New publication in the International Journal of Project Management

How do stable structures emerge in organizations that are actually only temporary—such as crisis response teams or projects? In their latest study in the renowned International Journal of Project Management, Michael Grothe-Hammer, Olivier Berthod, Gordon Müller-Seitz, and Jörg Sydow show how permanent structures emerge in the midst of temporary action when different organizations work together in emergency situations. Based on an ethnographic study of emergency response organizations in Düsseldorf – mostly led by the Düsseldorf Fire Department – the team highlights how routines and improvisation interact and how practitioners create a balance between stability and change over time.

In this context, it should be noted that the head of the Düsseldorf Fire Department, David von der Lieth, is a long-standing cooperation partner of Professor Müller-Seitz (including in the context of the study mentioned here as part of a project funded by the German Research Foundation) and will be a guest keynote speaker at the CIDR symposium in Kaiserslautern on November 14, 2025: rptu.de/symposium-2025-center-for-interdisciplinary-disaster-research-cidr

Title of the article: “Co-fabricating the permanent to enable temporary organizing: Insights from an ethnography of emergency response operations.” Available at the following URL: DOI: 10.1016/j.ijproman.2025.102768