Normative violence and its implications in project scholarship

Abstract

In recent years, project scholarship has increasingly focused on the dark side of projects. However, these discussions have largely overlooked extant literature on violence that is widely referenced in broader management and organizational studies. In this essay, I argue that normative violence—violence embedded in socio-cultural and legal norms accepted and practiced in broader society—provides a valuable lens through which to analyze and discuss the inequality, harm, and exploitation present in project settings. From this perspective, I argue that future research in project scholarship should investigate how norms—borrowed from external socio-cultural and legal frameworks, as well as those developed and spread within projects—can lead to the infliction of normative violence in, around, and of projects.