Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to describe and summarize a PhD thesis that contributes to the understanding of how unexpected events (deviations) are handled. It explores the reality of project manager's attempts to address loosely coupled components of tightly coupled projects from a...

Purpose – At the heart of this paper is the question of how to describe the ongoing changes of project management (PM) and how to cultivate the understating of projects. In line with the theme of this issue, a non‐traditional approach of presenting this paper is used with the aim of...

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to investigate the variety of affective emotions that are evoked in extant project management (PM) practitioners by various PM artefacts. Design/methodology/approach – A phenomenological methodology is used for eliciting, through self‐reporting and...

Purpose – This paper aims to look closely at the actuality of project formation to investigate the performance of project shaping – those acts performed by individuals to make that form of “sense” that constitutes a new project, and to propose a framework for mapping the skills of those...

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to analyze the empirical relationship between project management (PM) efforts (the extent to which national project coordinators (NPCs) – the project managers in the aid industry sector – make use of available PM tools), project success, and success...

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to contribute to the understanding of groupthink in temporary organizations. Only anecdotally has the literature touched upon how the temporary organization's structure may foster groupthink. Studies of faulty group processes are imperative since...

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate how the practice of program management can be used to manage strategically‐oriented initiatives such as mergers and acquisitions (M&As). Design/methodology/approach – The methodology applied is high‐level reflective retrospective...

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to summarise a recent doctoral thesis on the relationship between project portfolio management (PPM) and competitive advantage in service and manufacturing organisations. Design/methodology/approach – This two‐phase mixed method study comprises a...

Purpose – 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. Design/methodology/approach – Soft systems methodology is selected...

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to reflect on some of the fundamental project management (PM) research issues facing PM as a discipline. It aims to pose fundamental questions about where PM research has been heading over the last five decades and how it can remain relevant in supporting...