International Journal of Project Management最新文献

A lean approach in projects offers the opportunity to better connect people, processes, workflows, and delivery within projects. This is particularly important in contemporary project environments which is characterized by high levels of uncertainty, complexity, and pace of change. While knowledge from previous learning may exist, though it is often inaccessible or untapped and different levels of understanding about delivery approaches can prevail. We investigate how a lean approach in projects facilitates and can improve learning in project environments. Through thematic analysis of 40 semi-structured interviews, we found that applying a lean approach considers individual, project and organisational levels of knowledge and understanding, and triggers action underpinned by improved socio-behavourial interactions, leadership, and support. A lean approach enhances the quality of learning, better integrating timely actions and reducing the likelihood of lessons lost, to achieve effective project management.

This research explores temporary organizing in crisis. Recognizing crises in temporary organizations as involving the existential loss of meaning for plans and prospects, we present a qualitative study of the complex negotiation between integration and fragmentation of a temporary organization experiencing crisis. Embracing communication as constitutive of organization (CCO) theorizing, we analyse the real-time, digital communication during the crisis as episodes of temporary organizing. Our analysis reveals three interdependent communicative practices for coordinating—framing, co-creating, and connecting—that constitute “islands of certainty” or ephemeral instances of integration providing orientation for otherwise fragmented coordinating. These findings contribute to understanding coordinating as a sophisticated communicative practice of meaning negotiation about the possible future of a temporary organization in crisis. Specifically, this study reveals increased integration communication when the integrity of a project's future is contested, yet high degrees of communicative fragmentation when there is a shared prospection of the project's future.

This study focuses on the co-creation of value in the front end of urban development projects (UDPs) established by coalitions of public and private actors to develop specific urban premises or areas. Creating value in UDPs calls for collaboration between municipal actors and private companies, specifically in the front end phase, during which major design decisions are made. This qualitative case study builds on data collected through 27 semi-structured interviews in a middle-sized city in Finland. Our data analysis resulted in the categorisation of four value co-creation processes involving municipal actors and private companies, namely, zoning, exploring, procuring and negotiating. The study's results offer insights into how value co-creation can be facilitated in UDPs. This study contributes to recent value-creation literature by providing a novel understanding of each value co-creation process, its characteristics and its corresponding co-created values.

The evolution of the international business environment during the past twenty years due to globalization and the recent pandemic determined an increase in international projects requiring new organizational and individual capabilities to ensure project success. Cross-cultural competencies have been analyzed within the cross-cultural management field and organizational behavioral studies, with limited research available in the international project management field.

Through a comprehensive literature review, the current research outlines the gap within the project management domain concerning the need triggered by the pandemic to acquire cross-cultural and digital abilities among project professionals. We disclose how the existent globalized virtual environment differs from the new one triggered by the pandemic due to the forced shift to the digital setting with a strong impact on in-person interactions, verbal and non-verbal communication.

The originality of this work resides in the development of a novel project professional ability framework, including digital and cross-cultural components that emerged during the pandemic. Secondly, we propose the application of the identified cross-cultural and digital abilities within the project process group of the life cycle based on their scope and outputs.

Increasing concerns about disruptions and the need for adaptation to drastic changes in social and ecological systems is reflected in the growing interest in resilience science. At the same time, the surge in medium to large scale projects around the world, known as projectification of societies, has resulted in considerable interest in the discipline of project studies. The disciplinary idiosyncrasies of project studies motivate a reflection on theoretical and methodological considerations in resilience science. This reflection rests on the experience of instigating research at the juncture of resilience and projects in this special collection. Specifically, we framed these observations as a set of principles that can inform resilience science, including the need for theoretical parsimony, deliberate attention to system boundaries in conceptualization of resilience, as well as critical considerations in measuring resilience. We posit that in its essence, project studies has to navigate a paradox through: (i) investigating projects as efficient form of organizing for a resilient, sustainable and just future, while (ii) unpacking the governance and accountability limitations of temporary organizing within projects that aim to ensure these long-term goals. The proposed principles are core to the broader research stream that we call “projects of future,” a collective inquiry to unpack these paradoxes and a research stream to engage project scholarship with the contemporary phenomena in Anthropocene.