Shaping project strategy: Tribalism

In recent years, there has been an increasing recognition of the importance of the front end of projects, especially, the shaping of project strategy. Researchers have begun to realise that projects fail not only because of incompetent execution, but also, and frequently, because of the influence of stakeholders. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the interest and influence of diverse stakeholders in shaping project strategy, namely, the tribal world of organisations. The paper will also develop a conceptual framework for understanding the elements of tribalism in shaping project strategy. An extensive literature review and analysis was conducted that revealed the concept of project strategy is ambiguous in existing project literature, and that organisational project strategy is mainly shaped by the economy, diverse interests, culture, knowledge, power and politics. Moreover, it was also revealed that acting strategically has a greater influence over the success of strategic decisions than thinking strategically.