Governance and Creativity in Project-Based Organizations: Archetypes and Agenda for Future Research.

This article examines how project-based organizations (PBOs) foster creativity through governance practices, addressing what the authors term the "creativity problem" as distinct from the traditionally studied "efficiency problem." It introduces a framework of four governance archetypes—control-oriented, value-oriented, performance-oriented, and network-oriented—based on two dimensions: creativity locus (individual vs. collective) and creativity orientation (outcome vs. process). Each archetype is illustrated with case studies from well-known firms (Saab, Advanced Design, Oticon, and Tetra Pak), highlighting different governance challenges, control systems, and incentive mechanisms used to stimulate creativity. The article emphasizes the need for PBOs to balance creativity and efficiency in governance and proposes a research agenda focused on empirical validation, comparative and longitudinal studies, temporality of governance, and managing the interplay between creativity and efficiency.