Pub Date : 2025-02-01DOI: 10.1016/j.ijproman.2025.102696
Andreas Wald , Helgi Thor Ingason , Thordur Vikingur Fridgeirsson
Theory of projectification suggests that an increasing use of projects is a reaction to an increasing need for innovation and adaptation to changes in the environment of firms. The degree of projectification of an economy was first measured in 2013 for Germany followed by Norway and Iceland. Over the last ten years, significant changes have taken place in the three countries which can be assumed to spur a further increase in projectification. This paper presents the results of a new series of studies. The results reveal a high level of projectification in the three economies, but also that a plateauing has been reached. In addition to the degree of projectification, the present study assesses and compares the project landscapes in the three countries and examines if the high projectification corresponds to a professionalization of project management in the form of project careers and central project organizations.
{"title":"Ten years after: The evolution of projectification in Germany, Norway, and Iceland","authors":"Andreas Wald , Helgi Thor Ingason , Thordur Vikingur Fridgeirsson","doi":"10.1016/j.ijproman.2025.102696","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.ijproman.2025.102696","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Theory of projectification suggests that an increasing use of projects is a reaction to an increasing need for innovation and adaptation to changes in the environment of firms. The degree of projectification of an economy was first measured in 2013 for Germany followed by Norway and Iceland. Over the last ten years, significant changes have taken place in the three countries which can be assumed to spur a further increase in projectification. This paper presents the results of a new series of studies. The results reveal a high level of projectification in the three economies, but also that a plateauing has been reached. In addition to the degree of projectification, the present study assesses and compares the project landscapes in the three countries and examines if the high projectification corresponds to a professionalization of project management in the form of project careers and central project organizations.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":48429,"journal":{"name":"International Journal of Project Management","volume":"43 2","pages":"Article 102696"},"PeriodicalIF":7.4,"publicationDate":"2025-02-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143747874","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"管理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2025-01-01DOI: 10.1016/j.ijproman.2025.102675
Kubra Atli, Ilias Krystallis
Managing infrastructure projects often presents challenges in maintaining flexibility throughout their lifecycle, which limits their ability to adapt to evolving and uncertain conditions. This systematic literature review examines the factors that accelerate design flexibility in the management of infrastructure projects. Analyzing 50 articles from a dataset of 11,443, we identified several key factors, organized into seven clusters across three levels: individuals, organizations, and inter-organizational relationships and three operational dimensions of design flexibility. These factors help to expand the concept of flexibility beyond its traditional association with engineering product design to encompass managerial project design. Building on Simon's design theory, this study frames design flexibility as a proactive and strategic asset. We offer future research directions to further broaden the scope of flexibility in project management. This study contributes to ongoing debates in project management on how to enhance project performance in uncertain conditions, by addressing the challenge of balancing flexibility and control.
{"title":"Design flexibility in managing infrastructure projects: Contributing factors and research avenues","authors":"Kubra Atli, Ilias Krystallis","doi":"10.1016/j.ijproman.2025.102675","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.ijproman.2025.102675","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Managing infrastructure projects often presents challenges in maintaining flexibility throughout their lifecycle, which limits their ability to adapt to evolving and uncertain conditions. This systematic literature review examines the factors that accelerate design flexibility in the management of infrastructure projects. Analyzing 50 articles from a dataset of 11,443, we identified several key factors, organized into seven clusters across three levels: individuals, organizations, and inter-organizational relationships and three operational dimensions of design flexibility. These factors help to expand the concept of flexibility beyond its traditional association with engineering product design to encompass managerial project design. Building on Simon's design theory, this study frames design flexibility as a proactive and strategic asset. We offer future research directions to further broaden the scope of flexibility in project management. This study contributes to ongoing debates in project management on how to enhance project performance in uncertain conditions, by addressing the challenge of balancing flexibility and control.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":48429,"journal":{"name":"International Journal of Project Management","volume":"43 1","pages":"Article 102675"},"PeriodicalIF":7.4,"publicationDate":"2025-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143165836","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"管理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2025-01-01DOI: 10.1016/j.ijproman.2025.102676
Francesco Di Maddaloni , Leonardo Herszon Meira , Mauricio Oliveira de Andrade , Iury Ribeiro de Melo , Armando Castro , Giorgio Locatelli
Megaprojects can foster modernization and enhance social and economic development but also perpetuate poverty and deprivation. This dark legacy is fostered by weak governmental structures, where local communities lack representation and social welfare is sacrificed for economic gain. Through a normative stakeholder theory and social value perspective, we examine the nuanced interplay between local authorities and the project owner organization in the controversial case of Brazil's Suape Port. The substantial economic gains triggered by the Suape megaproject did not improve the social conditions for local communities. While the original business case primarily focused on economic profitability, the disengagement of local authorities and their communities prevented benefits from materializing at the local level. By examining these missed opportunities, we introduce the concept of value dissipation to explain how social value diminishes over time, resulting in a shortfall in social benefits and a poor legacy for local communities.
{"title":"The dark legacy of megaprojects: A case of local disengagement, missed opportunities, and social value dissipation","authors":"Francesco Di Maddaloni , Leonardo Herszon Meira , Mauricio Oliveira de Andrade , Iury Ribeiro de Melo , Armando Castro , Giorgio Locatelli","doi":"10.1016/j.ijproman.2025.102676","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.ijproman.2025.102676","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Megaprojects can foster modernization and enhance social and economic development but also perpetuate poverty and deprivation. This dark legacy is fostered by weak governmental structures, where local communities lack representation and social welfare is sacrificed for economic gain. Through a normative stakeholder theory and social value perspective, we examine the nuanced interplay between local authorities and the project owner organization in the controversial case of Brazil's Suape Port. The substantial economic gains triggered by the Suape megaproject did not improve the social conditions for local communities. While the original business case primarily focused on economic profitability, the disengagement of local authorities and their communities prevented benefits from materializing at the local level. By examining these missed opportunities, we introduce the concept of <em>value dissipation</em> to explain how social value diminishes over time, resulting in a shortfall in social benefits and a poor legacy for local communities.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":48429,"journal":{"name":"International Journal of Project Management","volume":"43 1","pages":"Article 102676"},"PeriodicalIF":7.4,"publicationDate":"2025-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143165834","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"管理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Cognition, understood as the way the mind acquires, processes, and enacts information, is at the root of all behaviour. Yet, while the interest in behaviour in projects is increasing, these cognitive foundations are often disregarded or only haphazardly investigated in project research. This essay calls for a stronger engagement with cognition in projects, leveraging the insights from general and applied cognition sciences to explore, explain, and predict project behaviour. We emphasise that it is not differences in the thinking itself, but differences in the context in which the thinking is applied, that makes projects a relevant and distinct area in which to study cognition. To sketch a way forward, we establish key terms, illustrate phenomena from project behaviour which might benefit from a study through a cognitive lens, and introduce appropriate theories from cognitive science. The insights generated from such research with attention to ‘project cognition’ are particularly valuable for practice as they help to design project environments that align with how people in projects make sense of their world and interact with it.
{"title":"Thinking is for doing: Project cognition as the foundation of project behaviour","authors":"Verena Stingl , Alicia Gilchrist , Ama Lawani , Rhona Flin , Ofer Zwikael","doi":"10.1016/j.ijproman.2025.102678","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.ijproman.2025.102678","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Cognition, understood as the way the mind acquires, processes, and enacts information, is at the root of all behaviour. Yet, while the interest in behaviour in projects is increasing, these cognitive foundations are often disregarded or only haphazardly investigated in project research. This essay calls for a stronger engagement with cognition in projects, leveraging the insights from general and applied cognition sciences to explore, explain, and predict project behaviour. We emphasise that it is not differences in the thinking itself, but differences in the context in which the thinking is applied, that makes projects a relevant and distinct area in which to study cognition. To sketch a way forward, we establish key terms, illustrate phenomena from project behaviour which might benefit from a study through a cognitive lens, and introduce appropriate theories from cognitive science. The insights generated from such research with attention to ‘project cognition’ are particularly valuable for practice as they help to design project environments that align with how people in projects make sense of their world and interact with it.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":48429,"journal":{"name":"International Journal of Project Management","volume":"43 1","pages":"Article 102678"},"PeriodicalIF":7.4,"publicationDate":"2025-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143210023","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"管理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Several studies have focused on local government as project-supported organisations (PSOs) initiating projects aiming to solve non-routine activities, but we know less about the widespread practice of initiating projects to solve recurrent problems in daily operations. This paper reports findings from a qualitative, longitudinal study of how a project team in a Norwegian local authority navigated tensions in their efforts to solve a daily operations challenge. Our findings contribute to the recent debate about consequences of projects in PSOs. First, we argue that tensions in PSOs can be theorised as competition between co-existing institutional logics and understood in light of strategic owner capabilities. Further, we suggest that the perceived strength of tensions influences whether the project is interpreted as a matchmaker between different logics, or, at other times, as a troublemaker where the project team's interpretation of contextual complexity limits its ability to combine co-existing institutional logics.
{"title":"The local government project: A matchmaker or a troublemaker?","authors":"Grete Hagebakken, Trude Høgvold Olsen, Elsa Solstad","doi":"10.1016/j.ijproman.2025.102674","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.ijproman.2025.102674","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Several studies have focused on local government as project-supported organisations (PSOs) initiating projects aiming to solve non-routine activities, but we know less about the widespread practice of initiating projects to solve recurrent problems in daily operations. This paper reports findings from a qualitative, longitudinal study of how a project team in a Norwegian local authority navigated tensions in their efforts to solve a daily operations challenge. Our findings contribute to the recent debate about consequences of projects in PSOs. First, we argue that tensions in PSOs can be theorised as competition between co-existing institutional logics and understood in light of strategic owner capabilities. Further, we suggest that the perceived strength of tensions influences whether the project is interpreted as a matchmaker between different logics, or, at other times, as a troublemaker where the project team's interpretation of contextual complexity limits its ability to combine co-existing institutional logics.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":48429,"journal":{"name":"International Journal of Project Management","volume":"43 1","pages":"Article 102674"},"PeriodicalIF":7.4,"publicationDate":"2025-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143165835","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"管理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2025-01-01DOI: 10.1016/j.ijproman.2025.102677
Kijan Vakilzadeh , Sebastian Raetze
In this qualitative study, we examine how project members organize for resilience amid adversity by analyzing the case of the 1972 crash of Uruguayan Air Force Flight 571. The survivors endured 72 days in the Andes, navigating uncertainty, time pressures, interpersonal conflict, and intense emotions—challenges similar to those in modern project organizations. Using insights from the survivors' (auto-)biographies, we conclude that resilience emerges through members' daily social interactions. Our findings reveal three key elements of project resilience: (1) processing contextuality, where sensebreaking and adaptive sensemaking evolve as adversity unfolds; (2) processing communality, which forms a socio-emotional foundation for resilience; and (3) shifting between different modes of emergent responding, by which project organizations harness the stability of structured responses while retaining the flexibility to adapt under pressure. This study highlights the dynamic processes through which project resilience is cultivated, offering insights for managing resilience in high-stakes environments.
{"title":"Enacting project resilience: Insights from Uruguayan air force flight 571′s crash in the Andes","authors":"Kijan Vakilzadeh , Sebastian Raetze","doi":"10.1016/j.ijproman.2025.102677","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.ijproman.2025.102677","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>In this qualitative study, we examine how project members organize for resilience amid adversity by analyzing the case of the 1972 crash of Uruguayan Air Force Flight 571. The survivors endured 72 days in the Andes, navigating uncertainty, time pressures, interpersonal conflict, and intense emotions—challenges similar to those in modern project organizations. Using insights from the survivors' (auto-)biographies, we conclude that resilience emerges through members' daily social interactions. Our findings reveal three key elements of project resilience: (1) <em>processing contextuality</em>, where sensebreaking and adaptive sensemaking evolve as adversity unfolds; (2) <em>processing communality</em>, which forms a socio-emotional foundation for resilience; and (3) <em>shifting between different modes of emergent responding</em>, by which project organizations harness the stability of structured responses while retaining the flexibility to adapt under pressure. This study highlights the dynamic processes through which project resilience is cultivated, offering insights for managing resilience in high-stakes environments.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":48429,"journal":{"name":"International Journal of Project Management","volume":"43 1","pages":"Article 102677"},"PeriodicalIF":7.4,"publicationDate":"2025-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143166433","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"管理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2025-01-01DOI: 10.1016/j.ijproman.2025.102680
{"title":"IJPM invites special paper collections proposals 2026","authors":"","doi":"10.1016/j.ijproman.2025.102680","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.ijproman.2025.102680","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":48429,"journal":{"name":"International Journal of Project Management","volume":"43 1","pages":"Article 102680"},"PeriodicalIF":7.4,"publicationDate":"2025-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143376505","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"管理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2025-01-01DOI: 10.1016/j.ijproman.2025.102679
Roya Derakhshan
In recent years, project scholarship has increasingly focused on the dark side of projects. However, these discussions have largely overlooked extant literature on violence that is widely referenced in broader management and organizational studies. In this essay, I argue that normative violence—violence embedded in socio-cultural and legal norms accepted and practiced in broader society—provides a valuable lens through which to analyze and discuss the inequality, harm, and exploitation present in project settings. From this perspective, I argue that future research in project scholarship should investigate how norms—borrowed from external socio-cultural and legal frameworks, as well as those developed and spread within projects—can lead to the infliction of normative violence in, around, and of projects.
{"title":"Normative violence and its implications in project scholarship","authors":"Roya Derakhshan","doi":"10.1016/j.ijproman.2025.102679","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.ijproman.2025.102679","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>In recent years, project scholarship has increasingly focused on the dark side of projects. However, these discussions have largely overlooked extant literature on violence that is widely referenced in broader management and organizational studies. In this essay, I argue that normative violence—violence embedded in socio-cultural and legal norms accepted and practiced in broader society—provides a valuable lens through which to analyze and discuss the inequality, harm, and exploitation present in project settings. From this perspective, I argue that future research in project scholarship should investigate how norms—borrowed from external socio-cultural and legal frameworks, as well as those developed and spread within projects—can lead to the infliction of normative violence in, around, and of projects.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":48429,"journal":{"name":"International Journal of Project Management","volume":"43 1","pages":"Article 102679"},"PeriodicalIF":7.4,"publicationDate":"2025-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143210202","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"管理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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