Rodney Turner

• Kingston University

Introduction Graham Winch (2014) suggests that there are three organizations involved in the management of projects (see Figure 6.1): 1. The investor: The organization that initiates the project. It is a permanent organization. Its aim is to make an investment; that is to invest in making some change which will be operated to deliver benefit to rep...

The impact of multilevel level governance on the frequency of ethical issues in temporary organizations (TOs) is investigated. A structural equation model, based on a global survey, showed that behavior control, as a governance mechanism at the temporary organization (TO) level, reduces the frequency of ethical issues. This relationship is partly m...

Small to medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) undertake smaller projects than larger organizations and so need more informal people focused project management practices. We investigate the nature of SMEs that leads them to adopt practices of this nature and explore comparative benefits and costs. We interviewed 19 companies and conducted a web-based sur...

This study investigates the variety of ethical decisions of project managers and their impact from corporate governance and project governance structures. The roles of personal trust and system trust as a mechanism to steer ethical decision making in different governance settings is explored. Nine qualitative case studies in Europe, Asia, and Austr...

Our aim is to develop a set of leading performance indicators to enable managers of large projects to forecast during project execution how various stakeholders will perceive success months or even years into the operation of the output. Large projects have many stakeholders who have different objectives for the project, its output, and the busines...

The topic of what human resource management (HRM) responsibilities are devolved from the HRM department to line managers has attracted much interest in recent years. We report findings from a study on the devolution of HRM practices in four project-oriented companies (POCs) and argue that although HRM practices are carried out beyond the HRM depart...

Large projects are notorious for erosion of value during execution. Decisions made by project managers have a significant impact on the strategic value of the asset delivered, and those decisions depend on the information feed on which they are based. This study uses theories of organizational behavior, decision-making and program management to inv...

Purpose ‐ The authors propose that small to medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) need simpler, more people-focused forms of project management than traditionally used by larger organizations. The authors have undertaken this research to identify to what extent SMEs use project management and what are the key components used. Design/methodology/approach...

Growth in the use of programs has led to a requirement of understanding what constitutes program success. A measurement construct for program success, which comprises four dimensions—delivery capability, organizational capability, marketing capability, and innovative capability—was developed based on 172 responses to a web-based questionnaire to pr...

Small to medium enterprises (SMEs) make a key contribution to the economy in terms of employment, innovation and growth. Project management can play a significant role in facilitating this contribution, but SMEs require less bureaucratic forms of project management than those used by larger, traditional organizations. We are undertaking this resear...

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to investigate the relative importance of project managers' attitudes towards their project and their leadership competences for achieving project success. Leadership competences were assessed as emotional, managerial, and intellectual competences (EQ, MQ, IQ, respectively) using the leadership dimensions questi...

This study examines the leadership competency profiles of successful project managers in different types of projects. Four hundred responses to the Leadership Development Questionnaire (LDQ) were used to profile the intellectual, managerial and emotional competences (IQ, MQ and EQ, respectively) of project managers of successful projects. Differenc...

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...

From the perspective of delivering successful projects, the value of a skilled project sponsor and project manager outweighs many other factors. Projects need leaders who can give them vision, identity, keep the stakeholders and the project team on board and make the difficult decisions that will enable the project to continue (or, if necessary, be...

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...

Purpose Small to medium enterprises (SMEs) play an important role in the economy, in terms of employment and their contribution to national wealth. A significant proportion of that contribution comes from innovation. SMEs are also the engine for future growth in the economy. Project management has a role to play in managing that innovation and grow...

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to examine the differences between leadership competences of project managers and those of functional managers. Design/methodology/approach Leadership styles of 414 project managers were assessed using a validated research instrument, the leadership development questionnaire. The results were compared with the...

When complex projects go wrong they can go horribly wrong with severe financial consequences. We are undertaking research to develop leading performance indicators for complex projects, metrics to provide early warning of potential difficulties. The assessment of success of complex projects can be made by a range of stakeholders over different time...

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.

This paper reports and reflects on the discussions about the nature of the discipline of project management that took place during the 8th conference of the International Research Network of Organizing by Projects (IRNOP VIII), held in Brighton in September 2007. The discussions started with the provocative motion “This house believes that we no lo...

As part of a wider study into human resource management (HRM) practices in project-oriented organizations, we investigated the issue of employee well-being. Project-oriented organizations adopt temporary work processes to deliver products and services to clients. This creates a dynamic work environment, where additional pressures can be imposed on...

A Four-Step Process of Innovation and Learning Creating an Environment Supportive of Innovation Achieving Innovation in Project-Based Firms Retaining and Using Technological Developments The Four Practices and Four Steps of Innovation and Learning Summary References

Human Resource Management in the Context of the Project-Oriented Society Project Management Personnel Processes of Human Resource Management The Role of the PM Office in HRM Summary References and Further Reading

The importance attached by project managers to project success criteria and the associated rates of project success were assessed for different types of projects, industries and traits of project managers. 959 responses to a web-based survey showed that importance attached to project success criteria and project success rates differ by industry, pr...

Human resource management (HRM) can be viewed as core processes of the project-oriented company, affecting the way the organization acquires and uses human resources, and how employees experience the employment relationship. Knowledge about HRM is produced by researchers and theorists who, through publishing their work in books and journals, constr...

We look into the interaction of the project manager’s leadership style with project type, and their combined impact on project success. We aim to show that different leadership styles are more likely to lead to a successful outcome on different types of project. A recently developed integrated model of intellectual, emotional and managerial compete...

Extract: In the realm of multiple projects and programmes, the need for organizational capability becomes obvious if only because the management of outcomes is no longer within the confines of a single project or the responsibility and authority of a single project manager. When an organization recognises that business change and corporate strategy...

Communication structures between project owners and project managers are influenced by the principal–agent relationship between the parties and the contract type chosen. Empirical research results on project owner–manager communication practices are mapped against the contractual communication requirements in projects. This identifies possible risk...

The Project Management Institute has commissioned the authors to conduct research into whether the project manager's leadership style is a success factor on projects, and whether its impact is different on different types of projects. In this paper, we review the literature on the topic. Surprisingly, the literature on project success factors does...

Pilot studies are widely used, but surprisingly almost nothing written about them in the literature. This editorial tries to stimulate discussion to fill that gap. It is posited here that their main role is risk reduction on projects. A pilot study is an element of work of a larger project or programme, undertaken to gather data to reduce risk or u...

The Project Management Institute has commissioned the authors to conduct research into whether the project manager’s leadership style is a success factor on projects, and whether its impact is different on different types of projects. In this paper, we review the literature on the topic. Surprisingly the literature on project success factors does n...

Research shows the best project performance is obtained when there is high collaboration between client and project manager, and medium levels of structure, when the project manager and project owner work together in partnership, and the manager is empowered. Unfortunately, this is not how it happens on many projects. There is mistrust, even confli...

The purpose of project organization is to create a cooperative environment. Contracts are the method by which the owner creates a project organization to employ resources to achieve their development objectives. Contracts should aim to produce a cooperative organization, aligning the contractors' objectives with the owners. A three-dimensional vect...

The nature of the project as a temporary organization is analysed from the perspective of organizational theory. This leads to a reassessment of the definition of a project. It is suggested that classical definitions of projects are not wrong, just incomplete. The project as a temporary organization is viewed here as a production function, as an ag...

How relevant are traditional innovation ideas for project-based firms? This paper asks if project-based firms provide a context supportive of innovation or indeed if they view it as useful. Based on research in firms from a variety of sectors, including telecommunications, information systems, computers, financial services and engineering, procurem...

To achieve a successful outcome for their projects, project teams often need to liberate energies and capabilities greater than that of the sum of the individual members, during what can be a period of considerable stress. It can be beneficial to project teams to understand how this growth in group efficiency arises, and to be able to capture it re...

This paper attempts to develop concepts of project and contract organization to predict the selection of contract type on infrastructure projects. Conventional wisdom is that at low-risk fixed price contracts are best, moving to remeasurement and then cost plus as risk increases. We started trying to predict this from a transaction cost perspective...

The last 50 years has seen a shift in the nature of work, from mass production, with stable customer requirements and slowly changing technology, to the current situation where every product or service may be supplied against a bespoke design, and technology changes continuously and rapidly. This modern environment is a more project-based economy....

Using the Body of Knowledge from the Project Management Institute this study explores the relative impact of the different project management knowledge areas on the Earned Value (EV) measures of Percent Schedule Variance (%sv) and Percent Cost Variance (%cv) in Information Technology (IT) projects. The results show that a planning stage after contr...

Project-based organisations require a different approach to their management from the functional hierarchical line-management approaches adopted for most of the 20th century. The latter works well where products are stable. During the latter half of the century, however, the nature of work has changed so that now, for many organisations, almost eve...

Key Words: project management competence, implicit and explicit knowledge, project management education, project management profession, stages of career development. Abstract Project Management is becoming established as a profession, and an essential part of that is practitioners should have a theoretical knowledge of the subject, from which they...

This paper describes how project-based organizations use structured experience to aid the learning and development of individuals, and how they capture their experience of projects to feed that back into the improved management of future projects and the experiential learning of individuals. We show that successful project-based organizations ensur...

Throughout the latter half of the 20th century, there has been a shift in the management paradigm, from the functional, bureaucratic approach, almost universally adopted in the first half of the century, to project and process-based approaches. This shift has been in response to the changing nature of work from mass production, with essentially sta...

It has been perceived wisdom that where an organisation is undertaking a portfolio of projects, they should use a common approach to the management of all projects in the programme. Presumed benefits include comparable progress reporting, and consistent calculation of resource requirements enabling sharing of resources. People can also move freely...

The image of an organisation structure as a pyramid has dominated management thinking for the past century, providing an image of stability in troubled times. The resulting functional, hierarchical, line management structures are used both as the structure for governance of the organisation and as the operational model, although there is no inheren...

There is increasing agreement that understanding complexity is important for project management because of difficulties associated with decision-making and goal attainment which appear to stem from complexity. However the current operational definitions of complex projects, based upon size and budget, have been challenged and questions have been ra...