Shankar Sankaran

• BSc, DMIT, MEng, PhD
• Professor (Full) at University of Technology Sydney

Michael Jackson's early work on the development of the Systems of System Methodologies recognised that problem situations can be complex, across both decision‐makers and systems. Jackson later advocated for methodological complementarity in his works on critical systems thinking, suggesting that ‘hard’, ‘soft’ and ‘emancipatory’ approaches may all...

This paper investigates the synergy between Levin’s theories on technology transfer as a socio-technical learning and developmental process (TLD process), and what we learnt about socio-technical systems (STS) theories in a case study developing human robot solutions for the construction sector. Levin’s extensive work highlights the significance of...

The multiple changes in population, economy, and social structure have significantly impacted China’s traditional home-based elderly care and social welfare. The importance of institutional care is becoming increasingly prominent. One of the critical considerations for the development of institutional care is its social sustainability, which pursue...

This process article reports on the use of Gioia data structures as a visual boundary object in project management research. Gioia data structures work as effective boundary objects that span a research team’s geographical distance in a virtual setting as an artifact for promoting visual collaboration in project management research. We demonstrate...

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to explore how organizations manage and integrate exploration and exploitation across the innovation project portfolio. Such ambidextrous capabilities are required for organizations to innovate and succeed in today's rapidly changing competitive environment. Understanding how exploration and exploitation project...

A project-oriented organization is a hybrid form of organization where a functional hierarchy is augmented with structures to manage projects strategically across the organization. Six project-oriented organizations from diverse industries that emphasize innovation in their strategies were selected for this study. We use the three pillars of instit...

Social sustainability, the social pillar of sustainable development, has had increasing influences in recent years. It pursues the realisation of human well‐being and focuses on satisfying human needs and improving the quality of life. Unfortunately, there is a lack of social sustainability research in the aged care sector. The definition and indic...

City rebuilding precincts are embedded in, surrounded by, and sometimes resisted or celebrated by stakeholders they impact. These projects require long-lasting relationships and loyalty from the community they serve, making trust a crucial factor. This article employs a case study approach and draws from both social exchange and circuit of power th...

Projects are a primary mechanism for the delivery of social, environmental and economic benefits. Transforming business for good requires that organisations have the ability to make good decisions about projects and expected benefits. This research study focuses on the board-level decision environment, explores how members of a Board of Directors e...

Context: Megaprojects are a phenomenon for fulfilling infrastructure requirements and aspirations of citizens of a nation. Characters/entities: Leaders of project teams working on megaprojects. Locations: Megaprojects occur worldwide, an example is given from Panama. Research gaps: Owing to the sheer quantum of resources consumed in megaproject de...

Too much governance can stifle innovation in organizations. Too little governance can waste precious organizational resources. Business agility demands empowerment of people to take decisions on initiatives designed to deliver innovative products and services. Traditional monthly and quarterly governance forums such as steering committees and progr...

This article is aimed at organisations and researchers to urge them to adopt more systemic ways to deal with energy justice issues in renewable energy projects being built around the world to help meet the United Nations Sustainable Development Goal (UNSDG) 7. It will focus on solar and wind farms. While these projects positively contribute towards...

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to investigate and discuss stakeholder issues faced by renewable energy megaprojects and in particular solar and wind power projects and their relevance to socioeconomic evaluation of megaprojects. Design/methodology/approach The paper uses secondary data collected from the recent literature published on stakeh...

This case study discusses the application of balanced leadership in Transport for New South Wales in Australia (Transport). It reports on three aspects of balanced leadership in Transport: how decisions are made regarding projects and programs; how leadership shifts between the vertical leader (project or program manager) and horizontal leader (sub...

This chapter discusses how leaders are identified in projects. As leaders are also appointed to teams in organizations, the chapter begins with a discussion on the nature of team leadership in organizations. It describes one of the models used for explaining team leadership and its application in an organizational context. The authors then turn to...

This chapter discusses how teams are nominated in projects. As teams are also used in organizations, the chapter points out the differences between the characteristics of teams in organizations and those in projects. Projects use different types of teams at different times; the types of teams used in projects and the sequence in which they are acqu...

This chapter addresses empowered leadership and its governance. The chapter starts by looking at empowered leadership and its impact on organizational performance and then discusses the factors that positively and negatively influence the role identity of empowered leaders. Subsequently, the authors turn the perspective toward governance and govern...

This chapter describes balanced leadership theory. It starts by discussing the need for theories for good practical work. A positioning follows, which locates balanced leadership as a middle-range theory between substantive and grand theories. The chapter continues with some of the required information to make sense of the theory. This includes the...

This chapter addresses the coordination between the project manager and project team members during balanced leadership. This coordination takes place through a socio-cognitive space (SCS), consisting of the joint understanding between the project manager and project team about (a) the shared mental model for project execution (i.e., skill needs, w...

This chapter addresses horizontal leadership and its scenarios. It starts by looking at what horizontal leadership is, and how horizontal leaders execute their leadership task in the context of balanced leadership. Then, it describes scenarios that occur when horizontal leaders are nominated, identified, selected, and empowered by the project manag...

This book has presented a theory of project leadership from the perspective of balancing leadership between the project manager and horizontal leaders. The theory offers an explanation on how the shifting of leadership in projects between formally appointed leaders and project team members occurs, and how social and cognitive structures enable such...

This chapter addresses the transition of leadership authority. This event occurs after an empowered leader’s assignment comes to an end. Leadership transition starts with a reflection and decision on the compatibility of the role’s conditions with the empowered leader’s actual behavior. In addition, internal and external contingencies are taken int...

This short chapter puts the book’s theme in the context of contemporary thinking, which perceives leadership as a shared experience among members of a community. It then anticipates and discusses some of the critiques that might come up while reading this volume, including the development of leaders in identifying situations for and training the us...

This chapter addresses the selection and empowerment event in balanced leadership; that is, when a team member or a subteam is selected and subsequently authorized to temporarily lead the project. The chapter introduces selection and empowerment concepts, first from a general management and then from a project management literature perspective. The...

This book is about contemporary leadership in projects. It adds two new perspectives to the leadership literature. The first is that of horizontal leadership. This occurs when the project manager empowers a team member to lead the project through a crisis or to solve a particular issue that the project manager might not be able to do. Once the hori...

Balanced leadership has emerged as a contemporary theory of the dynamics in the continuous transfer of leadership authority between project managers and team members in projects. This article addresses the cognitive mechanisms for the coordination of this transfer. Four case studies in three different continents identified the most generic cognitiv...

Current market trends show that customers no longer perceive value in a product but in the solution it provides. Consequently, businesses are realigning their value proposition to provide solutions than just selling products. Such offerings combined with the advancement in smart capabilities have given rise to cyber-physical product-service systems...

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to present evidence to the heated debate “whether Public-Private Partnership (PPP) model should be introduced into the hospitals” and, if so, how to promote the social sustainability of such PPP projects. Design/methodology/approach This paper has established an analytical framework to analyse the social sustai...

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to identify the issues that limited the supply of home and community-based Long-Term-Care (LTC) for the elderly, offer essential insights into the sustainable development of China's LTC. Design/methodology/approach A content analysis of news coverage on 12 major portals in China has been conducted to identify t...

Infrastructure projects such as metro rails are being increasingly built in busy cities mainly to improve mobility and reduce congestion. However, assessment of benefits realized from these projects is complex. One reason for this is that promoters of these projects often misrepresent the projects’ benefits to get them approved. Although some benef...

The unprecedented investment in megaprojects that has been witnessed in recent years seems likely to accelerate post Covid-19 with several countries, like Australia and the United Kingdom, announcing large infrastructure projects for economic revival. COVID-19 has also created social challenges due to increased unemployment that could result in an...

Purpose The purpose of this article is to investigate collaboration in project management research. Although the literature shows an increase in collaboration between scientists and social scientists for various reasons, it is unclear how and why such collaboration takes place in project management research. The literature does show that co-authors...

The Evaluative Study of Action Research presents all eight published papers as part of the six-year, global, Evaluative Study of Action Research (ESAR) in one volume. The study sought to enhance the academic rigour of Action Research (AR) and provide greater evidence of its impact. This research contained in this book shows, in a cohesive way, how...

The primary purpose of this study is to examine the relationship between two leadership styles (vertical and distributed), conceptualized through types of decisions made (strategic and operational/tactical), and the state of psychological contract (fulfillment/breach) at three different levels of the organizational hierarchy in project-based organi...

This paper proposes a framework developed by the authors to analyze life stories collected from megaproject leaders for a book. From initial themes derived from these stories, the authors found that an analysis framework that takes into account elements of time, space and relationships in the stories could provide a richer analysis facilitating a c...

This paper proposes a framework developed by the authors to analyze life stories collected from megaproject leaders for a book. From initial themes derived from these stories, the authors found that an analysis framework that takes into account elements of time, space and relationships in the stories could provide a richer analysis facilitating a c...

The literature on megaprojects are oriented towards ‘knowing’ the problems and ‘knowing’ the solutions, and there is a dearth in literature aimed at explaining strategies adopted in ‘doing’ or implementing that knowledge. Particularly, the literature highlights communication as important as part of the ‘knowing,’ while there is a gap in ‘doing,’ as...

“Megaprojects” is a term used to refer to projects and events that encompass large-scale projects in size, cost, space, time, energy, and influence. They are synonymous with large engineering projects, complex projects, large transport or energy projects, and large infrastructure projects, and are often composed of multilayered discrete projects fo...

Despite cost and schedule overruns and benefits shortfalls, megaprojects (which are large-scale projects that typically cost over a billion dollars and take years to develop and build) continue to be promoted and built creating a mega-project paradox. Prominent megaproject scholar Bent Flyvbjerg (2014) argued that this could be motivated by four 's...

This chapter applies a systems lens to the governance of projects, megaprojects (which are major undertakings, typically in infrastructure development), and Organizational Project Management (OPM), which is the integration of all project-related activities in an organization. The chapter provides an overview of systems thinking in the governance li...

External stakeholder support is critical to the success of megaprojects, necessitating strategic engagement, often using Information and Communications Technology (ICT). We conducted 30 semi-structured interviews with a megaproject team and analysed their social media communications with the project community. The findings show three ICT practices...

64th Annual Meeting of the International Society for the Systems Sciences will be held from July 11-14, 2020. The ISSS2020 conference will be co-hosted by the Center for Complex Systems in Transition (CST), Stellenbosch University, South Africa and co-hosted by North-West University and Stellenbosch University in Stellenbosch, Cape Town, South Af...

The adoption of Building Information Modelling (BIM) has been recently increasing within the Architecture, Engineering and Construction (AEC) industry. The current approach on adoption of BIM by the Vietnamese decision makers (e.g. government agencies and senior industry leaders) is primarily concerned with improving the adoption rate measured by t...

It is important that an organization selects the right projects and carefully manages and governs them to deliver their intended benefits. This paper will describe a model for Organizational Project Management (OPM) to help organizations to do that. OPM is the integration of all project management-related activities of an organization linking strat...

This concise text introduces an integrated view of all project management-related activities in an organization, called Organizational Project Management (OPM). The reader will learn how separate organizational functions, such as project, program and portfolio management and governance integrate in a cohesive manner. The book describes how differen...

Infrastructure megaprojects straddle multiple stakeholder boundaries who have an interest in the project and are affected by the project. Multiple papers in the literature stress the need for holistic approaches to stakeholder engagement, as existing approaches only address the concerns of the noisy stakeholders. This research proposes an innovativ...

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to investigate how project managers, influence the assignment of project team members by directly assigning or specifying who they want or by indirectly using lateral influence strategies to secure the appropriate resources. This study is part of a wider study investigating the balance between vertical and horiz...

The gap between supply and demand for health care services is expanding rapidly in China. In order to resolve this problem, the government has implemented supply‐side reforms in the health care sector by inviting private capital to increase supply quantity and improve quality. However, health care institutions have high complexity and particular ne...

The contemporary discourse on organizational project management (OPM) complements project, program, and portfolio management with emerging elements, such as governance, projectification, the project management office (PMO), and organizational design. This creates the need for an integrated model that defines the content and roles in OPM. This artic...

In the literature on construction projects, the role of project managers in maintaining control over tasks and activities has been theorised comprehensively, placing a firm focus on vertical forms of leadership. Increasingly, construction firms are challenged with unprecedented operational uncertainty, brought about by changes to project environmen...

The current discourse on organizational project management (OPM) focuses mainly on the integration of project, program and portfolio management, and ignores the contributions of other organizational entities and tasks to OPM. This paper overcomes this shortcoming by taking an organization theory perspective to develop and validate a seven layer "on...

A comprehensive identification of the forms of opportunism is essential for the academic and practical field of project governance. There is evidence that opportunistic behaviour demands different governance approaches and not all forms of opportunism may be detrimental to the performance of principal-agent parties in a contract. Researches on form...

The research introduces the combination of Diffusion of Innovation Theory and Activity Theory to investigate the process of adoption and implementation of BIM in the construction industry in Vietnam. Data was collected from three large main contractors as they are considered as innovation leading organizations. Qualitative research was employed usi...

This paper discusses how an emerging awareness of the complexity of project portfolio management (PPM) led to development of a role-play based simulation to test different means of identifying and reflecting on factors influencing the quality of decision making in stressful situations. Recognition of the inability to access reliable data in organis...

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to identify the marketing practices adopted by contractors in project-based industries to win new business and maintain relationships with existing clients. Design/methodology/approach The authors interviewed eight such contractors, and used activity theory as a lens to analyze the results. The authors invest...

Purpose The purpose of this paper is twofold: to identify how horizontal leaders (within project teams) execute their leadership task in the context of balanced leadership; and to pinpoint scenarios that can occur when horizontal leaders are identified and empowered by the vertical leader (senior or project managers) and a project task is handed ov...

Project portfolio management (PPM) bridges strategy and project management. Traditional research in PPM has primarily investigated the rational, top-down and structural aspects of strategizing. By doing so, it has failed to focus on the underlying practices that are triggered by the strategy and how these practices frame strategy implementation. Pr...

Balanced leadership has recently been identified as an important new leadership theory for projects. The present study is a first quantitative investigation for the validation of two of its major components, namely horizontal leadership and its regulating mechanism called socio-cognitive space. 174 responses to a worldwide survey were analyzed usin...

The majority of project mortfolio management tools are not flexibly responsive to complex and dynamic environments. This can results in business failures when management do not effectively direct adjust project portfolios to meet organisational and contextual needs. Insufficient attention has been given to the impact of individual decision making,...

This white paper summarizes the various conceptual, qualitative and quantitative studies performed in the research program on balanced leadership in projects, done between December 2015 and December 2017. Nine country teams with 22 researchers performed 54 case studies, including 278 interviews, and one global survey with 174 responses. Results pro...

Purpose To glean leadership lessons of megaproject managers through the life stories of four purposefully selected managers from two contemporary and two landmark megaprojects. Design/methodology/approach A narrative inquiry approach applying thematic analysis is used to capture lessons learnt from these stories with a focus on leading megaproje...

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to provide a brief overview from the literature on how best to define megaprojects in contemporary contexts. There is a need for a definition that encompasses a complex matrix of characteristics, inclusive of positive and negative aspects, which are not necessarily industry or sector specific. Whilst megaprojec...

This paper develops a framework for understanding the interaction between person-centered leadership by project managers (a.k.a. vertical leadership (VLS)) and team-centered leadership by individuals in the project team (a.k.a. horizontal leadership (HSL)). It builds on Archer's Realist Social Theory and its morphogenetic cycle, which describes the...

The aim of this chapter is to guide you to conduct your systems research project. It will start suggesting some ways to establish a research project based on traditional project management principles and compare it with ways in which a systems researcher might set a research project. It will then explain the importance of constructing a methodology...

Action research is widely acknowledged as an effective framework of empowerment and emancipation to improve a social situation or condition—an intent that appeals to leaders wishing to create improvement, particularly in low socioeconomic and disadvantaged communities. Validity of such espousals has been substantially unexplored, and where evaluati...

This paper contributes to Rodney Turner's initiative to develop a theory of project management from practice. Organizational scholars studying strategy suggest that more attention needs to be paid to practices involved in organizing, as well as the institutional contexts in which these practices are embedded. Taking a cue from strategy-in-practice...

Introduction This chapter focuses on defining and making sense of what organizational project management (OPM) is through the lens of integration. In this chapter we share our views on how we understand and define OPM so that the authors who have collaborated with us in this book are not only able to understand and critique our view, but can also d...

Systems researchers often combine methodologies to carry out systemic interventions in a purposeful way. Midgley defines a systemic intervention as “purposeful action by an agent to create change in relation to reflection on boundaries”. It is therefore important when undertaking systemic interventions that researchers and practitioners engage in ‘...