Project leadership: A research agenda for a changing world

Abstract

Project leadership increasingly occurs in the context of ecological risks, whether from a viral pandemic or an anthropogenically changing climate. It requires adaptability to change, especially as projects grow in complexity, becoming seen as interventions into wider systems. In this paper, we take a socialized perspective, synthesising recent work and proposing a new research agenda in three inter-related areas that need to be addressed by project leadership: 1) changing technologies, unpacking the values that technologies represent to achieve desirable outcomes; 2) organizational complexity, engaging multiple actors and addressing emerging complexity and uncertainty and 3), ecological concerns, addressing the demands for projects to intervene positively to create sustainable, resilient and just futures. Our contribution is to theorize what socialized leadership means for these crucial issues emerging in project studies and set out directions for further research on positive forms of project leadership in a changing world.