Abstracto
- Project-based organizations coordinate their activities using projects. These projects act as temporary and almost independent organizations that directly interlace the project-based organization with their customers. This complex interface is characterized by the existence of divergent interests between the two organizations. Therefore, project managers become crucial agents to handle this interface in order to accomplish the project's goals. By analyzing the retrospective accounts of twenty-four project managers, this chapter found that the project managers' actions that fostered the establishment of a relationship of trust and collaboration with their customer can be divided into four dimensions: providing knowledge, contextualizing the project, keeping the information flow, and boundary spanning. The authors argue that these project managers' actions and the generation of interaction spaces with the customer have an important impact on the development and success of the project.