Christophe Bredillet

• PhD
• Full Professor of Organisational Project Management at University of Quebec at Trois-Rivieres

La santé psychosociologique est un enjeu de première importance notamment en contexte de projectification. Ainsi le lien entre santé psychosociologique et gestion de projet doit être repensé au-delà des modèles traditionnels. L’article propose une réflexion théorique sur ce lien peu exploré. Pour appuyer cette réflexion, nous proposons une intégrat...

The study provides a comprehensive view of the research that has been conducted in the previous three decades on the topic of ‘green consumer’ in the marketing management domain and unravels the intellectual structure of the field along with the identification of core research gaps. Bibliometric analysis of 493 Scopus-indexed documents was conducte...

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the project team member's skill developmental activities within the context of a public organization, as to suggest both a theoretical understanding and a procedure adapted for this development, which is based on a reflective approach. The methodology used is based on a qualitative inductive approach subj...

Organizations still struggle to efficiently manage their complex product development projects (PDPs). A contributor to poor project performance is the dynamics of engineering design rework (EDR), due both to the necessity of adjusting the product being developed and the disruption it causes to the development process. The purpose of this research i...

The limitations of complexity theorizing in project studies are traced back to simplistic and reductionist theorizing strategies. This article offers pragmatist recommendations to develop strong theorizing strategies organized in a triad: orders of theorizing (degree of recursiveness of the theorizing process), levels of theorizing (interactions be...

Project management (PM) approaches are as diverse as the collaborative R&D projects they aim to manage. Indeed, numerous different PM approaches exist, all of which share the same goal, i.e. to increase the success and value of projects. This chapter presents a review of the leading PM approaches based on processes, results, competencies, and agili...

Stakeholder (SH) management has recently undertaken a turn from the traditional management "of" to managing "for" and "with" SH. Relating to this relational trend, identification and management tensions between SH is an important area of study. Indeed, from how to live with and/or resolve or not those tensions depend on the possibility of building...

This paper builds on the recent interest for the potential of neo-institutional theories to further research in project management. We discuss the relevance of organizational institutionalism for research in project management, and present the analysis of an action-research case study on a series of global roundtables on contracting for complex pro...

The purpose of this paper is to conceptualize temporary organizing as a practopoietic system. We critically review the current conceptualizations of projects; from the traditional project management perspective, and the temporary organization perspective using a systems approach. By juxtaposing the characteristics of the project with a system, we a...

The purpose of this paper is to conceptualize temporary organizing as a practopoietic system. We critically review the current conceptualizations of projects; from the traditional project management perspective, and the temporary organization perspective using a systems approach. By juxtaposing the characteristics of the project with a system, we a...

The purpose of this article is to organize this literature, which will facilitate a systematic investigation of work motivation in temporary organizations. First, we highlight the limitations of current theoretical lenses of work motivation specific to temporary organizations. Second, we synthesize three major theories-Event-Systems (E-S) theory, S...

Purpose Both project investments and entrepreneurial ventures are considered powerful catalysts of economic prosperity and social progress. But these ventures and investments come with their inherent challenges and risks. Observing this situation, academics have paid close attention to the fields of entrepreneurship and project management (E&PM)....

The growing popularity of Project Management Offices (PMOs) as organizational structures is grounded in the assumption they support more efficient and effective project management for better strategy implementation. However, research emphasizes they fail to deliver expected value: their unstable nature precludes the delivery of long-term benefits....

Traditional conceptualizations of strategy, entrepreneurship, and project management were predicated on a rational choice model of planning and decision-making. This paper examines contemporary theories and models in entrepreneurship and project management, respectively, to compare and contrast how the two disciplines deal with uncertainty. This pa...

Traditional conceptualizations of strategy, entrepreneurship, and project management were predicated on a rational choice model of planning and decision-making. This paper examines contemporary theories and models in entrepreneurship and project management, respectively, to compare and contrast how the two disciplines deal with uncertainty. This pa...

The purpose of this chapter is to propose an approach to structure literature review along robust theoretical lenses leading to conceptualization of work motivation in case of temporary organizations. The chapter is in response to studies calling for a “seamless” theory of work motivation spanning across different management disciplines, without be...

The purpose of this paper is to conceptualize temporary organizing using a systems perspective. We argue that while traditional project management has characteristics of an autopoietic system, temporary organization is an allopoietic system, and temporary organizing is a practopoietic system. Building on the concept of practopoietic system, we then...

In recent years, organizational project management (OPM) has emerged as a field focused on how project, program and portfolio management practices strategically help firms realize organizational goals. There is a compelling need to address the totality of project-related work at the organizational level, providing a view of organizations as a netwo...

This paper addresses a recurrent topic of organizational project management (OPM) research: Project Management Offices (PMOs) are perceived to be instrumental in implementing strategy through portfolios of projects, but empirical evidence also shows that PMOs are often short-lived and their value is hard to quantify. We argue that an explanation ma...

p>For the past 60 years, organisations have increasingly been using projects and management of, by and for projects to achieve their strategic objectives (Morris & Jamieson, 2004; Morris & Geraldi, 2011). Project management (PM) makes an important and significant contribution to value creation globally. However, the ‘glocal’ context in which projec...

This paper is grounded in 25 years of “engaged scholarship” and trailing research within a major organization. The problematic to address is, depending on the level of uncertainty, complexity both in project characteristics and in pluralistic context, how to continuously enact and (re)create in-house standards & guidelines? The paper offers a criti...

Project practitioners become so familiar with the word project that they think about it more in terms of how it is used, and less in terms of what it really is. But is there such a thing as the project being managed? What’s most real in the project? What’s a project? We raise these questions to contribute a subtler understanding of project manageme...

In this study, we set out to explore the relationship between an individual's personality type, and work motivation on project success. We try to understand how an individual's organisational commitment (OC) and professional commitment (PC) mediate this relationship. We present an extensive literature review of the variables of interest and present...

Kapsali (2011) recommends organizations to adapt themselves to environmental complexity. One of the most important issues in this adaptation process is coping with uncertainty and risks (Dunović, 2015; Sanderson, 2012). Uncertainty and risks are subject to the complexity and environmental dynamics (Rasmussen, 1997). Former research (Bourgeois, 1985...

This paper is grounded in 25 years of qualimetrics intervention research and trailing research within a major organisation. The problematic to address is, depending on the level of uncertainty, complexity both in project characteristics and in the pluralistic context of the project, how to continuously enact and (re)create in-house standards and gu...

The purpose of this study is to propose an operational definition of work motivation in temporary organizations. We use job design perspective of work motivation as a theoretical lens. We present an extensive review of job design theories from industrial-organizational ( I/O) psychology, and reconcile structure the work motivation literature in tem...

I wanted to offer a chapter in order to suggest some assumption-challenging perspectives that contrast to the dominant paradigm supporting doctoral studies leading usually to nice research but with little impact to organisation life. This chapter examines the challenges project management research faces in order to meet the expectations of practic...

The purpose of this article is to contribute, from a research practitioner perspective, to the theory–practice gap debate in organization studies, focusing on pluralistic contexts such as project organizing. The current debate is introduced, then the features of the two main philosophical traditions (i.e., modernism and postmodernism) are criticall...

Organizations’ poor performance results in losing 10.9 percent of their investment in portfolios of projects which shows their inadequate management of strategic initiatives. Thus the development of Portfolio Management of projects (PfM) as an organisational capability that enables organisations to align their projects with organizational strategy...

Recently, I was investigating the relation between project management problems (i.e. any kind of project organizing questions (e.g. Puranam et al, 2014)), competent project managers and ethics (Bredillet, 2014; Bredillet et al., 2015). I argued that deontological ethic (“what ought be”, doing “right”, i.e. using “ the right means”) and consequentia...

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to introduce, in the project management field, an Aristotelian ethics lens moving beyond the classical deontological and consequentialism approaches underlying the current ethical practices and codes of ethics and professional conducts. In doing so, the author wishes to pose the premises of a debate on the imp...

The overall purpose of this paper is to contribute to the theory - practice gap debate in organization studies, especially in pluralistic contexts such as project organizing. We briefly outline some of the current debates, i.e. modernist and postmodernist proposals, and the prevalent dichotomous thinking stance assumptions to better move beyond it,...

The purpose of this paper is to take a critical look at the question “what is a competent project manager?” and bring some fresh added-value insights. This leads us to analyze the definitions, and assessment approaches of project manager competence. Three major standards as prescribed by PMI, IPMA, and GAPPS are considered for review from an attrib...

The Australian Government has an unprecedented opportunity to take a leadership role to achieve improved productivity giving a competitive and co-adaptive advantage in securing and delivering major complex infrastructure projects. Through acting as an equity co-investor in a collaborative research and development effort, the Australia Government co...

If we acknowledge the increasing weight to the project-based economy, we recognize the failure for projects to deliver the expected benefits, despite the development of standards of best practice and credentials by professional bodies. However, project managers competence is widely assumed to be a key driver to project success. Thus we raise the qu...

The dynamic and complex nature of project management (PM) in Australia provides exciting opportunities for universities to that are willing to actively engage with their corporate partners and other key stakeholders to develop program and course offerings that simultaneously address the needs of students, employers, and other stakeholders and furth...

The purpose of this paper is to present a theoretical framework to investigate the relationship between work motivation, organisational commitment and professional commitment in temporary organisations. Through a review of theory, we contend that work motivation has two major patterns — internal motivation (which includes intrinsic, need-based and...

This paper takes its root in a trivial observation: management approaches are unable to provide relevant guidelines to cope with uncertainty, and trust of our modern worlds. Thus, managers are looking for reducing uncertainty through information’s supported decision-making, sustained by ex-ante rationalization. They strive to achieve best possible...

The purpose of this article is, ironically, to offer a critical discussion about the “practice” lens and its weaknesses in addressing acting and knowledge & competence development in the pluralistic context of temporary and project-based organizing. Therefore, as “reflexive” practitioner, I demonstrate that “practice turn” and “phronetic proposal”...

In Social Science (Organization Studies, Economics, Management Science, Strategy, International Relations, Political Science…) the quest for addressing the question “what is a good practitioner?” has been around for centuries, with the underlying assumptions that good practitioners should lead organizations to higher levels of performance. Hence to...

In spite of the activism of professional bodies and researchers, empirical evidence shows that project management still does not deliver the expected benefits and promises. I call for a Perestroika in researching and acting in project management situations. My intent is to suggest a balanced praxeological view of the apparent opposition between soc...

This paper demonstrates that project management is a developing field of academic study in management, of considerable diversity and richness, which can make a valuable contribution to the development of management knowledge, as well as being of considerable economic importance. The paper reviews the substantial progress and trends of research in t...

The purpose of this paper is to present theoretical lenses that explain the relation between work motivation and project management success in case of temporary organizations such as projects. This paper is a part of the larger research study that first empirically identifies the constructs of work motivation in case of temporary organizations, and...

The purpose of this paper is to present theoretical lenses that explain the relation between work motivation and project management success in case of temporary organizations such as projects. This paper is a part of the larger research study that first empirically identifies the constructs of work motivation in case of temporary organizations, and...

The purpose of this paper is to present a theoretical framework to investigate the relationship between work motivation, organizational commitment, and professional commitment in temporary organizations. Through a review of theory, we contend that work motivation has two major patterns- internal motivation (that includes intrinsic, need-based, and...

The purpose of this article is to investigate the relationship between organizational and professional commitment of project workers. We first present (1) role-conflict theory and exchange theory to establish the multiple dimensions of commitment (affective, continuance, and normative) and (2) social identity theory to support our argument for diff...

Modern project management had its genesis in the field of operations research in the late 1940s, but today it is a much more diverse subject. It has evolved and developed a much wider range of methods, techniques, and skills that the project manager can draw upon. Not all these skills are relevant to every project, but an assortment of them will b...

The purpose of this article is to suggest a possible “meta” approach of the project management field—the unit of analysis—respectful of the various perspectives in existence, while providing an integrative ontological and epistemological framework. In order to do so, I first suggest what could be perceived as being the state of the field and its ma...

Modern project management had its genesis in the field of operations research in the late 1940s, but today it is a much more diverse subject. It has evolved and developed a much wider range of methods, techniques, and skills that the project manager can draw upon. Not all these skills are relevant to every project, but an assortment of them will b...

This paper investigates the role of cultural factors as possible partial explanation of the disparity in terms of project management deployment observed between various studied countries. The topic of culture has received increasing attention in the management literature in general during the last decades and in the project management literature in...

The purpose of this study is to understand the constructs of work motivation in project-based organizations. We first juxtapose work motivation in traditional and project-based organizations to put forward an operational definition of work motivation for our study. We then present the research methodology where we profile work motivation as perceiv...

This article seeks to address the question of the current state of project management research through an analysis of the domain's advance over time, as evidenced in the pages of its principal academic research outlets. While there are many ways in which theoreticians and researchers have sought to examine the evolving nature of the project managem...

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the influence of work motivation on project management success empirically. Though the relationship between employee motivation and project success has been extensively covered in the literature, more research focusing on the nature of job design on project success may have been wanting. We address this g...

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to provide a summary description of the doctoral thesis investigating the field of project management (PM) deployment. Researchers will be informed of the current contributions within this topic and of the possible further investigations and researches. The decision makers and practitioners will be aware of a se...

The purpose of this study is to understand the constructs of work motivation in project— based organizations. We first juxtapose work motivation in traditional and project— based organizations to put forward an operational definition of work motivation for our study. We then present the research methodology where we profile work motivation as perce...

This paper investigates the role of cultural factors as possible partial explanation of the disparity in terms of Project Management Deployment observed between various studied countries. The topic of culture has received increasing attention in the management literature in general during the last decades and in the Project Management literature in...

The purpose of this chapter is to investigate the Japanese answer to the 90s depression, both 1) as a case study of what framework has been developed to address new business challenges and value creation in complex, ambiguous et uncertain environment, that is the development of Project and Programme Management for Enterprise Innovation (P2M) (Ohara...

Exploring Research in Project Management—Nine Schools of Project Management Research (Parts 1-6) In the next series of the “Letter From the Editor,” I am going to present the results of research undertaken with my colleagues J. Rodney Turner and Frank T. Anbari in order to draw a mapping of the researches conducted in the field of project managemen...

We review the substantial progress and trends of research in Project Management, which we have grouped into nine major schools of thought. We address interactions between the different schools and with other related management fields, and provide insights into current and potential research in each and across these schools.

The purpose of this paper is to suggest a framework to the influence of 'work motivation' on 'project success' from a team members perspective. Results from a literature review of 1345 articles on 'project success' and 1063 articles on 'work motivation' appearing in peer-reviewed journals between 1985-2005 are presented. We then propose a framework...

Purpose 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 an...

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to summarise a successfully defended doctoral thesis. The main purpose of this paper is to provide a summary of the scope, and main issues raised in the thesis so that readers undertaking studies in the same or connected areas may be aware of current contributions to the topic. The secondary aims are to frame th...

The paper introduces the underlying principles and the general features of a meta-method (MAP method) developed as part of and used in various research, education and professional development programmes at ESC Lille. This method aims at providing effective and efficient structure and process for acting and learning in various complex, uncertain and...

Purpose 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. Design/methodology/approach Review of the literature and reflection on the practice of being actively involved in conducting and supervising academic research and disseminating...

Introduction: Some Conceptual Issues to Knowledge and Learning in Project Management Knowledge Management: Overview, Key Issues Organizational Learning: Mapping the Domain, Considerations From Knowledge Management and Organizational Learning to Learning Organization Project Management, Knowledge Management, and Organizational Learning: A Systemic R...

In this study, we explore motivation in collocated and virtual project teams. The literature on motivation in a project set.,ting reveals that motivation is closely linked to team performance. Based on this literature, we propose a set., of variables related to the three dimensions of ‘Nature of work’, ‘Rewards’, and ‘Communication’. Thirteen origi...

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the Japanese answer to the 90’s depression by (i). presenting a case study of the framework developed to address the new business challenges and value creation in complex, ambiguous and uncertain environment, i.e., Development of Project and Programme Management for Enterprise Innovation (P2M) and Project...