Abstract
"The Scandinavian School of Project Studies" has led to the development of an understanding of projects and has as its ethos, a presupposition that projects are embedded in their contexts. Centered on a critical review and a case study, this paper discusses how a project and its context relate to each other. When we attempt to analyze the relationship between projects and their contexts, some difficulties arise. One of the difficulties is that there is a danger of static dualism, or that it is hard to distinguish the project from its context. In order to avoid these difficulties, this paper focuses on the materials that are produced in a particular moment of the project, and the actions that produced these materials. This paper analyzes a film making project, initiated by a TV station. The data was gathered from eight interviews and the research participants included the manager of the contents division of the TV station, the project planner of the TV station, the project manager of the TV station, the president of the film-production company, and the producers of the film-production company. The findings that emerged from this study suggest that a "distorted relationship" exists between projects and their contexts. The two concepts, project and context, are essentially unrelated to each other; however, they are related by the material used in the project. The differential direction approach to projects outlined in this paper can be used as a way to understand the uniqueness of projects and can also serve as a theoretical aspect for increasing the profit within the management activities of organizations.
