Introduction

This section of the research deals with findings from the interviews conducted in PwC as well as discussions on literature vis-à-vis what pertains in the case study organisation – PwC. The section begins with a profile of PwC after which patterns from the interview are enumerated to give a vivid account of how projects are managed in PwC. The discussion part will assess characteristics of TPM and APM as well as project management challenges that were identified in PwC. An elaborate review of the extent to which the research questions were answered concludes this chapter. 4

Profile of PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC)

PricewaterhouseCoopers is a global professional service organisation, resulting from the world-wide merger of Price Waterhouse and Coopers & Lybrand, which took effect from 1 July 1998. PricewaterhouseCoopers has brought together 163,000 of the best brains in 151 countries in the world to become the world’s largest business advisory and consulting organisation that aims at helping clients build value, manage risk and improve performance.

The firm is one of the few global professional services organisations with a unified global leadership structure which allows the investment and deployment of resources where they are needed. As an organisation with global consistency, the firm is focused on capturing national and cultural differences and adapting their services to clients’ local customs and work styles. This approach enables PwC to be an integrated organisation which emphasises a combination of responsiveness to the local environment in which the firms practises and a worldwide standard of excellence of service achieved through inter-change of Partners and staff, the final review of admissions of persons into the partnerships, dissemination of technical material, co-ordination of technical and manpower policies and related quality control procedures. In this process, PwC global firm provides support to the country organisations in achieving their long-term strategies, without being responsible for their management. In view of this, processes, work standards and patterns are quite uniform in all 757 member offices worldwide, including PwC-Ghana.

Findings from Interviews and Documents

In PwC, each assignment or job is considered as a project and executed as such; sometimes with resources from different countries and service lines forming the team(s). Teams within projects are mobilised at the beginning of assignments and structured with different levels of authority. Teams also interact in various ways with client staff at different levels of the project. The client staff involvement depends on the type of assignment and the approach that guides projects in the Line of Service. There are three main Lines of Service (LoS) in PwC; these are Assurance, Tax and Advisory offering services to diverse industries and clients. Within these LoS, members of the PwC network of firms in each country adapt to the economic environment and respond to client needs accordingly. Therefore, sub LoS or departments and services discussed in this section will be what pertain in PwC-Ghana specific; though they may be similar to other PwC offices in other countries. The office inGhana also serves countries such as Liberia, Sierra Leone and Gambia, where PwC has no offices yet.