Interpreting projects: bureaucratical mechanisms to enforce control or lever for change?

The widespread adoption of project management (PM) is undoubtedly associated with its practical diffusion (Whittington et al., 1999), which is particularly intensive in the case of certain specific industries (Ekstedt et al., 1999). The implementation of projects in public organizations has become an important issue recently. This interest stems from the need of a deep reform that as spread over almost all the OECD countries in the last two ecades (Arnaboldi et al. 2004). The goal of this paper is studying the functioning of the project management within an Italian public organization, traditionally considered highly bureaucratised, in terms of effects produced on control mechanisms.