Kirsi Aaltonen

• D.Sc. (Tech)
• Professor (Full) at University of Oulu

The breakthrough in generative artificial intelligence (AI) has unlocked new possibilities for higher education. There are many studies on educational chatbots in the fields of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics; however, studies on designing and leveraging chatbots in a multidisciplinary field like project management have been scarc...

A trade association is a not-for-profit organization made up of companies and/or individuals with common interests or who work in the same industry. They act as a representative body for the industry they represent. As the ‘industry voice’, trade associations speak on behalf of their members to government, agencies, regulators, the media, and other...

Purpose Relational contracting is increasingly being applied to complex and uncertain construction projects. However, it has proved hard to achieve stable performance and industry-level learning in this field. This paper employs an institutional perspective to analyze how legitimacy for relational contracting has been produced and challenged in Den...

Social media platforms have become common for engaging community stakeholders online in infrastructure projects. While online engagement can play a meaningful role in an infrastructure project's value creation and distribution, limited empirical evidence exists on how infrastructure project organizations' social media communication contributes to c...

The earned value management (EVM) is a project management method for monitoring and controlling project expenditure and progress. Teaching EVM is challenging as the method may appear theoretical, mathematical, and disconnected from the uncertainty of real-life projects. Educational games have been suggested as one method to influence students’ moti...

Purpose The purpose of this study is to investigate the benefits and challenges of implementing circular economy (CE), as well as shed light on the influence of procurement strategy in CE implementation in construction projects. Design/methodology/approach A qualitative research approach with abductive reasoning was adopted. The empirical data wer...

Purpose The aim of this research was to understand how governmental stakeholder engagement facilitates the sustainability of industrial engineering (IE) projects. A model for governmental stakeholder engagement activities is presented. Design/methodology/approach The authors relied on a single-case study of a mining project in Northern Europe, whe...

Inter‐organisational construction projects face the challenge of aligning objectives, facilitating trust, and integrating the resources and knowledge of various autonomous organisations and project team members with differing backgrounds and objectives in a timely manner so that the planned project outcomes are realised. This chapter talks about te...

Purpose In this study, we develop further understanding of how institutional change is created within a mature and local industry. In this pursuit, we examine how a collaborative large project governance model was institutionalized at an industrial sector-level through both industry-level activities and “institutional projects”. Design/methodology...

Purpose Project complexity has been researched much. The majority of publication is searching for law-like relations or development of descriptive frameworks. More prescriptive knowledge is needed to guide the project managers in navigating the project complexity in project managers' pursuit of success. Identifying the complexities of a given proje...

Purpose-Integrated project delivery (IPD) and building information modeling (BIM) have been discussed as prominent collaborative concepts in recent architecture, engineering and construction (AEC) literature, thus recommended for more advanced value creation. However, they have been studied predominantly as discrete even though they are typically h...

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to define the integration capability dimensions and create a model for self-assessing the integration capability in inter-organizational projects. Design/methodology/approach A theoretical construct of, referred in this study as integration capability framework is elaborated following a systematic literature re...

Empirical examples have demonstrated that project organizations increasingly use social media for engaging external stakeholders. However, very few studies in the field of project management have yet explored this topic. The purpose of this chapter is to examine how project organizations can use social media for engaging external stakeholders. The...

Managing stakeholders is an essential part of complex project organizing. Stakeholder management is a key activity for creating value to project stakeholders and ensuring successful project delivery. However, previous research suggests that stakeholder management is challenging due to project complexity. While stakeholder management and project com...

We employed engaged scholarship as a research strategy for exploring the applicability of relational contracting in nuclear power projects. Insights from a series of workshops with nuclear industry practitioners in Finland indicated that although project alliancing is not a familiar contractual approach in the nuclear industry, the benefits of its...

The benefits and challenges of using game-based learning (GBL) methods in project management higher education have not been widely investigated. This study employs qualitative methods and builds on in-depth interview data from 22 experienced university teachers with a project management teaching background. It shows that teachers perceive beneficia...

Several studies have indicated that project managers' competencies contribute to construction project success in a considerable manner. However, these studies have mainly addressed subject of the interest in the context of traditional construction projects. The choice of construction project delivery models is increasingly turning from traditional...

Collaborative project delivery models were introduced in North Sea oil and gas projects. Recently, they have been successfully applied in the context of construction and infrastructure projects but their application in industrial engineering project context has been limited. We analyze empirically which type of challenges there are in applying coll...

Currently, the increase in relational project contractsand integrated project deliveries indicates that companiesshould collaborate to facilitate more effective project delivery inindustrial projects. Collaborative project identity is considered acore concept in the evaluation of processes involved incollaborations between industrial projects. The...

Projects and project-based activities account for over 30% of the global GPD and act as significant vehicles in the transition towards a more sustainable future. Sustainability strategies are typically enacted and implemented through projects in project-based organisations and firms. Incorporating sustainability principles into the project, product...

In this chapter, we provide an institutional perspective on a systemic approach to safety in a project context. Major safety-critical projects are implemented in an operating environment of diverse and sometimes conflicting institutional pressures and demands from multiple participating project actors. Linkages between institutional environment and...

Collaborative work practices are getting more common in construction projects. Consequently, new project delivery models have emerged and new practices have also entered the world of traditional delivery models. The resultant collaborative construction projects provide a different working environment compared to the traditional construction deliver...

Engaging project stakeholders and integrating their user knowledge plays an increasingly vital role in projects to ensure benefit creation of projects. Due to digitalisation new practices are evolving that allow for digital ways of integrating and interacting with future end users by analog and digital boundary objects. This paper focuses on identi...

Purpose Project complexity is becoming increasingly challenging for project managers. Much valuable research has been done on the concept of project complexity. The research reported in this paper aims to provide a new means (the “Complexity Navigation Window”) and guiding principles for the navigation of project complexity in practice. Design/met...

In this chapter, we evaluate the process of implementing human factors (HF) in nuclear power industry from the design thinking point of view. We reflect how the HF implementation manifested design thinking perspective and furthermore, if the design thinking approach would be valuable for the improvement of safety management practices in nuclear ind...

Purpose The purpose of this study is to create a framework to analyze approaches for coordination, adaptation and safeguarding of exchanges in interorganizational project networks. Design/methodology/approach An analysis framework to analyze governance in project networks was created based on a systematic review of existing literature. The framewo...

In 2018, the Construction giant Carillion went into compulsory liquidation costing the UK taxpayers an estimated £148m. According to our analysis performed on the case, the demise of Carillion was the result of accumulation of failures and normalisation of deviations from good practice. The purpose of this study is to better understand how deviance...

Project success research has been a field of importance for more than three decades. The research field has been developing along the passed time; however, our understanding of this development is very limited. This study aims at understanding the longitudinal developments in the project success research field, and discussing and elaborating furthe...

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to achieve an understanding of the challenges and preconditions for inter-organizational collaborative project practices in industrial engineering projects. A framework for identifying the challenges and preconditions for inter-organizational collaboration is presented. Design/methodology/approach The adopted r...

Collaborative delivery methods in construction projects provide a new operational environment, which can foster effective interaction and cooperation between different project stakeholders. Project managers are one of the most important players in this environment, who therefore need to possess appropriate competencies. Collaborative construction p...

External stakeholder engagement is crucial for delivering value to diverse stakeholders in inter-organizational projects, however, it is not straightforward to organize this in a way that adds value. The intra-organizational focus of previous research offers limited insights into the relevant roles, responsibilities, arrangements and activities in...

Supply chain risk management has been well researched over the years. However, management of social risks in bioenergy supply chains has been studied less in contemporary research. The ability of bioenergy companies to identify, properly address, and communicate social sustainability has become crucial for many global producers. In order to meet cu...

Purpose: The success of projects clearly relies on project management personnel and particularly on project managers. Their performance and capacities are based on the achieved competencies. The purpose of this paper is to address possible discrepancies between the views arising from the research results and standards of practice related to project...

Purpose In megaprojects, changes in scope and organization may occur continuously. The purpose of this paper is to investigate how actors in a project network make sense of a safety-related process innovation introduced during the design phase. Design/methodology/approach An inductive single case study of an ongoing nuclear power plant project in...

Earlier research has highlighted the dynamic nature of influencing in business networks, and shown that firms may vary considerably in their influence, defined as their potential to achieve changes in the activities, resources, or goals of other firms in the business network. There is, however, limited understanding of the specific means of influen...

Project alliance requires all parties to work together in good faith, share project risks, and make unanimous decisions for the betterment of the project. A key feature of successful implementation of a project alliance is a focus on value creation and value for money. This paper proposes a qualitative system dynamics model to specify and explain d...

Purpose This paper aims to increase the current understanding of the connection between operational level information and communication technology (ICT) projects and national level digital transformation by researching how project governance structures and practices are applied in an e-government context. Design/methodology/approach An elaborative...

This paper introduces a procurement capability model for supporting the strategic decision-making in establishing and developing purchasing organisations during the early development phase of large infrastructure projects. Large infrastructure projects have traditionally emphasised the production-related technical competences as the core of their o...

Purpose The “big room” concept and lean philosophy have become increasingly popular in the construction industry. Visual control is a central part of lean philosophy and the big room concept; its aim is to improve information flow, joint problem-solving and real-time decision-making. Visual control facilitates effective project management by provid...

Purpose ICT projects, especially in the public sector, can have a substantial impact on society but are challenging due to organizational and technological complexities and uncertainties. Collaborative and cooperative project delivery models, namely, the project alliance method, can mitigate such challenges, but, thus far, have not been utilized i...

The purpose of this study is to provide understanding of project governance practices in agile projects. A systematic review of the previous agile literature is conducted to identify and categorize agile project governance practices, which are synthesized in a six-dimensional framework. The study contributes to the literature by contrasting traditi...

Collaboration with stakeholders has become a cornerstone of contemporary business; however, absolute collaboration is not trouble-free. The present study explores how and why firms engage and disengage external stakeholders in their value-creating activities in complex product systems over time. From the existing research on stakeholder management,...

Public infrastructure projects must comply with the divergent and even conflicting demands of multiple institutional logics causing institutional complexity. Despite the increasing interest in different forms of complexities in projects, we lack empirical illustrations and rigorous theorizing of mechanisms for responding to institutional complexity...

Long term use of postmenopausal hormone therapy (HT) has been reported to increase breast cancer risk. On the other hand, observational studies suggest that breast cancers diagnosed during HT may have a more favorable prognosis. While family history is a risk factor for breast cancer, and genetic factors also influence prognosis, the role of family...

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to elaborate the understanding of socialization in the context of temporary operations and organizational settings, using project alliance – the most contemporary approach to the management of large and complex projects – as an example. In particular, the paper also assesses how informal and formal socialization...

Purpose This study aims to explore how to identify and manage opportunities successfully in a large multi-organizational infrastructure project. Large projects struggle with exploiting and capturing opportunities because of the lack of practices that support active and continuous opportunity management over the project lifecycle in inter-organizati...

Urban renewal projects involve several public and private stakeholders whose interaction during the project's early stage determines the scope of the project. Prior research has conveyed a somewhat ahistorical view of this early stage, based on the assumption that abundant design options are available to stakeholders. This study of a multi-stakehol...

Inter-organizational projects struggle to build a sense of joint belonging and a culture of cooperation. In evaluating the social processes of collaboration in inter-organizational projects, organizational identity is considered a core concept. To extend existing knowledge of how collaborative identity is formed in inter-organizational infrastructu...

Purpose Project alliancing – a project delivery model used in delivering complex projects – demands new organizational capabilities for successful project implementation. The purpose of this paper is to define the concept of project alliance (PA) capability and to identify the elements that constitute an organization’s PA capability. Design/method...

Purpose Agile methodologies are widely used to manage the technical complexity of software development, and project governance can provide feasible means of organizational support for complex project success. The purpose of this paper is to: analyze the project governance practices of public sector organizations, illustrate what kind of impact thes...

Purpose The effective management of inter-organizational integration is central to complex projects. Such projects pose significant challenges for integration, as organizations struggle with constantly changing inter-organizational interdependencies and must develop and adapt integration mechanisms to meet new demands. The purpose of this paper is...

The business ecosystem is a co-evolving, self-organised constellation. By examining the case of a health and well-being campus, we describe how end customers' requirements can be defined based on service preferences. During ecosystem initiation these requirements help to identify a set of core service providers. The research proposes that early cus...

Agile development methods were developed to enhance innovations and productivity in software projects, increase customer collaboration and flexibility, and enable dynamic approach to change management. These key principles of agile approach responded to the challenges that project management faced with software projects. The agile methods are incre...

Because research focusing on sustainability in a project context is still nascent and fragmented, we carried out a systematic literature review covering all research published in five leading journals in the fields of project management and sustainable production prior to 2016. Our analysis revealed two distinct perspectives in the project sustaina...

Understanding stakeholders, their influences and devising engagement strategies based on the analyses of stakeholder landscapes has become one of the key capabilities within project-based firms. Based on a systematic literature review of the project stakeholder management literature, we develop a conceptual framework for characterizing and classify...

This study aims to research the impact of impersonal and interpersonal trust on communication among virtual teams. A multi-method case study was conducted, with data provided by 94 organisation members in a global telecommunication company with a long history of virtual ways of working. The case study consisted of semi-structured interviews, an ele...

Agile development methods are widely used among business enterprises. Since the introduction of the Agile Manifesto in 2001, several agile methods have been implemented, first in single-team setups and later in larger multi-team setups for complex Information Technology (IT) system development. However, the adoption of agile methods has been slow i...

In this paper, the key aspects associated with procurement in the context of the real estate and construction sector(RECS) are discussed, in order to address the research gaps in purchasing and supply management. The research question is “What kindof context-specific attributes can be identified in the RECS with respect to procurement”, arguing tha...

Understanding stakeholder dynamics and their impact on project management is crucial, especially for large and complex projects such as nuclear waste repositories. This study examines the stakeholder dynamics during the project front-end stage of two pioneering nuclear waste repository projects. To analyze changes in stakeholders' importance and po...

Contemporary project risk management literature introduces uncertainty, i.e., the lack of information, as a fundamental basis of project risks. In this study the authors assert that equivocality, i.e., the existence of multiple and conflicting interpretations, can also serve as a basis of risks. With an in-depth empirical investigation of a large c...

This research develops the understanding of project stakeholder management through examining how stakeholder communication is facilitated and managed during the different phases of the project's life cycle. By building on the information processing view and the stakeholder salience framework, our study shows how stakeholder communication practices...

Genome-wide association studies (GWAS) and large-scale replication studies have identified common variants in 79 loci associated with breast cancer, explaining ~14% of the familial risk of the disease. To identify new susceptibility loci, we performed a meta-analysis of 11 GWAS, comprising 15,748 breast cancer cases and 18,084 controls together wit...

Increasingly, projects are executed by networks of organizations. The networked form of organization has many important implications for project risk management. Information processing theories introduce mechanisms for processing information inside organizations as well as among organizations to reduce the uncertainty and equivocality inherently pr...

Genetic variations, such as single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) in microRNAs (miRNA) or in the miRNA binding sites may affect the miRNA dependent gene expression regulation, which has been implicated in various cancers, including breast cancer, and may alter individual susceptibility to cancer. We investigated associations between miRNA related...

Project marketing research has shown that project-based firms (PBFs) can favorably differentiate themselves from their competitors by developing a strong functional position and a strong relational position in a specific market milieu. Combined, these two interrelated positions constitute the market position of a project-based firm, and inter-organ...

Estrogen receptor (ER)-negative tumors represent 20–30% of all breast cancers, with a higher proportion occurring in younger women and women of African ancestry1 . The etiology2 and clinical behavior3 of ER-negative tumors are different from those of tumors expressing ER (ER positive), including differences in genetic predisposition4 . To identify...

Purpose – The establishment of legitimacy is one of the critical issues faced by international projects that involve a host of stakeholders and are implemented in challenging institutional environments. The purpose of this paper is to examine the establishment of legitimacy and factors that affect this process in the context of international projec...

International projects face a variety of pressures from their uncertain and complex external stakeholder environments. In order to reduce uncertainty, a project management team builds up interpretations about their environment by conducting stakeholder analysis. This study aims to examine the interpretation processes, through which project manageme...