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The purpose of this paper is to consider how multiple logic systems employed by project managers lead to manifold understandings of two foundational project management constructs (“project” and “planning”) that in turn influence both the practice of project management and project outcomes.

Largely conceptual in nature, this paper focuses on the language project managers use to make sense of projects and plans, seeking to get beyond the surface recitation of discourse to the underlying logic systems that influence practice. The discussion is illustrated with stories of practice, collected through interpretive phenomenological interviews with project managers perceived by their peers to demonstrate special skill or knowledge in successfully delivering projects, and reference to project management doctrine embedded in professional standards.

Expert project managers use multiple thinking styles to adapt their practice to emergent project issues. While instrumental rationality helps project managers focus on how to do things, other rationalities, particularly those labeled non‐rational, help them to decide what to do and why to do it. Expert judgment and practice supported by intuitive, holistic, and relational thinking allows project managers to navigate a sophisticated journey from ambiguity to accomplishment.

This paper illustrates how practice research can deconstruct interpretive phenomenological interviews to get beyond identifying the “what”, or empirical evidence, of practice to explore unique individual habitus that inform each individual's practice. Understanding the actions of expert project managers navigating between prescribed project management doctrine and their own praxis opens a space for us to rethink how we research, teach, and talk about project management.

This paper provides insight into the value and implications of practice‐based research by illustrating: how research grounded in practice identifies and raises more complex questions than professional doctrine currently reflects; and how simplifications utilizing duality as a means of theorizing (i.e. “hard” versus “soft”, rational versus non‐rational, etc.) is neither useful nor reflected in expert practice.

The purpose of this editorial is to reflect on the growing interest of situated project research.

The editorial is conceptual and relies on published work and the articles included in the special issue.

With this special issue it is found that practice‐based studies, also called Projects‐as‐Practice studies, interested in the everyday activities of project practitioners, are multi‐faceted and rich. What may also be seen is that practice‐based studies are not yet a coherent area. However, it is more important that practice‐based studies allow researchers to understand the organization less as an entity and more as a socially‐accomplished task.

Several implications for research are offered, including the need for studies that emphasize the small details of organizing, and that practice‐based studies are not restricted to a certain methodology but depend on what a particular paper tries to accomplish.

With an ever‐growing stream of research focusing on projects the guest editors argue that it is about time to look into the details of organizing. This could be accomplished through a number of ways but in this special issue it is proposed that approaching traditional areas with a conscious naivety when asking the questions may do it. For the practitioner, the special issue offers important insights into how things are done in practice, which may be used as a mirror or reflection upon their own practice.

This editorial and special issue offer insights for any academic interested in understanding projects differently.

The purpose of this article is to provoke diversity scholars to think about the implications of the confluence of the racial disparities in the effects of the Coronavirus and the persistence of racial inequality for a new direction of theorizing in the field.

Drawing upon three major analogies between the Coronavirus and the virus of racism, the author discusses their similarities as a means to think about why racism persists despite efforts to eradicate it. The history of racism in the United States forms a key part of the discussion.

The current theoretical tools diversity scholars primarily use to address racial inequality in organizations may only at best mitigate, not eradicate, racism in organizations. There is a need to direct theoretical development toward the concepts of racialization and deracialization.

The views and proposals for new theorizing reflect the author's positionality and biases. It also relies on three of the many possible analogies that can be made between racism as a virus and the Coronavirus.

Understanding racism through the lens of racialization and deracialization can help organizations and the leaders of them to identify the structures that embed racism and also how to change them.

Understanding racism and processes of racialization is critical to achieving racial equality. Organizations are one of the main societal institutions that shape and perpetuate the racism and inequality among African-Americans and other people of color experience. Awareness of the continuing effects of racism is critical to anticipating how virus pandemics increase the vulnerability of marginalized racial groups to greater health risks and precariousness.

This essay provokes diversity scholars to engage in reflexive discomfort about the current path of theorizing in the field. It suggests ways that the concept of racialization can be used descriptively and normatively to theorize racism in organizations. In addition, it proposes deracialization as a frame for supplanting the ideology of White supremacy and theorizing nonracial organizations.

The purpose of this paper is to explore how and why teachers use historical fiction in their classroom (e.g. selection and instruction) through the lenses of their pedagogical content knowledge (Shulman, 1986) and pedagogical tools (Grossman et al., 1999).

The authors explored the following questions: In what ways do elementary school teachers, more specifically fifth grade teachers responsible for early US history as part of their social studies curriculum, use historical fiction in their classrooms? and What factors do elementary school teachers consider when they select historical fiction to use in their classrooms? In order to explore these questions, the authors interviewed eight fifth grade teachers. The authors describe the ways in which these teachers use historical fiction as part of their social studies instruction by employing collective case study (Stake, 1994).

This study has reified this notion that historical fiction is widely used by fifth grade teachers. The authors identified that these teachers are choosing texts that allow them to integrate their language arts and social studies instruction in effective and engaging ways. Many participants described choosing the texts purposefully to address social studies standards during their language arts time. Despite many of these teachers using prescribed curricula for language arts instruction and following state standards for social studies, the teachers in this study felt free to make curricular decisions related to integration. Most importantly, when given this freedom, they chose to integrate purposefully with quality texts.

The primary limitation of this research study is the small sample size (n=8). However among the eight teacher participants, there are two states are represented, varied teaching contexts (e.g. departmentalized, self-contained classrooms), and many years of classroom social studies teaching experience.

The Common Core State Standards for English Language Arts (CCSS) (Council of Chief State School Officers and the National Governors Association, 2010) have prompted teachers to present both informational text and literature in equal balance in upper elementary grades. Little research has been done in the last decade about the ways in which historical fiction addresses these standards.

The purpose of this paper is to understand the nomological network of associations between collective mindfulness and big data analytics in fostering resilient humanitarian relief supply chains.

The authors conceptualize a research model grounded in literature and test the hypotheses using survey data collected from informants at humanitarian aid organizations in Africa and Europe.

The findings demonstrate that organizational mindfulness is key to enabling resilient humanitarian relief supply chains, as opposed to just big data analytics.

This is the first study to examine organizational mindfulness and big data analytics in the context of humanitarian relief supply chains.

Because of its omission of social influences, conventional animosity research has failed to sufficiently consider consumption context. To address this limitation, this research constitutes two interrelated parts: (a) investigating how normative influences (value-expressive and utilitarian influences) shape consumers’ animosity attitudes and purchase intentions; and (b) building on the normative influence perspective and separating consumption context into purchase (online vs. offline) and usage (private vs. public) contexts. The goal was to examine under the condition of preference conflict, how consumption contexts with different degrees of behavioral exposure affect purchase decisions.

One pretest, one survey and one experiment were conducted to empirically validate the proposed research model.

In an international crisis, consumers’ attitudes and behaviors were socially determined. Moreover, the online purchase with private usage (offline purchase with public usage) condition resulted in the highest (lowest) level of purchase intention.

This research pioneers in the animosity literature to identify the possibility of preference conflict in a situational international crisis, and to more delicately separate the conventional consumption context into purchase and usage contexts.

The purpose of this study is to investigate the attitudes and perceptions of Greek librarians regarding information literacy programs and their preparedness for such programs.

The study was targeted at all professional and paraprofessional staff of the academic libraries in Greece and Cyprus. The instrument was a specially designed structured questionnaire which included 20 questions, in sum 67 variables.

Most libraries do not deliver information literacy programs, but some kind of library instruction. Many respondents consider that more money, more librarians and an appropriately equipped space are the best ways to improve information literacy programs. Concerning the information literacy trainers, there are those who emphasize teaching abilities and/or pedagogical experience, and those who emphasize infrastructure and funding.

The paper contributes to the existing knowledge of information literacy skills by revealing certain issues regarding the academic libraries in Greece and Cyprus.

Aarhus Kommunes Biblioteker (Teknisk Bibliotek), Ingerslevs Plads 7, Aarhus, Denmark. Representative: V. NEDERGAARD PEDERSEN (Librarian).

The purpose of this paper is to investigate student information literacy skills in the Technological Education Institute (TEI) of Thessaloniki, Greece, and examine whether courses and/or library seminars make any difference and contribute to the development of information literacy skills.

The survey is conduct with students from all the departments of TEI that are enrolled at the sixth or seventh semester of their studies. The instrument of the survey is a structured questionnaire that included 12 questions, and measured a total of 73 variables.

A significant percentage of the students have not completed an assignment in the previous semester, are not acquainted with the scientific sources available in the library, and have not attended an information literacy course and/or a library seminar. However, there is a slight difference between those respondents who have “attended an IL course integrated in the curriculum” and those who have not.

The approaches described here may be helpful to librarians when they prepare guidelines for a program that assesses the level of students with regard to information literacy skills.