Risk perceptions and approaches in multi-organizations: A research review 2000–2012

Shared risks and opportunities set specific premises for risk management (RM) in temporary multi-organizations (TMOs). However, most project RM research is presented from the perspective of a single-organizational project delivery team or covers limited risk perceptions and RM approaches. This paper aims to address how well the body of knowledge on multi-organizational RM corresponds to a state-of-art understanding on project RM and to identify which gaps need to be addressed in future research. The review involves: 1) the preferred view of risk as threat and/or opportunity, 2) the nature of addressed risks as anticipated or unanticipated risks or unrealistic assumptions, 3) the role of the multi-organization as the source of risks and/or resources for risk management (RM), and 4) the allocation of risk responsibilities. The review covers research papers published between 2000 and 2012 in four journals: International Journal of Project Management (IJPM), Project Management Journal (PMJ), Journal of Construction Engineering and Management (JCEM), and IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering (TSE). 105 eligible research papers were identified. The results and conclusion outline the identified main gaps in multi-organizational RM research compared to the state-of-art RM research and TMO-specific characteristics. The results can be used to inform research agendas on more holistic and dynamic multi-organizational RM concepts.     

Directions for future research in project management: The main findings of a UK government-funded research network

In 2003 the UK’s Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) agreed to fund a research network – Rethinking Project Management – to define a research agenda aimed at enriching and extending the subject of project management beyond its current conceptual foundations. The main argument for the proposed Network highlighted the growing critiques of project management theory and the need for new research in relation to the developing practice. Being the first paper of this Special Issue, this paper presents the Network’s main findings: a framework of five directions aimed at developing the field intellectually in the following areas: project complexity, social process, value creation, project conceptualisation, and practitioner development. These areas are based on a comprehensive analysis of all the research material produced over a 2-year period and represent the dominant pattern of ideas to emerge from the Network as a whole. They are not meant to be the agenda for future research, but an agenda to inform and stimulate current and future research activity in developing the field of project management. Methodologically, the five research directions represent a synthesis of ideas for how the current conceptual base needs to develop in relation to the developing world of practice. As well as presenting the main findings, the paper also presents a practical research framework aimed at researchers working in the field. The intended audience for the paper is the project management research community, and also researchers in other management areas for whom the Network’s findings might be of interest.     

Governing projects under complexity: theory and practice in project management

In this paper we argue that the fledgling field of project and program governance has the potential to make a major scholarly and practical contribution. One that not only has the potential to mainstream project management within the broader business and management field, but to also cement its place as a dominant voice in the successful governance of the strategic intentions of organizations, societies, and nations. With this argument in mind three themes organize present discussion in this issue of International Journal of Project Management: the first concerns how we should make sense of governance, something that is clarified through a review of the current state of play in the literature; the second theme comprises papers that report research conducted on governance in projects, using insights from surveys, case studies and other systematic forms of empirical observation. The third theme focuses on theoretical models of governance, ranging from distributed knowledge management and learning perspectives on project governance to systems engineering approaches. While we do not claim that this issue is exhaustive, we do believe it provides a sign post about the current state of play, and the potential future of governance in project and program management as a mainstream domain of research, theory and practice.     

Project studies: What it is,where it is going

Project organising is a growing field of scholarly inquiry and management practice. In recent years, two important developments have influenced this field: (1) the study and practice of projects have extended their level of analysis from mainly focussing on individual projects to focussing on micro- as well as macro-level concerns around projects; and (2) there has been a greater interest in different kinds of scholarly inquiry. Taken together, these two developments call for closer scrutiny of how the levels of analysis and the types of inquiry are related and benefit each other, and of the explanations of project practices they could offer. To discuss avenues for future research on projects and project practice, this paper suggests the notion of project studies to better grasp the status of our field. We combine these two sets of ideas to analyse the status and future options for advancing project research: (1) levels of analysis; and (2) type of research. Analysing recent developments within project studies, we observe the emergence of what we refer to as type 3 research, which reconciles the need for theoretical development and engagement with practice. Type 3 research suggests pragmatic avenues to move away from accepted yet unhelpful assumptions about projects and project organising. The paper ends with an agenda for future research, which offers project scholars a variety of options to position themselves in the field of project studies, and to explore opportunities in the crossroads between levels of analysis and types of research.     

Multi-level project governance: Trends and opportunities

Project governance is important in ensuring successful project delivery. In this article we conduct a systematic investigation of previous research to provide a content-driven review of the literature, and to provide future research direction. We use the textual data mining software Leximancer to identify dominant concepts and themes underlying project governance research. Our findings indicate that agency and stakeholder theories have been adapted to the project governance context to a greater extent than other theories. Furthermore, we find differences in project governance research, published in project management journals compared to general management, IT and engineering journals. We conclude the paper by presenting a framework that links governance theories to the multiple organizational levels relevant to project governance.     

The past will guide us: What the future could bring according to the last 40 years of IJPM?

This article examines all papers published in the International Journal of Project Management over the last 40 years (1983–2022), identifying research themes. By performing keyword co-occurrence analysis, keywords were clustered into five groups, which served for identification of the most prominent research themes shaping the Journal's publishing history - Performance Management, Risk and Construction Management, Project Governance, Project Planning and Control and Project Success. The results shed light on how these research themes developed and are interconnected over time, while the findings collected using a focus group method have provided the insightful understanding of the future trends in the field of Project Management, Organizing and Studies. It may be expected that future publishing brings a greater number of articles covering challenges of organizations, teams and individuals faced by the 4th Industrial revolution, digital transformation and sustainable development goals (SDGs), as well as articles on project finance and investment-related topics, and articles addressing a project's benefits and values. The main findings of this article may significantly contribute to researchers and PhD candidates in defining the thematic orientation of their studies, educators in creating programs which meet more accurate future demands in project management, and editors for specifying the scope of journals or conference proceedings in order to make them more influential in the research community. This paper may, moreover, serve in the phase of research-design modeling and for those performing bibliometric analyses within the other scientific areas with the intention to potentially anticipate the future research thematic-orientation in their analysis.     

A memetic paradigm of project management

This paper aims to fuel the discussion on examining project management research from different perspectives. A new memetic approach to project management is presented that promotes a new way to examine the discipline of project management. Project management is claimed to be a memeplex with the language and stories of its scholars and practitioners at its core; shaping and restricting human behaviour, and creating impoverished mental models of project management. The paper suggests that a new memetic approach to project management will help lift restrictions imposed by the traditional research approach, and enrich our mental maps of project management to serve us better.     

Rethinking Project Management: Researching the actuality of projects

This paper puts forth the somewhat controversial position that what is needed to improve project management in practice is not more research on what should be done or the frequency and/or use of traditional project management practices. We argue that while a great deal is written about traditional project management we know very little about the “actuality” of project based working and management. This paper formulates a research approach that takes seriously practitioner’s lived experience of projects. We explore the ontological, epistemological and methodological assumptions underlying this kind of research and provide examples of some project management research originating from this perspective. We conclude by summarizing the findings from these studies and providing insights into the map ahead for future such research. In this kind of work the attention is refocused on praxis, on context-dependent judgement, on situational ethics and on reflexivity which enables social actors to see how power actually functions in context.     

Why projects fail? How contingency theory can provide new insights – A comparative analysis of NASA’s Mars Climate Orbiter loss

When important projects fail, the investigation is often focused on the engineering and technical reasons for the failure. That was the case in NASA’s Mars Climate Orbiter (MCO) that was lost in space after completing its nine-month journey to Mars. Yet, in many cases the root cause of the failure is not technical, but managerial. Often the problem is rooted in management’s failure to select the right approach to the specific project. The objective of this paper is to enrich our understanding of project failure due to managerial reasons by utilizing different contingency theory frameworks for a retrospective look at unsuccessful projects and perhaps more important, potential prevention of future failures. The evolving field of project management contingency theory provides an opportunity at this time to re-examine the concept of fit between project characteristics and project management, and offer deeper insights on why projects fail. After outlining several existing contingency studies, we use three distinct frameworks for analyzing the MCO project. These frameworks include Henderson and Clark’s categorization of change and innovation, Shenhar and Dvir’s NTCP diamond framework, and Pich, Loch, and De Meyer’s strategies for managing uncertainty. While each framework provides a different perspective, collectively, they demonstrate that in the MCO program, the choices made by managers, or more accurately, the constraints imposed on them under the policy of ‘better, faster, cheaper’, led the program to its inevitable failure. This paper shows that project management contingency theory can indeed provide new insights for a deeper understanding of project failure. Furthermore, it suggests implications for a richer upfront analysis of a project’s unique characteristics of uncertainty and risk, as well as additional directions of research. Such research may help establish new and different conceptions on project success and failure beyond the traditional success factors, and subsequently develop more refined contingency frameworks. The results of such research may enable future project managers to rely less on heuristics and possibly lead to a new application of “project management design.”     

The three roles of a project portfolio management office: Their impact on portfolio management execution and success

Project portfolio management offices (PPMOs) are a subset of project management offices (PMOs) that handle collections of multiple single projects and programmes, i.e. portfolios. PPMOs are centralised organisational units that cater to the demands of various stakeholders by performing specialised tasks. They are initiated by their organisation's leadership in response to increasing management challenges originating from project portfolios. Although there has been considerable research on PMOs in general, not only a clear understanding of multi-project PMOs' activity patterns set in specific contexts like project portfolio management, but also both existence and mode of multi-project PMOs' contribution to successful performance are still lacking. By quantitatively analysing PPMOs in 278 portfolios, we identify three different activity patterns, which are interpreted as distinctive roles. We show a significant positive effect of PPMOs' coordinating and controlling roles on performance in terms of project portfolio management quality, which is a predictor of portfolio success.