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The purpose of this paper is to present a cost‐benefit interpretation of academic‐practitioner research by describing and analysing several recent relevant examples of academic‐practitioner research with a focus on doctoral theses carried out at universities and business schools in clusters of research centred in North America, Australia and Europe.

Using case study examples, a value proposition framework for undertaking collaborative research for higher degree level study is developed and presented.

Value proposition benefits from this level of collaborative research can be summarised as enhancing competencies at the individual and organisational level as well as providing participating universities with high‐quality candidates/students and opportunities for industry engagement. The project management (PM) professional bodies can also extend PM knowledge but they need to be prepared to provide active support.

A model for better defining the value proposition of collaborative research from a range of stakeholder perspectives is offered that can be adapted for researchers and industry research sponsors.

Few papers offer a value proposition framework for explaining collaborative research benefits. This paper addresses that need.

This paper is a summary of a successfully defended doctoral dissertation. The purpose of this paper is to place this research in context to emerging areas of project management and service science, management and engineering and to encourage others to embark on further research related to this important topic.

Results reported in this paper were based upon action learning from research in which a project management tool for estimating deployment cost was developed by capturing the knowledge of subject matter experts (SMEs) and subsequently tested against projects from various geographic areas.

There were two primary findings. A development and analysis of the conceptual estimating framework supports the assertion that the use of the framework provides an awareness of the project that may not otherwise be observed or, at best, would be observed later in the life of the project and potentially addressed at a higher cost. A strong association has been found between the conceptual estimate produced by the comprehensive framework and the conceptual estimate produced manually through the use of SMEs.

From academic perspective, the synthesis of technology management, business processes, and the conceptual estimating framework enhances the body of knowledge of project management. For practical applications, the method and framework employed can be utilized to build functioning conceptual estimating tools for deployment, which can lead to cost savings during the estimating process and, as this study surmises, will lead to more effective project management, control, and implementation.

The purpose of this paper is to provide of a review of the theory and models underlying project management (PM) research degrees that encourage reflective learning.

Review of the literature and reflection on the practice of being actively involved in conducting and supervising academic research and disseminating academic output. The paper argues the case for the potential usefulness of reflective academic research to PM practitioners. It also highlights theoretical drivers of and barriers to reflective academic research by PM practitioners.

A reflective learning approach to research can drive practical results though it requires a great deal of commitment and support by both academic and industry partners.

This paper suggests how PM practitioners can engage in academic research that has practical outcomes and how to be more effective at disseminating these research outcomes.

Advanced academic degrees, in particular those completed by PM practitioners, can validate a valuable source of innovative ideas and approaches that should be more quickly absorbed into the PM profession's sources of knowledge. The value of this paper is to critically review and facilitate a reduced adaptation time for implementation of useful reflective academic research to industry.

This study aims to demonstrate the application of Lean Six Sigma (LSS) at a stainless steel manufacturer in Türkiye for yield improvement.

A qualitative approach consisting of a single descriptive case study was adopted. Both primary and secondary sources were used. The interviews were conducted with the Six Sigma team. In addition, an in-depth review of the project documents was conducted. The “define, measure, analyze, improve and control (DMAIC)” phases were explained by examining the tables, facts and figures. The company’s downgraded rate owing to defective materials was 0.21%. Root causes were detected in the tension unit, carpet cleaning, coating unit, film surface and cleaning of the rolls. Therefore, improvements were taken accordingly.

The rolled throughput yield was 99.05%, and the defect rate was reduced to 0.08% after implementing LSS, which provided statistically proven results and a direct reflection on customer satisfaction.

To the best of the author’s knowledge, this is the first case study examining the application of LSS to improve the yield of a medium-sized stainless steel company in Türkiye.

Project management has become the hip new trend in librarianship, appearing more and more in job listings, position descriptions, and professional development offerings. How did project management become the latest buzzword, and what does it have to offer our profession?

The answers to these can be explored through a look at the evolution of project management from the concept of Scientific Management to the certifiable skill set it is today, and how that evolution connects with librarianship’s own changes over time. This examination is done through a literature and historical analysis.

A deeper look at the basic concepts behind project management in light of this historical and practical connection with librarianship demonstrates how project management not only can be a useful skill for library workers to embrace today, but will also illuminate how our service-oriented structure may not mesh well with a concept rooted in business and computing. However, libraries that take a systems approach to implementing project management may see that they are better able to find success.

This study is largely theoretical and based on literature and historical analysis rather than practical implementation and testing. However, it does offer us a different way of looking at a trendy concept, one which helps ground the concept in theory and practice in a way that is seldom done. It also provides examples of tools to help libraries implement project management with a systems approach, which has not been addressed much in library literature.

The purpose of this paper is to glean leadership lessons of megaproject managers through the life stories of four purposefully selected managers from two contemporary and two landmark megaprojects.

A narrative inquiry approach applying thematic analysis is used to capture lessons learnt from these stories with a focus on leading megaprojects. Narrative analysis has been used in organization studies and this paper is an attempt to use it in project management research.

Common strategies used by all four megaproject managers to be successful include: selecting the right people and building their capability; building trust with stakeholders; dealing with institutional power and politics effectively; and having the courage to innovate. There were also some differences in the approaches used by these managers due the times in which these projects were implemented.

The use of narrative inquiry is new to project management literature. As the life stories were not presented in the same way it was difficult to analyze them in the same manner, and further data had to be collected. This could have been avoided if it were feasible to collect narratives directly from the megaproject managers. This is being planned in future research emerging from this paper.

This study helps megaproject managers to exhibit leadership attributes that would be required to execute such large complex projects that have wide implications for the society, economy and the environment.

Megaprojects are often considered major displacements that cause social and geophysical issues that affect the environment. Lessons learnt from these stories could be useful to avoid such issues. The stories analyzed showed the human side of the megaproject managers toward people related, health and societal issues.

Narrative inquiry is new to project management literature. In the past, project management literature has focused on extracting lessons learnt from historical and classical projects, but lessons from life stories of project managers have not been used for the same purpose.

Process redesign refers to the intentional change of business processes. While process redesign methods provide structure to redesign projects, they provide limited support during the actual creation of to-be processes. More specifically, existing approaches hardly develop an ontological perspective on what can be changed from a process design point of view, and they provide limited procedural guidance on how to derive possible process design alternatives. This paper aims to provide structured guidance during the to-be process creation.

Using design space exploration as a theoretical lens, the authors develop a conceptual model of the design space for business processes, which facilitates the systematic exploration of design alternatives along different dimensions. The authors utilized an established method for taxonomy development for constructing the conceptual model. First, the authors derived design dimensions for business processes and underlying characteristics through a literature review. Second, the authors conducted semi-structured interviews with professional process experts. Third, the authors evaluated their artifact through three real-world applications.

The authors identified 19 business process design dimensions that are grouped into different layers and specified by underlying characteristics. Guiding questions and illustrative real-world examples help to deploy these design dimensions in practice. Taken together, the design dimensions form the “Business Process Design Space” (BPD-Space).

Practitioners can use the BPD-Space to explore, question and rethink business processes in various respects.

The BPD-Space complements existing approaches by explicating process design dimensions. It abstracts from specific process flows and representations of processes and supports an unconstrained exploration of various alternative process designs.

This paper aims to clarify emerging aspects and trends of Six Sigma literature over 17 years, from 1992 to 2008.

The literature on Six Sigma from 417 referred journal articles in business and management disciplines, information systems and computer science, engineering, healthcare, etc. were systematically analyzed based on a scheme that consists of four distinct dimensions: publication year and journal, major themes, research type, and application sector (i.e. manufacturing vs service).

A number of key findings emerged: Six Sigma research is growing rapidly, covering various disciplines and domains with a great focus on Six Sigma tools and techniques; empirical research is dominant with more emphasis on case study approach; and the growing gap between manufacturing‐ and service‐focused articles implies the return of Six Sigma to manufacturing as its initial base. Although a large volume of literature is available on Six Sigma, the topic is still under development and offers potential opportunities for further research and applications.

The paper provides both academics and practitioners with a useful framework for pursuing rigorous Six Sigma research through explaining the chronological growth of Six Sigma, challenging themes of Six Sigma research, dominating research types and application areas in Six Sigma, and the major sources of Six Sigma information.

The aim of this analysis is to review the Indian manufacturing organizations practicing Lean Six Sigma (LSS) tools/techniques with an objective of monitoring the performance of an organization and to develop recommendation for strategies to benchmark organizational operational efficiency.

This study offers insights of the LSS performance measurement aspects of the Indian manufacturing organizations based on Data envelopment analysis (DEA) approach. The five inputs and two outputs are considered on the basis of literature review and discussed with the practitioners.

In this analysis, the relative efficiency score of 18 Indian manufacturing organizations has been determined in order to assist evaluation of the impact of monetary investment on the outputs. The present analysis not only investigates the optimum level of input variables but also lays down a significant observation that an organization having higher profit and inventory turnover ratio is not necessarily an efficient organization.

The results assist to determine the best practice units, potential source of inefficiency and deliver beneficial data for the consistent enhancement of the operational efficiency. The DEA results assist managers and decision makers to derive appropriate strategies to enhance their performance with reference to the efficient organization and to regard it as their role model.

This analysis renders a DEA based framework of LSS practicing Indian manufacturing organizations. The framework is unique in terms of its input-outputs variable selection and measurement procedure.