Actors’ agency in the routines of innovation project portfolio management

Innovation project portfolio management (IPPM) is carried out through various routines of assessing, prioritizing, selecting and coordinating projects. Empirical research increasingly suggests that the official routines are not necessarily used, but personnel use agency, i.e., individual situation-specific judgment in their practice of IPPM. This agency perspective is not sufficiently understood, so far. The purpose of this study is to explore different actors’ agency in implementing IPPM, covering managers, personnel and external stakeholders. The goal is increased knowledge on implementing IPPM in dynamic contexts and development of propositions for better IPPM frameworks that account for different actors’ agency. The qualitative case study with two innovative project-based firms reveals different approaches to IPPM agency across four different actor categories. The nature of the innovation project portfolios is discussed especially in terms of uncertainty and the maturity of the IPPM routines as situation-specific factors relevant in enabling and restraining project actors’ agency in IPPM. The results contribute by proposing agency as a novel perspective to IPPM research, showing evidence of it in highly innovative contexts, and thereby enabling the theorization of situation-specific practice of IPPM.