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

Abstract

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.