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The purpose of this paper is to present an overview of a completed doctoral action research thesis that moved beyond focussing on the instrumentality of project actuality to explore project praxis as social process.

Soft systems methodology is selected as the process of enquiry for the thesis, to explore a perceived complex problematic situation. A conceptual framework is designed to guide thinking to explore the social nature of projects, through acknowledging the interconnected nature of human realities, the pragmatism of knowledge and the emergent nature of cognition.

The paper reveals the reality of project complexity as being socially derived, necessitating an emergent project management response to the inherent differences created from human plurality. Organisational resilience emerged as dependent upon recognising and successfully managing the evolving cognition that arises from a multiplicity of human and project environmental interconnections.

The project context plays a significant role in determining project outcomes. Projects, as social process will benefit from a PM strategy that adaptively responds to manage the power and politics inherent in project practice, particularly in contexts involving socially disparate stakeholders.

The research is implemented in a Middle Eastern setting where local cultural constraints add to organisational and project complexity caused by socio‐cultural differences in an expatriate workforce. Portraying projects as “complex adaptive systems” has facilitated a shift in project management thinking from traditional linear, inflexible models, towards approaches which can more ably accommodate for human diversity in project practice.

The purpose of this paper is to analyze the similarities and differences between the Danish rethinking project management (RPM) initiative named Project Half Double (PHD) and the RPM research stream. The paper furthermore discusses how PHD and RPM can inspire each other in research and practice.

This is an empirical paper based on collaborative research between industry and researchers. PHD has developed principles and practices driven by industry consisting of ten leading stars and the impact, leadership and flow (ILF) method. The ten leading stars and ILF method are compared to RPM research. The comparative analysis is then used in a broader discussion about how the research-driven RPM initiative can enrich the industry-driven PHD initiative and vice versa depicted in a theoretical understanding of translations between global ideas and local implementations.

RPM and PHD share a focus on value creation, social processes, learning and complexity while PHD also focusses on lean thinking, agile thinking, front-end loading and leadership, which are largely topics beyond the RPM research stream.

The paper presents how stakeholders from Danish industry interpret the actuality in projects and how they want to move forward with a radically different project paradigm. This is expressed in the ten leading stars and ILF method, which is compared and contrasted to the existing RPM literature providing a foundation for further development of both RPM and PHD.

The purpose of the paper is to propose a framework for researching the possibilities for project manager identities: the multiple ways there are of being a performer, as a manager, in the world of projects.

The author's line of enquiry was to seek evidence of project manager identity within real‐life stories told by practitioners, the author's perspective being: that identity is produced through action, that action and identity are framed by social narratives, and that identities and the strategies that create and support them are therefore evident in project stories.

Two examples are discussed; they validate the proposed research framework, demonstrating how storytellers use their projects as vehicles for the performance of their personal professional “project manager identity”.

The form of the stories is crucial to what their analysis can reveal about identities. The personal stories (narrating the storyteller's own experience) must be, in essence, complete, told by individuals addressing situations that challenge them.

The primary purpose of this research is to inform personal learning and educational programmes. An enriched understanding of what it means to be a professional in the project world can enhance the awareness of individuals learning to perform roles, and making choices in this field.

The analysis of stories has been used previously as a research methodology to critique projects and power structures. This paper makes proposals to extend the use of such analysis into the realm of personal identity and its construction.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the lived experience of the project leader and generate additional insight into the relationship between the social and technical aspects of the actual practice of project leadership, focussing on a particular type of project that is prevalent in practice but largely overlooked in mainstream literature. It is referred to here as a “loosely coupled transient” (LCT) project.

Using an exploratory, inductive approach, the research investigates the lived experience of 30 project management (PM) practitioners to try to deepen the empirical and conceptual insight into the nature of the leadership challenge and what it takes to be successful in the LCT project setting. The research design includes an extra data-collection phase to allow the initial findings and their interpretation to be further validated and refined in the field.

The empirical findings highlight the importance of three socio-behavioural roles: context building, culture-bridging and political brokering, in addition to the more traditional technical coordinating role, and examine their implications for future research and practice.

The findings emerging from this study are based on the insights provided by 35 exploratory interviews and while they provide the authors with useful insights into the socio-behavioural roles that practitioners consider necessary, they should now be further examined through more focussed, systematic research.

This study points up that project leadership requires new forms of ability and intelligence described in this study as contextual, cultural and political forms of intelligence. Practitioners suggest the findings have a potential usefulness in the selection and training of future project managers.

The study attempts to provide a fresh perspective on social phenomena that are context specific, of relevance to PM practice and of interest to the academic community. It contributes to previous PM research by furthering the analysis of actual PM practice that takes place within the project setting by giving explicit consideration to the importance of understanding the contextual, cultural and political influences on leadership in the project setting.

The purpose of this paper is to understand the philosophical changes which underpin research and practices in project management. This study is an attempt to challenge previous studies that have tried to explain this change in order to provide a better explanation.

The authors adopt a critical review research method to challenge previous explanations of the paradigm change and definition of communication. For this purpose, philosophical and social theories and concepts have been used.

This paper proposed changing the paradigm from modernism to postmodernism and the paradigm shift, which happens from postmodernism to participation, as a better explanation for the paradigmatic change in project management. Furthermore, the important role of communication has been illustrated in the participation paradigm.

For the first time in project management, the authors attempt to clarify the role of power in this paradigmatic shift, especially because this concept is an axial concept in postmodern philosophy and a neglected concept in project management literature. In addition, communicative action theory has been used with the aim of pursuing the influence of informal power in the participation paradigm and paving the way for confronting its emerging challenges in future studies.

The purpose of this paper is to review and analyze Albert Hirschman’s landmark book Development Projects Observed, share its insights for managing big projects, discuss its theoretical implications and how it may contribute to the current understanding of project behavior, project management (PM), and in what way it may encourage the rethinking of PM.

The paper is based on an in-depth analysis of Hirschman’s book. The paper draws on the writings of Jeremy Adelman who authored Hirschman’s biography, Cass Sunstein and Michele Alacevich who, respectively, wrote the foreword and afterword of the Brookings Institution classic published in 2014. It also profits from the work of Robert Picciotto who first met Hirschman in 1964, and Bent Flyvbjerg who recently offered a test of validity for Hirschman’s “Hiding Hand” principle.

Albert Hirschman was an original thinker and, the authors argue in many ways, a father of PM scholarship. His ideas had profound implications for social sciences and lasting influence in academy, policy, and practice. Although, to a great extent based on studies of projects, his ideas have had surprisingly little impact on modern writings of PM. This paper contributes to amending this weakness in current literature on PM. The authors identify in Hirschman’s book a set of core ideas that possess analytical power for explaining problems in contemporary PM. They include the principle of the Hiding Hand, the power of context, the role of complexity and uncertainty, the unexpected project effects, project traits, and latitudes/disciplines. For all his work and way of research, the authors conclude that Hirschman is not only an early behavioral theorist in PM but equally an early rethinker of PM.

This is the first paper that offers a discussion of Hirschman’s ideas on contemporary projects, how to understand them, their behavior, including the principle of the Hiding Hand and other important nuggets of wisdom in his research such as the significance of project traits, latitudes, and disciplines. The authors discuss in what respects these ideas may enlighten PM practice and theory. This paper also conveys the novel idea that Hirschman is an early rethinker of PM.

The purpose of this paper is to outline a research agenda for the phenomena of projects grounded in Continental philosophy concepts as an alternative to the dominant Analytical thinking.

A theoretical exploration of Continental concepts in generic terms; discussion of the examples of discourse on various philosophical lenses in different disciplines; discussion of extant examples in the project literature of Continental themes; conceptualisation and discussion of the Continental research agenda.

The integrated Continental research agenda proposes three key themes: experience, projectyness and being. This interpretive lens is important for providing an alternative worldview to the dominant Analytical viewpoint.

The paper provides an integrated Continental framework (drawing on a variety of Continental themes) for the conceptualisation of, and inquiry into the experience of project work. It highlights how our worldview impacts our interpretation of phenomena.

This paper reports on an action research study based optimization project related to healthcare IT implemented on the Faroe Islands. The aims were to study what constitutes value in the public healthcare setting by applying and activating existing resources in the organization, hence answering the overall research question: How can a resource-based view (RBV) improve benefits management (BM) practices?

By applying a RBV to findings from an action research study of an optimization project of an integrated health information system (HIS), a framework of capabilities needed in a public HIS setting to create value was developed.

The theoretical contribution is a framework explaining how BM practices and, hence, value can be interrelated in a public healthcare IT system.

The study shows the need for academic IT professionals to structure and facilitate value generation, especially in the form of creating an innovative and learning environment in the form of an action research based project.

This study suggests which actors should be motivated and developed in order to ensure value in healthcare IT projects. Having value creation in mind, the model could have potentially broad applicability in a variety of healthcare IT settings.

The findings leads to better usage of public healthcare resources.

The present research studies real problems in a real setting, thus providing distinct ideas on how to improve public value creation by direct engagement of researchers.

The purpose of this paper is to suggest a situated conception of projects, in order develop finer understanding of how these endeavors emerge and unfold over time. The author proposes that these understandings should be rooted in a process ontology, conceive action as situated and focus on actual practices as they are performed by all project actors. Taken together, these dimensions can renew how one views and approaches projects and their management.

The paper is illustrated with examples taken out of a study of a software development project, conducted in the ethnographic tradition.

The examples expose how a specific practice, planning, was accomplished differently depending on the moment and was affected by different circumstances and constraints. The paper also discusses how preferring a processual worldview is especially befitting projects. As endeavors instigated to create or to make something happen, projects are perpetually changing and in movement; it is therefore relevant that their conceptualization takes fully into consideration their intimate nature.

The originality and value of the paper lie in the combination of perspectives, which can be both useful in theorizing projects differently, and in enhancing practitioners' reflexivity. This combination, it is argued, can address a wide array of issues in the context of projects, can favor localized reflection on project management prescriptions and tools, and can help practitioners to sharpen their sensitivity to their own practice.