Project management structures in Hong Kong industries

In recent years, increasing numbers of Hong Kong companies have been successfully applying appropriate technologies to the development of new products or to incremental improvements of existing products and manufacturing processes within Hong Kong, as well as outside the territory in the special economic regions of South China. Project management plays a significant role in this era of rapid changes. Since 1990, the authors have been carrying out a continuous investigation of the use of project management concepts and techniques in Hong Kong industries. The paper examines the use of different types of project management structure in 84 case studies from different Hong Kong industrial sectors. Contrary to the authors' earlier expectations, the overall results indicate that, in Hong Kong, the matrix structure is by far the most widely used structure for projects. Even when the matrix structure is further classified into weak and strong matrices, the use of the latter is found to be more popular. However, when the cases are categorised into various industrial sectors, namely public utilities, manufacturing, government agencies and engineering services, the results indicate a different picture, and reveal much about the traits, culture and traditions of the people and organisations in the various industrial sectors. © 1995.