification and public procurement shape interorganizational relationships and managerial challenges. Second, we examine interorganizational project collaboration, which is the primary area to which our study contributes, focusing on the interplay between formal and informal collaboration and the challenges of aligning divergent interests. Third, we introduce a practice perspective as our analytical lens, which enables us to explore how project managers navigate paradoxical tensions in their everyday work.

Public Sector Project Organizing

Over the last decades, the process of projectification (Midler, 1995) has significantly impacted the public sector, with public sector work increasingly organized into projects (Godenhjelm et al., 2015). This shift has redefined interactions with private actors, particularly in interorganizational projects where public procurement plays a central role. While projectification is promoted to enhance flexibility and foster innovation, its implementation in the public sector has shown contradictory effects. For example, Fred (2020) demonstrated that project management models in the public sector are frequently used to increase control rather than reduce bureaucracy. Similarly, Rowe et al. (2024) question whether projectification genuinely minimizes bureaucratic inefficiencies or instead reinforces hierarchical structures and rigid rules.

Projectification has coincided with outsourcing, turning public agencies into clients managing interorganizational projects (Nilsson Vestola, 2024). Outsourcing through public procurement is expected to increase efficiency and effectiveness (Håkansson & Axelsson, 2020). Therefore, public procurement has been recognized as a strategic tool to solve societal challenges (OECD, 2023). However, the regulatory framework governing public procurement limits flexibility, complicating strategic public outsourcing (Håkansson & Axelsson, 2020). These regulations impact how public clients manage interorganizational projects, where procurement practices represent engineered strategies interrelated with project-level strategies (Nilsson Vestola & Eriksson, 2023).

Interorganizational Project Collaboration

Following an extensive literature review, Bedwell et al. (2012) defined collaboration as a process that develops over time, where social entities mutually participate in joint activities aimed at achieving at least one common goal. Applied to interorganizational collaboration, this definition emphasizes that such collaboration is built on relationships that evolve throughout the project life cycle (Aaltonen & Turkulainen, 2018). In line with this perspective, interorganizational collaboration is best understood as a dynamic, process-oriented phenomenon rather than a fixed state—challenging much of the prior literature, which has often treated interorganizational collaboration as a static, predefined structure (Saukko et al., 2020). Recent research has highlighted that interorganizational collaboration frequently unfolds along multiple, parallel, and decoupled paths rather than through tightly coordinated activities

(Bos-de Vos et al., 2022). This underscores the need for flexible, context-sensitive integration strategies across participating organizations, as actors must continuously navigate and realign multiple organizational and industry contexts throughout a project’s life cycle.

Most research on interorganizational project collaboration has primarily focused on formal collaborative tools (e.g., Eriksson 2010; Bygballe & Swärd, 2019), including the client parent organization’s collaborative procurement strategies specified in contractual documents. These strategies include bid evaluation based on soft parameters, open books, collaborative tools such as collaboration workshops, joint objectives, colocation, facilitators, early contractor involvement, and financial incentives based on group performance (Eriksson, 2010).

To address the challenges of interorganizational collaboration, the organizational infrastructure supporting collaboration must evolve, aligning tools, language, and routines across participating organizations (Braun & Sydow, 2024). Pauna et al. (2021) identify early involvement and joint goal setting as foundational to collaborative practices but also highlight how misaligned incentives and limited precontractual funding can undermine collaboration before it begins. These findings reinforce the importance of designing collaboration into projects from the front end.

Collaboration also has an informal dimension, consisting of personal relationships, direct interaction between participating individuals, trust building, shared values, and previous experiences (Bygballe et al., 2015). This informal side of collaboration is a local phenomenon that develops in response to the specific project’s context and circumstances (Hartmann & Bresnen, 2011). Scholars in this line of research argue that interorganizational project collaboration cannot be considered merely as something that can be successfully designed through top-down decisions, without acknowledging the locally developed collaboration. In construction, the relationship between client and contractor project managers has been recognized as crucial for the development of informal collaboration (Nilsson Vestola & Eriksson, 2023).

Interorganizational collaboration is shaped by project actors actively navigating tensions across organizational levels (Vosman et al., 2024), highlighting the important role of project managers. Prior research has suggested that formal collaboration may support successful responses to paradoxical tensions at the project level (Eriksson, 2013). However, recent literature emphasizes that recognizing collaboration as both a formal and an informal process also means acknowledging that these two sides interplay (Nikulina et al., 2022; Eriksson et al., 2023; Nilsson Vestola & Eriksson, 2023; Valkokari et al., 2024). This suggests that collaborative project-level responses to paradox are dependent on both formal and informal collaboration.

One of the key challenges in implementing formal collaboration tools in interorganizational projects is the difficulty actors with divergent objectives face in agreeing on joint objectives (Pauna et al., 2021; Zhang et al., 2022). This challenge is particularly evident in collaborations between public and private actors (Kronlid & Baraldi, 2020), as successful public–private collaboration requires individuals to engage in strategies to merge the public and market logics (Leite & Ingstrup, 2022). Furthermore, international collaboration standards (such as International Organization for Standardization [ISO] 44001) have been identified as enabling project-level adaptations through contractual flexibility (Chakkol et al., 2018), which could potentially aid public–private collaborations.

In the context of strategic programs, Frederiksen et al. (2024) show that routines emerge through generative, adaptive practices. Crucially, the routines developed within interorganizational programs must be actively transferred and reembedded into the parent organizations to support long-term strategic change.

A Practice Perspective

In organization studies, practice researchers aim to explain organizational matters by capturing the mundane details of everyday work (Nicolini, 2012). Practices are patterns of actions (Chia & MacKay, 2007) representing shared habits of behavior (Whittington, 2006). This perspective allows us to delve into the intricacies of daily activities and understand how these contribute to broader organizational phenomena.

Next, we summarize our theoretical backgrounds of strategizing in a project-based context and organizational paradox, from a practice perspective.

On Strategizing in a Project-Based Context

A practice approach lets us capture and explore organizational processes (Nicolini & Monteiro, 2017), enabling a focus on the doing of project management, rather than only looking at the outcomes of strategic intentions and plans from a top-down perspective (Blomquist et al., 2010). This focus on the microactivities and interactions within projects provides a detailed understanding of how projects are executed in practice. However, project-level activities do not happen in isolation but are interconnected with practice from outside of the project as well (Hällgren & Lindahl, 2012; Whittington, 2006). Drawing on practice theory (Feldman & Orlikowski, 2011; Jarzabkowski et al., 2021) enables a holistic perspective on projects, considering not only their technical aspects but also the social and contextual dimensions that shape their execution and outcomes.

Since Engwall’s (2003) seminal article, scholars of project studies have increasingly recognized the importance of linking project practices to the project’s organizational environment. From a planning perspective, projects are a means through which the parent organization can implement its strategies (Artto et al., 2008b). However, when viewed as temporary organizations instead of mere tools of their parent organizations (Packendorff, 1995), projects are acknowledged to possess characteristics akin to those found in other organizational forms. Through this perspective, projects are expected to develop strategies of their own that may deviate from the strategies of the parent organizations (Artto et al., 2008a).

Strategy implementation between different organizational levels has inherent tension (Weiser et al., 2020); therefore, it is critical for research on strategy in project contexts to integrate strategy and execution (Söderlund & Maylor, 2012). Taking a practice approach, strategy is viewed as a “situated, socially accomplished activity” (Jarzabkowski et al., 2007, p. 7) that an organization’s members do, rather than something that the organization has.

On Organizational Paradox

Gaim et al. (2018) provide a comprehensive literature review on competing demands in organizations, emphasizing the conceptual ambiguity that has developed due to the proliferation of related but distinct constructs, including dilemmas, trade-offs, dialectics, dualities, and paradoxes. Out of all identified types of competing demands, paradoxes are the only ones that are both contradictory and complementary (Gaim et al., 2018). When the conflicting demands from parent and project organizations are viewed as both contradictory and complementary, they can be understood as paradoxes.

A paradox perspective on managing contradictory demands in organizations enables a simultaneous focus on conflicting and interdependent demands (Smith & Lewis, 2011), avoiding the reduction of complex tensions to either/or choices (Smith et al., 2017). Because paradox is a persistent condition of organizations (Gaim et al., 2022), the goal is not to resolve the paradox; rather, the paradox requires a response (Abdallah et al., 2011; Smith & Lewis, 2011). Through their study of the Sydney Opera House construction project, Gaim et al. (2022) show how a collaborative mindset of project members enabled the navigation of persisting paradoxes, instead of suppressing them as obstacles in need of decisive action.

The persistence of paradox implies that it cannot be resolved by focusing exclusively on one side; such an approach merely suppresses the paradox temporarily (Gaim et al., 2022). In fact, prior research has shown how unbalanced, one-sided responses to organizational paradoxes can spur vicious cycles (Szentes, 2018). For instance, Gaim et al. (2018) illustrate how an organization that prioritizes the exploration of new frontiers without simultaneously managing the exploitation of existing knowledge risks undermining its own survival. Without a stable foundation, excessive exploration may lead to inefficiencies and an inability to capitalize on accumulated expertise.

In order to understand the relationship between strategic intentions and enactment, it is necessary to explore the paradoxical tensions inherent in the implementation of strategy between different levels of an organization (Weiser et al., 2020), such as between parent and project organizations. From a practice perspective, these tensions are addressed and enacted through the ongoing actions and interactions of individuals (Jarzabkowski et al., 2013). Since practice theory rejects dualisms and encourages the integration of polarized concepts (Feldman & Orlikowski, 2011), there is a shared ontological basis between the practice and paradox perspectives (Lê & Bednarek, 2017). A practice approach complements paradox theory’s focus on the coexistence of contradictory yet interdependent elements (Smith & Lewis, 2011). Therefore, a better understanding of organizational paradox may come from applying a practice approach (Lê & Bednarek, 2016), a combination of perspectives that has been employed by a few earlier studies (e.g., Clegg et al., 2002; Jarzabkowski & Lê, 2017). By combining these two perspectives, we aim to capture not only the persistent nature of paradox but also the situated practices through which project managers navigate and respond to these tensions in their everyday work.

In project-based contexts, paradox exists in multiple organizational interfaces (Szentes & Eriksson, 2016) and has been identified between the temporary organizations and their surrounding permanent environment (Burke & Morley, 2016), as well as within the project (Gaim et al., 2022). Practices that parent organizations consider legitimate may conflict with practices required at the project level, triggering paradoxes (Qian, 2024). Therefore, the design of the contractual documents has a central role in the paradoxical nature of interorganizational projects (van Marrewijk et al., 2008). Taking a practice approach on projects does not mean dismissing that “plans are a cornerstone of any project” (Blomquist et al., 2010, p. 11). In its contractual documents, an interorganizational project’s formal and explicit plan and expectations are set out in detail. The contractual documents of interorganizational projects are a source of paradox, since this “often very unclear paperwork” is translated into complex project contexts (van Marrewijk et al., 2008, p. 592). When the contractual documents do not align with the reality in the local context of the project, project managers need to improvise to move the project forward (Blomquist et al., 2010). In doing this, they enact and respond to the competing demands of parent and project organizations.

Method

Case Selection and Description

Our purpose and research questions aim toward theory elaboration rather than theory testing (Eisenhardt, 1989; Ketokivi & Choi, 2014). Specifically, we refine and extend the literature on interorganizational project collaboration, paradoxes in project contexts, and collaborative procurement by examining how public and private project managers collaborate to navigate paradox between parent and project organizations. To make these theoretical contributions, our case selection follows a theoretical sampling strategy (Eisenhardt, 1989; Ketokivi & Choi, 2014), with two case studies within the same public client parent organization. For the two case studies, we followed four projects per case. These eight case projects in total varied in their collaboration intensity and exposure to paradoxical tensions. To capture two of the public client’s successive efforts to increase formal collaboration, our research design relies on a longitudinal research approach (Pettigrew, 1990), where the two case studies were sequential, amounting to over six years of data collection; see Figure 1 for illustration.

Figure 1.

Timeline of the contract periods for each project.

Our units of analysis are paradoxes as the competing demands from parent and project organizations, and the collaborative practices that project managers use to respond to these. Our units of observation are thus the public and private project managers. Our level of analysis is the project level, at which the paradoxes and collaboration are taking place.

The largest client in the Swedish construction industry is the Swedish Transport Administration (STA), with an annual purchasing volume of around 62 billion Swedish krona (SEK) (approximately €5.6 billion). They serve as the public client in both case studies. The projectification of society has made projects a pluralistic empirical phenomenon (Jacobsson et al., 2015), and in the public sector, there are now examples of continuous work being organized in projects (Fred, 2018; Nilsson Vestola et al., 2021). Our data is collected in such a setting: STA’s road operation and maintenance projects; see Figure 2 for an organizational overview.

Figure 2.

Organizational structure of the Swedish Transport Administration.

The operation and maintenance of roads is a continuous endeavor that has historically been conducted with in-house resources of the public agency but was reorganized into interorganizational projects in the 1990s. The reorganization of road operation and maintenance in Sweden is part of a broader shift in public sector governance that began in the early 1990s. In line with market-oriented reforms, the Swedish government sought to introduce competition and private sector principles into public administration (Nilsson Vestola, 2024).

These operation and maintenance projects are four to six years long (four years with one or two option years available as contractual extensions by the client) and include, for example, winter maintenance (e.g., snowplowing), maintenance of paved and unpaved roads, and replacing damaged road equipment (such as road signs). The Swedish public road system is divided into approximately 110 geographical areas, each with a procured external contractor carrying out the work, in other words, the operation and maintenance project.

Since the early 2010s, a basic-level collaboration has been applied in the road operation and maintenance projects. However, since 2018, STA has made efforts to further extend the formal collaboration; see Table 1 for a description of collaboration activities. The two case studies have allowed us to longitudinally explore how STA has implemented extended formal collaboration in their road operation and maintenance projects in two sequential iterations. Pilot Project 1 (PP1) and Pilot Project 2 (PP2) were the first two projects that tested an extended form of collaboration, carried out between 2018 and 2022. Following those, starting in 2022, Pilot Project 3 (PP3) and Pilot Project 4 (PP4) implemented an even further developed formal collaboration in their contracts. These pilot projects were compared with four standard projects (Standard Project 1 [SP1], Standard Project 2 [SP2], Standard Project 3 [SP3], and Standard Project 4 [SP4]), selected to have the same timeframe and close geographical location to each of the pilot projects. Figure 1 shows how the projects are carried out in parallel and in sequence.

Table 1.

Overview of the Collaboration Models and Activities in the Case Projects

Collaboration Level	Formal Collaboration Activities	Case Projects
Basic collaboration	Joint goal management Joint risk management Joint conflict management Continuous follow-up	SP1, SP2, SP3, SP4
First effort with extended formal collaboration	Standard activities plus Colocation Open books Collaboration workshops in the establishment phase	PP1, PP2
Second effort with extended formal collaboration	Two-phase contracting model with early contractor involvement. Activities include mutually agreed target cost and production plan. Possibilities to adjust STA’s production requirements.	PP3, PP4

The longitudinal study not only enables comparison of how project managers handle paradoxes between the standard projects and the pilot projects, but also between different levels of formal collaboration between the two iterations of pilot projects. The timeline in Figure 1 also shows that all contractors participated in more than one project: for instance, Contractor A and Contractor B were involved in both generations of pilot projects. This continuity provided opportunities to carry forward established collaborative practices within the contractor organizations but also highlighted how changes in contractual models affected the dynamics between familiar partners over time.

Data Collection

Having a practice perspective on how project managers respond to paradox through collaboration implies immersing deeply in the data looking for consequential everyday practice (Jarzabkowski et al., 2021). The research has been ongoing since 2018, enabling us to follow the operation and maintenance projects longitudinally in real time. Figure 1 illustrates the periods of data collection in each project.

Data was collected through interviews, observations, and document studies; see Table 2 for details on data sources. The main part of the observations was done in the pilot projects, focusing on formal collaboration workshops and meetings. Note that, in accordance with our empirical data, the contractor project managers are called site managers in this section. In all other parts of the article, the site managers are referred to as “private project managers.”

Table 2.

Overview of Data Sources

Data Type	Details
Interviews	30 interviews with client’s project managers (PM) and contractors’ site managers (SM), including:
	Project	Public Client Project Manager	No	Private Contractor Site Manager	No
	Pilot Project 1 (PP1)	Project Manager 1 (PM1)	1	Site Manager 1 (SM1)	3
		Project Manager 2 (PM2)	2
	Pilot Project 2 (PP2)	Project Manager 3 (PM3)	2	Site Manager 2 (SM2)	1
		Project Manager 4 (PM4)	1	Site Manager 3 (SM3)	2
	Standard Project 1 (SP1)	Project Manager 4, same project manager as PP2 (PM 4)	2	Site Manager 4 (SM4)	2
	Standard Project 2 (SP2)	Project Manager 5 (PM5)	1	Site Manager 5 (SM5)	3
		Project Manager 6 (PM6)	2
	Pilot Project 3 (PP3)	Project Manager 7 (PM7)	1	Site Manager 6 (SM6)	1
				Site Manager 7 (SM7)	1
	Pilot Project 4 (PP4)	Project Manager 8 (PM8)	1	Site Manager 8 (SM8)	1
	Standard Project 3 (SP3)	Project Manager 9 (PM9)	1	Site Manager 9 (SM9)	—
	Standard Project 4 (SP4)	Project Manager 10 (PM10)	1	Site Manager 10 (SM10)	1
Observations	Approximately 185 hours of participant observations at on-site and online meetings, including: Collaboration workshops with all project actors, some also including subcontractors Collaboration meetings with client and contractor’s regional managers, project managers, site managers Site meetings with project managers, site managers and supervisors Experience feedback workshop between STA and contractors of PP3 and PP4 Additionally, we have been invited to lunches and dinners in connection with the observations, and chatted with the participants during coffee breaks and car rides between sites.
Documents	Contractual documents, including: Construction contracts (approximately 15 pages per contract) Administrative requirements (approximately 38 pages per contract) Bill of quantities (approximately 11 pages per contract) Production requirements (approximately 35 pages per contract) Performance and compensation rules (approximately 21 pages per contract). Minutes from collaboration workshops and site meetings.

The interviews were conducted in four rounds: first round 2019–2020, second round 2020–2021, third round in 2022, and fourth round in 2023. All interviews were semistructured, allowing the respondents to elaborate. With permission from the respondents, the interviews were recorded and transcribed verbatim. We then sent the transcribed interviews back to each respondent, encouraging them to read them and notify us of any inaccuracies or points of disagreement.

Observations were conducted continuously throughout the years. They were recorded through continuous field notes, capturing detailed accounts of practices and interactions during collaboration workshops, collaboration meetings between managers, and site meetings. These observations provided firsthand insights into how public and private project managers navigated paradoxical tensions from the parent and project organizations. While topics from the observations informed the development of the interview guides, the observations themselves were a crucial source of empirical material for analyzing the informal and formal collaborative practices at play. For example, collaboration workshops revealed the dynamics of negotiation and how project managers responded to tensions in real time, informing our interpretation of how collaboration was enacted in practice.

Document studies of the contractual documents complemented the interviews and observations by providing a structured understanding of the formal and explicit plans, expectations, and constraints framing the projects. Meeting minutes validated and enriched our field notes, and minutes from meetings that we could not attend provided a retrospective view of key discussions and decisions. Together, the observations, documents, and interviews formed an integrated dataset, enabling us to triangulate findings and develop a nuanced understanding of the conflicting demands of parent and project organizations, and how project managers collaborated in response to these.

Analysis

The first step of the analysis involved constructing chronological narratives (Langley, 1999) for the eight case projects by organizing our data into detailed chronologies. Individually, both authors systematically identified instances where project managers were responding to competing demands from parent and project organizations. Thereafter, we went back to the literature on the dynamics of project organizing in public sectors to sufficiently understand and describe the paradoxes faced by public and private project managers, resulting in aggregated dimensions: adherence versus flexibility for public project managers, and profit versus quality for private project managers.

In the second step of our analysis, we were interested in how the public and private project managers responded to the identified organizational paradoxes through collaboration. Following our practice perspective, we wanted to capture how the everyday collaborative actions of the managers constructed the responses. Guided by the literature review on interorganizational collaboration, both authors jointly compared the collaborative actions found in the standard projects (SP1–SP4) with those in the first (PP1–PP2) and second (PP3–PP4) iterations of the pilot projects. Our analysis enabled us to understand how the public and private project managers responded to paradoxes by negotiation, enabled by contractual wiggle room created by the public project managers. It also showed how extended formal collaboration (specifically PP3–PP4) dissolved the paradoxes through mutually agreed target cost with open books and adjustable production requirements. Our coding structure, with exemplifying quotes, is illustrated in Table 3.

Table 3.

Coding Structure with Emerged Themes and Aggregated Dimensions

First-Order Codes	Exemplifying Quotes	Second-Order Themes	Aggregated Dimensions
Insufficient resources to meet requirements	“We only have 10 drivers, but we would need 12 to meet the requirements.”	Standardized production requirements	Contractual aspects triggering paradoxes
Practical considerations motivate deviations from requirements	“If we had followed all of the documents, we would have sent a grader. My assessment was that it would only have worsened the situation.”	Standardized production requirements
Underpriced tenders	“For example, they have priced their winter organization with 1 SEK. […] I assess that it will cost 5 million. And they have put 1 SEK on it.”	Tactical pricing by contractors
Internal dissatisfaction with pricing	“So sure, there are things that I’m not happy with how my bosses have priced them. That’s how it is. But we have to try to make the best out of it.”	Tactical pricing by contractors
Need for experience beyond contractual obligations	“There must be room for knowledge and instinct. It’s impossible to include everything in the contract!”	Public project manager’s paradox: Adherence versus flexibility	Project manager’s paradox
Public project managers have individual willingness for flexibility, affecting project execution	“A lot depends on the [public] project managers’ interpretations, in their way of viewing their contracts and how close to production and reality that person is. […] You got to have flexibility and see the reality.”
Tactical pricing leading to financial constraints and strategic decision-making on-site	“The tender calculation is one thing, then it becomes a production calculation. Then you have to focus on the quantities that the tender managers have decided that we will profit on. So, it’s quite tough to be a site manager because you’re handed a plan and told ‘This is what you have to do.’”	Private project manager’s paradox: Profit versus quality
Maintaining quality despite discrepancies between tender and production calculations	“We’re upholding the quality on the roads. Based on the differences between the tender calculation and the production calculation, one might think that we wouldn’t.”	Private project manager’s paradox: Profit versus quality
Negotiation is needed to balance tactical pricing	“The tactical pricing creates demands on site managers and project managers to make it work in a good way. The pricing causes some things to be almost free, while others are very expensive. […] ‘Now we’ll lose money, and we can’t do this, you’ll have to buy extra’… It’s sort of a game.”	Standard projects: Negotiation through informal collaboration	Collaborative responses to paradox
Collaboration enables prioritizing the project's best interests over those of the parent organization	“I think that Project Manager 4 is really really good, and a person who can listen. It’s very important that you can listen and talk about everything. […] I might not be following the rules that my company thinks that I should follow.”
Expectations that the pilot project would allow for more locally adapted execution	“There were expectations of finding out how you are supposed to do the job, and if there are things that you can skip because it’s totally unnecessary to do.”	Pilot projects 1 and 2: First effort with extended formal collaboration
Experiencing that pilot project allows more flexibility	“In this innovation pilot, there’s wiggle room in the documents, as long as both parties agree.”
Lack of openness in financial discussions despite attempts to foster transparency	“I’ve told them 400 times ‘Tell me if there’s anything that you don’t want more orders on. I don’t have to actively look for money on those accounts if you’re on the verge of going under financially.’ But we don’t have that openness.”
Disruptive effects of tactical pricing persisting in pilot projects	“Everything comes back to the tactical pricing. It doesn’t matter if it is a pilot or a standard project because the tactical prices are so disruptive.”
Unmet expectations of new contract models solving issues caused by tactical pricing	“'We've cheated and had tactically priced contracts for 12 years, and then this magical contract form comes along that will make us do the right things and earn the right money, and everything will be great.’ But it didn't turn out that way.”	Pilot projects 3 and 4: Second effort with extended formal collaboration
Transition from informal, effective collaboration to formal collaboration model but with weaker actual collaboration	“What has happened is that I’ve gone from having a good collaboration, without the structure, to now being in a high-level collaboration contract but having a poor collaboration.”
Uncertainty and loss of established collaboration practices in new contract settings	“They say they felt a huge safety in the old contract. Back then they knew how we could talk to each other, and we had a well-established good collaboration. But now, they say that they don’t know how to handle things.”
Increased complexity in collaborative contracts, requiring greater clarity on execution	“In a contract like this, it becomes even more extensive for all staff to understand everything. Everybody knows what we should be doing. But how and with what resources?”

Findings

The findings are divided into two parts. In the first part, we answer our first research question by describing the paradoxes faced by public and private project managers as they balance contractual demands and local context. In the second part, we explain how the public and private project managers responded to these paradoxes. We first explore their responses in the four standard projects, then in the first and second efforts with extended formal collaboration. The findings are summarized in Table 4.

Table 4.

The Development of Responses to Paradoxes Over Time and Project Iteration

	Standard O & M Projects	First Effort With Extended Formal Collaboration	Second Effort With Extended Formal Collaboration
Case projects	SP1, SP2, SP3, SP4	PP1, PP2	PP3, PP4
Contractual aspects triggering paradoxes	Public client’s standardized production requirements and private contractor’s tactical pricing.	Public client’s standardized production requirements and private contractor’s tactical pricing.	The new contract model (with the mutually agreed target cost, mutual production plan, and possibilities to adjust STA’s production requirements) dissolved the paradoxes triggered by the public client’s standardized production requirements and the private contractor’s tactical pricing.
Project managers’ paradoxes	Public project manager: Adherence versus flexibility; private project manager: profit versus quality	The public project manager’s paradox became easier to handle as it was considered that they had been formally given the right to practice contractual wiggle room. However, the private project manager’s paradox was not easier to handle as the projects were still procured at the lowest price, and the private project managers still had to relate to tactical pricing.	Previously identified paradoxes were dissolved by the second effort with extended formal collaboration.
Collaborative responses to paradox	The public project managers practiced informal contractual wiggle room, enabling them to negotiate with the private project managers.	The negotiation between the public and private project managers became unbalanced; partially complicating the collaboration. The project managers needed to reconstruct their wiggle room.	Since the previously identified paradoxes were dissolved, the project managers’ collaboration changed. The informal collaborative practices were not applicable in these projects. Trust was still needed on project level to encourage collaborative practices.

Paradoxes Faced by the Project Managers

Through the analysis of paradoxical situations encountered by the public and private project managers, we found two aspects of the contractual documents that triggered paradoxes at the project level: the public client’s standardized production requirements, and the private contractor’s tactical pricing. The detailed and standardized production requirements triggered the public project manager’s paradox of adherence versus flexibility, while the tactical pricing provided the private project manager with the paradox of profit versus quality.

The Public Project Managers’ Paradox: Adherence Versus Flexibility

The production requirements describe the quality of the roads that the contractor needs to uphold and the required operations. The requirements are very detailed and are also standardized and applied across all of STA’s road operation and maintenance projects. The requirements are used as a tool for control of quality of the road network. STA has procured a third-party controller to check how well the contractor in each geographical area meets the production requirements.

The project managers in the studied operation and maintenance projects described how the tasks of operation and maintenance could not be fully described in contract documents. The project managers considered the production requirements as too rigid, not always aligning with the local needs of the project. The everyday reality at the project level was too complex to sufficiently describe the tasks in a detailed and standardized way. This was illustrated by Project Manager 6 during a collaboration workshop in PP1¹: “There must be room for knowledge and instinct. It’s impossible to include everything in the contract!” Another project manager highlighted a situation where meeting the contractually defined requirements was practically infeasible, due to limited resources: “We have trouble finding snowplow drivers here in the inland. Perhaps we need to extend the plowing routes a bit because we only have 10 drivers, but we would need 12 to meet the requirements” (PM2). These examples illustrate how project managers had to negotiate between contractual adherence and operational flexibility, often making context-based adjustments to maintain project efficiency.

The public project managers described how they, on one hand, needed to adhere to the production requirements (to ensure traffic safety and consistency across geographical areas) and, on the other hand, needed to be flexible toward the project’s current conditions, demonstrating their experience of conflicting demands between parent and project organizations.

The Private Project Managers’ Paradox: Profit Versus Quality

The contractor’s pricing of the contract is set by tender managers within the contractor’s organization, outside of the project. Since the procurements of the operation and maintenance projects are based on lowest price, it is common practice among the contractor’s tender managers to engage in tactical pricing. For the private project managers, the priced bill of quantities is handed down to them from the tender managers, leading to financial constraints at the project level. One public project manager described how extreme these price discrepancies could be: “For example, they have priced their winter organization with 1 SEK. […] I assess that it will cost 5 million. And they have put 1 SEK on it” (PM3).

Private project managers were forced to work within these constraints while maintaining project quality, leading to difficult trade-offs: “We’re upholding the quality on the roads. Based on the differences between the tender calculation and the production calculation, one might think that we wouldn’t” (SM5).

Thus, private project managers had to balance financial limitations imposed by their parent organizations with the need to meet contractual and quality expectations. The pricing affected what tasks the contractors needed to perform in order to make a profit. This resulted in conflicting demands between parent and project organizations since the tasks that the private project manager needed to perform, for economic reasons, often differed from what was required to meet the production requirements. Thus, the paradoxes experienced by public and private project managers are interrelated.

Responding to Paradox

As illustrated in the previous sections, the public project managers’ paradox and the private project managers’ paradox are interrelated. This becomes even more evident when looking into how the managers respond to these paradoxes.

Standard Projects: Negotiation Through Informal Collaboration

Public project managers in standard projects created informal contractual flexibility, allowing for real-time negotiations with private project managers. This informal negotiation helped adapt standardized production requirements to fit the practical conditions of each project: “A lot depends on the project managers’ interpretations, in their way of viewing their contracts and how close to production and reality that person is. Some things that are stipulated in the contract, well… You got to have flexibility and see the reality. That’s the way it is” (SM10).

This flexibility was essential for balancing standardized requirements with local project challenges. One public project manager described how negotiation played a central role:

“The tactical pricing creates demands on site managers and project managers to make it work in a good way. The pricing causes some things to be almost free, while others are very expensive. […] It’s sort of a game.” (PM6).

This game required two players: The public and private project managers negotiating what tasks should be done. With good collaboration, the public project manager could trust the contractor to perform unprofitable tasks, and in return the private project manager could count on the public project manager to allow wiggle room in the production requirements.

In order for the public and private project managers to find a way forward, the strategies of the public client parent organization and the private contractor parent organization needed to be merged. In all of the standard projects, the public and private project managers considered their relationship and collaboration to be good, and they mutually engaged in the merging of their parent organization’s disparate strategies in an active manner. Through negotiation of requirements and priced quantities, they dealt with paradoxical tensions from the parent and project organizations.

Pilot Projects 1 and 2: First Effort With Extended Formal Collaboration

The introduction of extended formal collaboration mechanisms in PP1 and PP2 was intended to improve collaboration. During an early collaboration workshop in PP1, the project manager expressed: “In this innovation pilot, there’s wiggle room in the documents, as long as both parties agree” (PM1).

However, in these pilot projects there were no more formal possibilities to practice contractual flexibility than in the standard projects. In PP1 and PP2, any wiggle room in the contractual documents was therefore purely informal.

While the public and private project managers in PP1 considered their collaboration to be very good, the collaboration in PP2 took a turn for the worse during the pilot project. As in PP1, the private project manager in PP2 expected that participating in the pilot project would entail having more room for negotiation than in the standard projects: “There were expectations of finding out how you are supposed to do the job, and if there are things that you can skip because it’s totally unnecessary to do” (SM3).

While open-book collaboration improved transparency, tactical pricing continued to disrupt project operations. Because the public and private project managers in PP2 did not develop a good collaboration, they did not achieve the openness required to discuss the tactical prices with each other:

And that’s the thing with tactical prices, it affects the trust. […] I’ve told them 400 times “Tell me if there’s anything that you don’t want more orders on. I don’t have to actively look for money on those accounts if you’re on the verge of going under financially.” But we don’t have that openness. (PM3)

However, in PP1 the open books resulted in a more evolved openness than the project actors had in the preceding project. Still, the project actors agreed that the pilot would have worked out even better if the prices had not been tactical. No matter how open the private project manager was about the tactical prices, the bill of quantities could not be changed, and the private project manager still had to relate to those prices throughout the project. This created an unbalance in the negotiation: the public project manager thought that there was more wiggle room in the production requirements, creating larger opportunities for mutual discussion about what tasks to do and how to use the project’s budget, but then the discussion faltered due to the heavily tactical, and static, pricing:

This pilot would be even better if the prices weren’t tactical so that we would be able to buy the quantities that we need to get the best possible roads. Because if they have really bad prices you want to steer toward the quantities where they have decent prices. The contractor has performed well. We read the contracts with STA eyes, and they read the contracts with contractor eyes; “where are the loopholes where we can make money?” Everything comes back to the tactical pricing. It doesn’t matter if it is a pilot or a standard project because the tactical prices are so disruptive. (PM2)

Pilot Projects 3 and 4: Second Effort With Formal Collaboration

The second iteration of pilot projects (PP3 and PP4) introduced a two-phase contracting approach, allowing for adjustments to production requirements and a mutually agreed target cost. While this approach aimed to formalize flexibility, it unintentionally disrupted previous informal collaboration practices. A private project manager noted the unexpected challenges: “What has happened is that I’ve gone from having a good collaboration, without the structure, to now being in a high-level collaboration contract but having a poor collaboration” (PM7).

Something worth noting is that in PP3 it was the same contractor as in the preceding contract in the geographical area that won the procurement for the pilot project, while in PP4, the contractor was new to the operating area. In PP3, the project actors were well known to each other, except for the new private project manager, Site Manager 7. Site Manager 7 had only worked a year as a supervisor in the preceding project before becoming project manager just before the production started, and therefore did not have a vast knowledge about the operation and maintenance tasks nor much experience about collaborating with STA. During the first year of production, both the public and private project managers in PP3 were disappointed about how their collaboration had deteriorated:

Most things are working a bit worse than I’d expected. But that's because I thought, “We've cheated and had tactically priced contracts for 12 years, and then this magical contract form comes along that will make us do the right things and earn the right money, and everything will be great.” But it didn't turn out that way. We’ve been on such a collision course with STA. (SM6)

When inquiring about what had caused the collaboration to deteriorate in PP3, the public and private project managers accused each other. When searching for reasons that did not depend on single individuals, we found that the shift from a standard project to a pilot project seemed to be part of the explanation behind the poor collaboration:

They say they felt much safer in the old contract. Back then they knew how we could talk to each other, and we had a well-established good collaboration. But now, they say that they don’t know how to handle things and have a hard time understanding when they have to talk to us and when it is only a contractor matter. Like, what does collaboration mean? (PM7)

With the new contract form, the project actors could no longer collaborate as they had done in preceding projects. Previously, the collaboration had included negotiating what tasks to perform and how to use the project’s budget, but now those things were settled formally. The previously informal collaborative practices were now no longer applicable. Even though the public and private project managers in PP4 had not worked together before, so had no previous collaboration to compare with, the changing of ways of working and roles was visible in that pilot project as well:

We have started with a clean slate with new staff; very few have worked with this before. And in a contract like this, it becomes even more demanding for all staff to understand. Everybody knows what we should be doing. But how and with what resources? That is what we’re dealing with right now, everybody needs to find their roles and understand them fully. (SM8)

In PP4, the project actors experienced it as if everything had changed compared to standard operation and maintenance projects. The preceding quote by Site Manager 8 shows that the changes are not just about collaboration, but also about the performance of tasks. The formal collaboration model had a large impact on the everyday work of the public and private project managers in PP3 and PP4. Through the second effort with extended formal collaboration, they had the chance to decrease the paradoxical tensions between the contractual documents and the local context. This, however, did not mean that the projects ran more smoothly than standard projects. As is illustrated in Table 4 on development of collaborative responses to paradoxes, changing the rules of negotiation, and thereby altering the public and private project managers’ collaborative practices, complicated the interorganizational project collaboration.

A difference between PP3 and PP4 was the project managers’ approach to negotiation. In PP4, project participants actively worked to “challenge” the contract, seeking solutions that worked for both parties while experimenting with new “practices for road maintenance” that moved away from tactical maneuvering and instead focused on “what the road needs.” Here, ongoing negotiations were understood as allowed by the new contract model, creating a more adaptive and dynamic collaboration.

By contrast, in PP3, project participants struggled to find space for negotiation, potentially due to a lack of understanding of the contract’s flexibility or interpersonal dynamics within the team. This highlights how shifting negotiation practices can mitigate certain paradoxes but may also introduce new challenges, such as coordination difficulties or dependencies on specific individuals’ interpretations and relationships. Thus, while allowing projects to codevelop contracts can help align formal mechanisms with local needs, it does not eliminate complexity—it merely shifts the nature of the tensions that project managers must navigate.

Discussion

The purpose of this article is to understand how public and private project managers collaborate to respond to the paradoxes they face as they navigate competing demands from parent and project organizations. Our longitudinal study captures how collaborative responses were shaped by the public client’s efforts to extend formal collaboration, revealing both expected and unintended consequences of these strategies.

Competing Demands as Persistent Paradoxes

Gaim et al. (2018) identified five types of competing demands: dilemmas, trade-offs, dialectics, dualities, and paradoxes. Since each of these implies different theoretical understandings and practical responses, it is important to frame the competing demands of parent and project organizations correctly. Out of all of the different types of competing demands identified by Gaim et al. (2018), paradoxes were the only ones that were both contradictory and complementary. In the context of infrastructure operation and maintenance, the competing demands were both contradictory and complementary. Contradictions arose as parent organizations prioritized long-term strategic control and resource allocation, while project organizations focused on flexibility, execution, and short-term delivery. At the same time, these demands were complementary because both the stability of the parent organization and the agility of the project organization are necessary for sustained project success. The competing demands between the parent and project organizations in our study were not temporary conflicts to be solved, but ongoing tensions to be managed. Unlike dilemmas or trade-offs, which suggest resolution through prioritization, paradoxes require continuous engagement and navigation rather than elimination (Gaim et al., 2022). Our study contributes to this understanding by underscoring the need for procurement and project management strategies that do not aim to eliminate paradoxes but rather enable actors to work productively within them.

The Role of Contracts and Procurement Strategies in Triggering Paradoxes

With one public parent organization and one private parent organization, disparate strategic priorities were embedded in contractual documents, shaping the paradoxes that project managers had to navigate in their everyday work. While prior research highlights how collaborative procurement strategies—such as bid evaluation based on soft parameters, open books, and early contractor involvement—are intended to foster alignment (Eriksson, 2010; Bygballe & Swärd, 2019), our findings reveal a more complex dynamic. Instead of enabling flexibility, rigid contractual frameworks often constrained adaptation, generating tensions between parent organizations and project teams.

Our findings confirm the observation by van Marrewijk et al. (2008) that contractual design plays a central role in the paradoxical nature of interorganizational projects. However, in our case, paradoxes did not stem from unclear paperwork but rather from rigid contractual documents that failed to align with project contexts. This rigidity triggered competing demands between parent and project organizations, as formal collaboration mechanisms conflicted with efforts to adapt locally.

Frederiksen et al. (2024) emphasize that routines emerge through generative, adaptive practices, and that these routines must be actively transferred and reembedded into the parent organizations to support long-term strategic change. In our study, this challenge became particularly evident in the transition from earlier informal practices to more formalized collaboration models. While some project-level routines had proven effective in practice, they were not always institutionalized or sustained at the organizational level, limiting the public client’s ability to build on prior learning and scale up collaboration.

Contractual Wiggle Room as Response to Paradox

Our findings show that project managers actively responded to paradoxical tensions through everyday practices, particularly by creating contractual flexibility to enable negotiation between public and private actors. This flexibility is what we refer to as “wiggle room,” a term used by one of our respondents, to highlight the fact that the practice of flexibility in the requirements was informal and unauthorized. In standard projects and pilot project 1, public project managers informally adjusted contractual terms to facilitate collaborative problem-solving. In pilot projects 3 and 4, the public client sought to formalize this practice, yet this extension of formal collaboration unintentionally disrupted well-functioning informal practices.

Recent literature has shown that informal and formal collaboration interplay (Nikulina et al., 2022; Eriksson et al., 2023; Nilsson Vestola & Eriksson, 2023; Valkokari et al., 2024); our findings expand on this by demonstrating how project managers actively navigate and negotiate between formal and informal collaboration mechanisms in response to paradoxical tensions. This interplay is shaped by several contextual factors. First, the rigidity of standardized contractual documents often necessitated informal collaboration to adapt requirements to local project conditions. Second, previous working relationships influenced whether formal collaboration efforts reinforced or disrupted established informal practices. Third, procurement strategies, particularly tactical pricing under lowest bid contracts, created financial constraints that made informal negotiations a necessary practice for balancing cost and quality.

In the public client’s second effort with extended formal collaboration, they applied early contractor involvement, in line with prior research noting the significance of procurement strategies for early phases of interorganizational collaboration (Pauna et al., 2021). However, our findings from these two projects suggest that while the early contractor involvement may be important, it was even more crucial that the project managers viewed their collaboration as dynamic. While formal procurement strategies aim to structure collaboration, they may inadvertently constrain well-functioning informal practices, requiring project actors to adapt their working methods. This contributes to the ongoing discussion of interorganizational collaboration as dynamic (Saukko et al., 2020), where formal mechanisms provide a framework, but successful project execution often relies on the flexibility and trust built through continuous informal interactions.

Our findings also illustrate how the effectiveness of collaborative negotiation depends not only on the contractual structure but also on project actors’ interpretations of contract flexibility and the interpersonal dynamics within the team. This aligns with studies on boundary work in interorganizational collaboration (Vosman et al., 2024), which highlight that individuals familiar with both formal structures and informal practices are essential for enabling adaptive collaboration.

Moreover, the organizational infrastructure supporting collaboration must also evolve to address the challenges of interorganizational collaboration, including the alignment of tools, language, and routines across participating organizations (Braun & Sydow, 2024). For instance, Pauna et al. (2021) emphasize that while early involvement and joint goal setting are foundational to collaborative practices, misaligned incentives and limited precontractual funding frequently constrain their implementation. Our findings from pilot projects 3 and 4 illustrate precisely this dilemma: although early contractor involvement was formally introduced, the lack of alignment around roles, expectations, and resources hindered the realization of collaborative intent. This reinforces the need to design collaboration not only into contracts, but also into the organizational systems and incentives that support project delivery from the outset.

Public Sector Project Organizing and Its Role for Interorganizational Collaboration

The projectification of public-sector activities has led to continuous work being organized in projects (Fred, 2018; Nilsson Vestola et al., 2021). However, it remains debated whether project-based organizing enhances flexibility and innovation or merely increases control and bureaucracy (Fred, 2020; Rowe et al., 2024). Our findings demonstrate that extended formal collaboration introduced additional rules and complicating project-level collaborative practices, not only improving them. Public–private collaboration has been recognized as particularly challenging (Kronlid & Baraldi, 2020; Leite & Ingstrup, 2022). Our empirical research on a public client’s efforts to strengthen the interorganizational collaboration through formal activities shows that challenges persisted at the project level.

Furthermore, recent research has emphasized that interorganizational collaboration often progresses through multiple parallel and decoupled paths, rather than tightly coordinated activities (Bos-de Vos et al., 2022). This reinforces our observation that even when formal collaboration frameworks are introduced, they may fail to unify collaborative efforts if they do not accommodate the situated, evolving nature of collaboration across multiple organizational and industrial contexts. In such settings, project actors must engage in continuous navigation and realignment, which calls for flexible and context-sensitive integration strategies that are often not supported by static contractual mechanisms.

Recent studies highlight the dual role of procurement as both a constraint and an enabler in public–private collaboration (Håkansson & Axelsson, 2020; Pauna et al., 2021). Our findings contribute to this debate by illustrating how extended formal collaboration frameworks may unintentionally disrupt existing informal practices. While strategic public procurement is positioned as a tool for addressing societal challenges (OECD, 2023), we find that its implementation at the project level is often far from straightforward. Prior research has shown that international collaboration standards can be used to create contractual flexibility (Chakkol et al., 2018), something that could perhaps have facilitated the collaboration in the studied projects. If future efforts to increase the formal collaboration in the operation and maintenance projects could create contractual flexibility, allowing for project-level adaptations, the competing demands from parent and project organizations could perhaps be handled successfully through both informal and formal collaboration.

Conclusions

This study demonstrates how public project managers leveraged contractual flexibility, or “contractual wiggle room,” to informally collaborate with private project managers. These informal practices helped them navigate paradoxes emerging from the competing demands of parent and project organizations. However, when the public client attempted to formalize collaboration to mitigate these paradoxes, it unintentionally disrupted well-functioning informal practices. This highlights that extended formal collaboration does not automatically resolve tensions but can instead introduce new challenges.

By applying a practice perspective, we contribute to the literature on interorganizational collaboration (Nikulina et al., 2022; Eriksson et al., 2023; Nilsson Vestola & Eriksson, 2023; Valkokari et al., 2024). Our research contributes to this literature by showing how project managers navigate persistent paradoxes through the dynamic interplay of formal and informal collaboration, highlighting contractual wiggle room as a previously underexplored practice that enables adaptive coordination in rigid institutional settings. Through our findings, we also expand on studies of paradox in interorganizational projects and its collaboration, (van Marrewijk et al., 2008; Gaim et al., 2018, 2022) by showing that paradoxes in public–private collaborations are not merely structural contradictions but are continuously shaped and reshaped through project actors’ ongoing responses. In particular, we illustrate how informal collaboration practices serve as a key mechanism for managing paradoxes, while formalization efforts may inadvertently destabilize these practices.

Furthermore, we contribute to the debate on project-based organizing in the public sector (Fred, 2020; Rowe et al., 2024) by highlighting procurement’s dual role as both an enabler and a constraint in interorganizational collaboration (Håkansson & Axelsson, 2020; Pauna et al., 2021). Our findings show that while strategic public procurement is positioned as a tool for addressing societal challenges (OECD, 2023), its implementation at the project level remains complex and often unpredictable. The introduction of formal collaboration mechanisms did not eliminate paradoxical tensions; rather, it required project actors to renegotiate their working methods to maintain effective collaboration. By tracing this renegotiation in practice, our study advances understanding of how public sector project organizing relies on continuous alignment work to manage the tensions between standardized procurement frameworks and situated collaboration.

Given these insights, public clients must recognize that informal practices significantly shape project outcomes and ensure that procurement strategies remain adaptable to project-level conditions. Further studies could examine the interrelation between formal and informal collaboration in response to paradoxes, particularly addressing: Under what conditions does formal collaboration enhance rather than disrupt project-level practices? How do project actors balance the need for formal structure with the flexibility of informal collaboration? How do project-level responses to paradox relate to project autonomy? Addressing these questions will deepen our understanding of interorganizational collaboration in complex project environments.

Footnotes

Acknowledgments

The authors gratefully acknowledge the funding received from the Swedish Transport Administration (TRV 2018/11956) and (TRV 2021/53619). The authors would also like to thank reviewers and participants at the International Research Network on Organizing by Projects (IRNOP) 2024 conference for their insightful comments and valuable feedback.

ORCID iD

Emilia Nilsson Vestola

Notes

Author Biographies

Emilia Nilsson Vestola is a postdoctoral researcher at the Department of Civil, Environmental, and Natural Resources Engineering at Luleå University of Technology, Luleå, Sweden. Her research draws on longitudinal case studies of interorganizational projects procured by public clients. She is especially interested in understanding how public project organizing and procurement strategies are interrelated with the everyday work of project actors. She can be contacted at emilia.nilsson.vestola@ltu.se

Susanna Hedborg holds a doctorate in business studies from KTH Royal Institute of Technology in sustainable urban development. She has completed a post doctorate fellowship at Luleå University of Technology and is currently doing another at Uppsala University. Her research is based on project studies of urban development contexts, with a focus on project ecologies and practices. She can be contacted at susanna.hedborg@ibf.uu.se

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Wiggle Room in Practice: Project Managers Navigating Paradoxes Through Collaboration

Abstract

Keywords

Introduction

Theoretical Background

Public Sector Project Organizing

Interorganizational Project Collaboration

A Practice Perspective

On Strategizing in a Project-Based Context

On Organizational Paradox

Method

Case Selection and Description

Data Collection

Analysis

Findings

Paradoxes Faced by the Project Managers

The Public Project Managers’ Paradox: Adherence Versus Flexibility

The Private Project Managers’ Paradox: Profit Versus Quality

Responding to Paradox

Standard Projects: Negotiation Through Informal Collaboration

Pilot Projects 1 and 2: First Effort With Extended Formal Collaboration

Pilot Projects 3 and 4: Second Effort With Formal Collaboration

Discussion

Competing Demands as Persistent Paradoxes

The Role of Contracts and Procurement Strategies in Triggering Paradoxes

Contractual Wiggle Room as Response to Paradox

Public Sector Project Organizing and Its Role for Interorganizational Collaboration

Conclusions

Footnotes

Acknowledgments

ORCID iD

Notes

Author Biographies

References