About this issue

Citation

Walker, D.H.T. (2010), "About this issue", International Journal of Managing Projects in Business, Vol. 3 No. 4. https://doi.org/10.1108/ijmpb.2010.35303daa.001

About this issue

Article Type: From the Editor From: International Journal of Managing Projects in Business, Volume 3, Issue 4

This issue, the last in 2010, continues a three year tradition by presenting an eclectic set of project management (PM) papers that provides a broad PM perspective from a wide variety of countries. The main theme emerging from this issue of individual papers is PM and stakeholder engagement. Each paper has its own focus but they all provide insights into how stakeholders, such as a client and community as well as internal project team stakeholder, interact with stakeholders to deliver projects. This editorial therefore introduces the papers though this stakeholder-centric lens.

This issue begins with a Finnish authored paper “A stakeholder network perspective on unexpected events and their management in international projects” by Kirsi Aaltonen, Jaakko Kujala, Päivi Lehtonen and Inkeri Ruuska. The paper addresses important stakeholder management issues and illustrates how a focal project’s local stakeholder relationships are associated with the emergence and management of unexpected events in the context of international projects. Working in a cross-cultural project environment stimulates frequent misunderstanding in expectations from both team-internal and client/end user-external stakeholders. Two types of unexpected events related to local stakeholder relationships were identified:

1. 1.

   Unexpected events that were due to misunderstandings, and diverging practices, processes, values and norms of the focal project organization and the local stakeholders.

2. 2.

   Unexpected events that emerged due to the challenges in the establishment of direct and indirect relationships with salient external local stakeholders.

The findings of the study reveal a paradox – both the existence of and the lack of local stakeholder relationships with salient actors may generate unexpected events in international projects. This paper advances both theoretical and empirical project stakeholder and uncertainty management research.

The second paper by Lisa Bradley, Kerry Brown, Helen Lingard, Keith Townsend and Caroline Bailey from Australia entitled “Talking the talk and walking the walk: how managers can influence the quality of work-life balance in a construction project” investigates the work life balance (WLB) of staff engaged on construction industry alliance projects. Managers need to ensure they provide good opportunities for staff to balance their work and non-work lives, but importantly, they need to demonstrate the importance of the issue through modelling good WLB behaviour themselves. This paper used a study with interviews conducted at two points in time, several months apart, after interventions were implemented to improve WLB through moving from demands for a business-as-usual six days a week to a more intense but flexible five days a week workload model. The examination of WLB involves the investigation of people’s ability to manage the demands from the multiple domains of their life and this is vital for staff, as critical internal project stakeholders, while delivering projects. Without willing and enthusiastic commitment of key project team members, projects are placed in a hazardous situation for effective project delivery through low morale.

The third paper by Nicholas Clarke from the UK is focussed on project-internal teams and is entitled “Projects are emotional: how project managers’ emotional awareness can influence decisions and behaviours in projects”. This paper stems from important work that affects both within-project team stakeholders as well as external stakeholders through a recent empirical study that offers insights into how emotions can influence project manager behaviours and decisions specifically within the context of undertaking their roles in relationship management in projects. It shows that the emotional awareness of project managers may be a factor that helps to explain how project managers may arrive at decisions that affect their inter-personal relationships on projects. Emotional awareness was found to be particularly significant in underpinning decisions and behaviours that were likely to affect the subsequent pattern of inter-personal relationships in projects. The findings suggest that project managers may respond differently in similar emotion generating circumstances dependent upon their levels of emotional awareness. This contributes to an emerging theme in recent PM research into how project manager emotional intelligence “soft skills” affects and impacts stakeholder engagement as part of a broad political and influencing, as well as service-oriented, view of what is expected of project managers.

The fourth paper by Nathalie Drouin, Mario Bourgault and Caroline Gervais from Quebec, Canada is entitled “Effects of organizational support on components of virtual project teams” and focuses on the organizational support systems and mechanisms provided by firms to their virtual project teams and their impacts on the components of these teams. This addresses issues relating to project team stakeholders. The paper’s objective was to identify the structural factors and processes related to virtual teams that are affected by organizational support systems and mechanisms. Findings enable practitioners to better understand the effects of organizational support on the components of virtual teams, so that greater attention is paid to the configuration of these components and support systems can be better designed to improve team performance of these particular virtual project stakeholders.

Jan Terje Karlsen from Norway provides the fifth paper entitled “Project owner involvement for information and knowledge sharing in uncertainty management” that relates to an important project stakeholder, the project owner. This paper reports on a study that investigates the communication of uncertainty information and knowledge between the project manager, and steering group. It identifies the effects of project owner and steering group involvement in the process of uncertainty management which is vital to sound stakeholder engagement and this involvement was also found to contribute to building a collaborative, respectful, professional and trusting relationship between the project parties. Research results indicate that engaging the project owner with information about uncertainty has helped develop a holistic view for improved decision making.

The sixth paper by Peter E.D. Love, Peter R. Davis, Joanne M. Ellis from Australia and S.O. Cheung from Hong Kong entitled “A systemic view of dispute causation” attempts to identify the underlying dynamics influencing disputes through the use of causal modelling. The paper reveals that PM, organisation and people are the main sources of disputes. Causal models are constructed for each of these constructs and a series of strategies for avoiding disputations identified so this paper adds to our understanding of the dynamics of stakeholders engaging in projects as well as providing an illustration of a useful tool (system modelling) that can be used to map complexity associated with disputes and identifies the interrelatedness of factors that can lead to their causation. Once these conditions are examined then effective strategies for dispute avoidance can be identified and advancement toward improving the performance of construction projects made.

Two doctoral thesis research notes are presented. Kosheek Sewchurran, Derek Smith and Dewalde Roode from the Republic of South Africa provides a valuable thesis research notes entitled “Toward a regional ontology for information systems project management” that takes a philosophical stance on better understanding an important aspect of PM. The thesis is a critical interpretive a priori effort. In the pursuit of the goal of developing a regional ontology, the notions, concepts and theories related to existentialism and social construction were investigated. These were investigated because the research literature places considerable emphasis on the need to understand as-lived project experiences. It also showcases a thesis emanating from the University of Cape Town and broadens our appreciation of universities engaged in PM research at this level able to offer PhD opportunities. The second doctoral thesis research note is presented by Ellen Lau and Steve Rowlinson from the University of Hong Kong entitled “Trust relations in the construction industry” and also is relevant to this issue’s focus on stakeholders and how to best engage them. The paper provides a better understanding of the important yet complex and abstract concept of trust. Result from this study allow practitioners and academics alike to be made aware of the importance of trust relations and have a better understanding of how trust relations operate in the construction industry PM environment.

This issue also contains two book reviews. The first by Alejandro C. Arroyo reviews the book entitled “International project management – leadership in complex environments” by Thomas W. Grisham published by Wiley, Hoboken, NJ. The second, by Kam Jugdev, reviews “Project management: The managerial process (5th ed.)” written by Larson, E.W. and Gray, C.F. and published by McGraw-Hill.

We also provide a call for papers for a special issue to be presented in 2012. An update on forthcoming events, conferences and useful PM links is, as usual, provided.

Finally, I would like to thank contributors and reviewers who have generously given time and energy to make this issue possible for 2010 which was another successful year for the journal. I expect to see many more papers that address the important and emerging frontiers of PM during 2011 and onwards. By now International Journal of Managing Projects in Business (IJMPB) has established a style for substantial PM papers that investigate many emerging themes in PM research. I was recently asked what kinds of papers I most enjoy. I replied quirky ones because that is my personal preference but as an active academic responsible for some 20+ doctoral studies in my school, I am also aware that rigorous and valid PM research takes many forms from more traditional topics to the “quirky”. I trust that IJMPB will continue to deliver ideas that will stimulate debate, discussion and controversy. In the first issue of 2011 Rolf Lundin and I will present an editorial note on the ethics of presenting research outcomes which we hope will spark some follow up research note papers.

Derek H.T. Walker