Impact of organizational structure on success of projects in the food industry in transition countries

Abstract

This paper examines the project management in food industry, and the analysis is based on data collected from 38 projects carried out in food industry in Serbia. Objective was to analyze the relationship between aspects of project organizational structure and four different success criteria. Project organizational structure was determined by division of responsibilities between project and line managers in terms of source of authority of project manager, how project manager obtains resources for projects, i.e. how project teams are formed and who evaluates the performance of project teams. Success criteria were: completion on time, staying in the budget, meeting all requirements and specifications, as well as by estimating the overall success of the project. Although companies can successfully manage their projects in traditional, functional organizational structure if the organizational culture encourages cross-functional integration, this paper shows that projects are more successful if performed in matrix organizational structure. Limitation of this study is that Serbia is still at the early stages of project management development, and therefore no project comes from organizational structure which could be called project organizational structure so there could be no comparisons between the success of projects in project organizational structure and other organizational structures.