International Journal of Project Management最新文献

{"title":"Does proximity foster collaboration? exploring the role of proximity in shaping relationship quality and knowledge flow in inter-organizational projects","authors":"Yangzhi Yan ,&nbsp;Liang Xiao ,&nbsp;Abubakar Sadiq Ibrahim ,&nbsp;Xiaowei Luo ,&nbsp;Xiaopeng Deng","doi":"10.1016/j.ijproman.2025.102791","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.ijproman.2025.102791","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Inter-organizational projects (IOPs) are increasingly adopted to address complex and knowledge-intensive tasks across diverse industries. Effective inter-organizational knowledge flow is crucial for IOPs success but is often hindered by weak relational foundations, divergent systems, and limited collaboration history. Although prior studies identify trust and relational quality as central enablers of inter-organizational knowledge flow, they largely treat these relational conditions as pre-existing rather than examining how they are formed. As a result, the contextual antecedents that shape relational foundations—particularly the various forms of organizational proximity—remain insufficiently theorized in the project management literature. This gap is especially salient in IOPs, where organizations often lack collaboration history and operate under divergent governance systems. Drawing on transaction cost theory and social capital theory, this study examines how six dimensions of inter-organizational proximity—geographical, cultural, institutional, technological, policy, and goal—affect knowledge flow in IOPs, and whether this relationship is mediated by relationship quality. A sequential mixed-methods approach was employed, combining a three-wave survey of 272 professionals with semi-structured interviews in five representative IOPs. The results reveal a clear hierarchy: goal and cultural proximity are the primary drivers of relationship quality and knowledge flow, while technological proximity exhibits a significant negative impact on knowledge flow, a paradox attributed to perceived competition. Furthermore, geographical proximity has a moderate effect, and policy/institutional proximities are important but insufficient. Crucially, relationship quality serves as the central mechanism that translates structural proximity into effective collaboration. By bringing a knowledge governance and organizational proximity perspective to IOPs, this study contributes to the project management literature on the structural antecedents of relational conditions and offers practical guidance for partner selection and knowledge governance in complex, multi-organizational environments.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":48429,"journal":{"name":"International Journal of Project Management","volume":"44 1","pages":"Article 102791"},"PeriodicalIF":7.5,"publicationDate":"2026-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145798499","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"管理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Caring beyond compliance: how social procurement professionals reshape relational norms in construction projects","authors":"Roksolana Suchowerska ,&nbsp;Martin Loosemore ,&nbsp;Ashlea Coen ,&nbsp;Suhair Alkilani","doi":"10.1016/j.ijproman.2025.102783","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.ijproman.2025.102783","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Large construction projects are increasingly required to create social value through social procurement. Yet project managers often struggle to fulfil these contractual obligations due to industry norms that undermine the relational practices on which social value creation depends. Using Ethics of Care theory and drawing on semi-structured interviews with fifteen Social Procurement Professionals (SPPs) in the construction industry, this article investigates whether and how SPPs practice care, and how a caring relationality challenges the transactional, rationalist norms that otherwise prevent projects from creating social value. Thematic analysis shows that to create social value, SPPs foster trust, reciprocity, and collaboration among webs of project actors by evoking their emotions, moral responsibility, holistic perspectives, and long-term commitment to change. In doing so, SPPs act as intermediaries who work on shifting relational norms in projects towards greater inclusivity and care. The findings suggest that while SPPs often remain marginal and under-resourced in project structures, they play a critical role in shifting how projects create social value, thus offering new insights for both project management scholarship and practical implementation of social procurement.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":48429,"journal":{"name":"International Journal of Project Management","volume":"43 8","pages":"Article 102783"},"PeriodicalIF":7.5,"publicationDate":"2025-11-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145418026","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"管理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Unpacking technical-political interweaving and the dual role of information technology in project collaboration","authors":"Pei Ma ,&nbsp;Isabelle Y.S. Chan ,&nbsp;Ying Gao ,&nbsp;Shuibo Zhang","doi":"10.1016/j.ijproman.2025.102770","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.ijproman.2025.102770","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Interdisciplinary project teams face significant challenges when collaborating across knowledge boundaries. However, existing research focuses primarily on technical issues while overlooking political complexities. This creates incomplete understanding of how political complexities are resolved, how technical and political components intertwine, and how information technology serves as boundary objects. This research addresses these gaps by developing a theoretical framework that integrates both technical and political components, grounded in sociomateriality. Built environment projects featuring building information modelling-enabled early facilities management involvement provide the research context, where information technology enables interdisciplinary collaboration amid complex boundary-spanning challenges. Two interconnected study phases were conducted, employing qualitative methods. The findings illuminate mechanisms underlying political abilities arising from capital utilization and conversion, identify the driver of technical-political interweaving, and reveal information technology’s dual role and perceived effects. This research advances sociomaterial boundary-spanning studies and provides insights for information technology-enabled interdisciplinary collaboration in projects.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":48429,"journal":{"name":"International Journal of Project Management","volume":"43 8","pages":"Article 102770"},"PeriodicalIF":7.5,"publicationDate":"2025-11-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145322518","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"管理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Call for papers: Power and politics in project management","authors":"","doi":"10.1016/j.ijproman.2025.102790","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.ijproman.2025.102790","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":48429,"journal":{"name":"International Journal of Project Management","volume":"43 8","pages":"Article 102790"},"PeriodicalIF":7.5,"publicationDate":"2025-11-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145623879","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"管理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Building organizational and project readiness for AI: A dialectical approach","authors":"Daniel Erian Armanios ,&nbsp;Christopher L. Tucci","doi":"10.1016/j.ijproman.2025.102792","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.ijproman.2025.102792","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>To date, most organizational and project management studies have focused on how to deploy artificial intelligence (AI) tools to improve outcomes. However, this wrongly assumes the preexisting project and organizational context is already prepared to incorporate such AI tooling productively. To address this issue, this essay proposes a provocation that we call CIPHER, a first-of-a-kind framework to increase organizational readiness for deploying AI in project work. CIPHER identifies six key tensions that occur with the use of AI: <u>C</u>ognitive, <u>I</u>nformational, <u>P</u>rojection, <u>H</u>aptic, <u>E</u>xchange, and <u>R</u>esource. These tensions occur either when humans directly interface with algorithms or indirectly where humans interface with an algorithmically driven robotic, immersive reality, and/or multi-agent system. For each tension, we identify a key project lever to navigate these tensions: intergenerational teaming, problem scoping, delivery-validation scaffolding, task separability, multi-agent governance, and model parsimony &amp; transfer learning. Our aim is that through CIPHER, project leaders can harness the promise of AI while also more carefully managing its perils.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":48429,"journal":{"name":"International Journal of Project Management","volume":"43 8","pages":"Article 102792"},"PeriodicalIF":7.5,"publicationDate":"2025-11-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145684246","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"管理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"From outputs to outcomes: Meeting a threshold of short-term project management success as a necessary condition for achieving long-term impact","authors":"Zhiwen Zheng,&nbsp;Ofer Zwikael","doi":"10.1016/j.ijproman.2025.102789","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.ijproman.2025.102789","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>The literature is conflicted as to whether achieving short-term project management success (e.g., delivering project outputs on time and within budget) is necessary for attaining long-term project success (e.g., benefits realization and project impact). This research examines the relationship between project management success and project success using data from two studies: a survey of 198 U.S. projects and an analysis of 154 World Bank projects. Results suggest that meeting a project management success threshold is a necessary, though insufficient, condition for attaining long-term project success; in other words, if a project management success threshold is not met (e.g., poor quality of the project’s outputs), long-term project success is unlikely to be attained. Further, among the project management success measures, quality was found to require a higher threshold than schedule and cost. This means that a project can still achieve long-term project success despite some schedule delays and cost overruns, but this is unlikely to occur if there are major quality issues with its outputs. Overall, this paper clarifies conflicting perspectives in the literature regarding the relationship between project management success and project success, reveals the non-linear nature of this relationship, and supports project leaders (e.g., project managers and project owners) in making better project decisions.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":48429,"journal":{"name":"International Journal of Project Management","volume":"43 8","pages":"Article 102789"},"PeriodicalIF":7.5,"publicationDate":"2025-11-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145579771","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"管理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Projectification without projects? Theorizing temporal structures of agile-based organizing","authors":"Joana Geraldi ,&nbsp;Iben Stjerne ,&nbsp;Matthias Wenzel","doi":"10.1016/j.ijproman.2025.102786","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.ijproman.2025.102786","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Research has revealed a surge in the reliance on projects to organize firms and society in recent decades, a phenomenon termed projectification, yet has remained oblivious to the fact that <em>how</em> projects are organized has changed, as, hence, has the nature of projectification. Grounded in the 4Ts—time, task, team, and transition—we analyze through an ethnographic work at a financial firm how agile-based organizing reshaped the firm’s temporal structures from temporary toward “continuous temporariness,” a continuous flow interrupted by short, orchestrated pauses. This form of projectification addresses temporal fragmentation in classic projects but introduces new challenges. Overall, agile-based projectification enriches project-based organizing with new temporal structures that challenge traditional notions of temporary organizations.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":48429,"journal":{"name":"International Journal of Project Management","volume":"43 8","pages":"Article 102786"},"PeriodicalIF":7.5,"publicationDate":"2025-11-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145623878","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"管理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Projecting for circularity in sustainability transitions: The case of wind turbines","authors":"Mathilde Kring Holmgaard,&nbsp;Laura Moeslund Mains,&nbsp;Maria Figueroa Meza","doi":"10.1016/j.ijproman.2025.102772","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.ijproman.2025.102772","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>As wind energy matures, end-of-life project management, especially of turbine blades, poses a growing sustainability challenge. We examine how project organising shapes circular outcomes in decommissioning, bridging project management, socio-technical transitions, and circular economy perspectives. Using a qualitative case of the Danish wind sector (15 interviews plus documents), we find barriers to circularity are less technological than organisational and institutional: front-end project shaping rarely embeds end-of-life goals, and the absence of project sequencing limits learning and market formation. We contribute to project studies by (1) reframing decommissioning as a strategic phase in sustainability transitions, (2) specifying mechanisms – shaping, sequencing, and lineage/learning – that enable circularity, (3) linking these mechanisms to transition dynamics across niche, regime, and landscape levels. We map likely pathways where project organising through shaping, sequencing, and learning interacts with regime conditions, showing projects as levers shifting end-of-life renewable energy assets, beyond wind, up the circular ladder.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":48429,"journal":{"name":"International Journal of Project Management","volume":"43 8","pages":"Article 102772"},"PeriodicalIF":7.5,"publicationDate":"2025-11-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145322519","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"管理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Digital pathways in project communication: A process study of community engagement","authors":"Tommasina Pianese ,&nbsp;Walter Vesperi","doi":"10.1016/j.ijproman.2025.102769","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.ijproman.2025.102769","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Community engagement is fundamental for project success. However, establishing genuine connections with community members is hindered by limited project time and the variety of interests involved. In this context, social networking sites (SNS) have been shown to be a powerful engagement tool as long as they are strategically leveraged by project organizations. Yet key features of these platform dynamics remain underexplored in the PM literature. To advance our knowledge, this study aims to understand the communication process enacted on SNS by project organizations for community engagement. To this end, we conducted a process study on a sports event where such platforms are consistently exploited for engaging the online community. The internal perspective enabled the underlying organizational processes to be detected. Our findings revealed that project communication acted in practice as a dynamic process relying on the discursive patterns with the online community and affected by the external context.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":48429,"journal":{"name":"International Journal of Project Management","volume":"43 8","pages":"Article 102769"},"PeriodicalIF":7.5,"publicationDate":"2025-11-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145230066","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"管理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Empowering future leaders: The interplay between shared leadership in projects and leadership development of project professionals","authors":"Julia Bauer ,&nbsp;Martina Huemann ,&nbsp;Alexander Kock ,&nbsp;Hans Georg Gemünden","doi":"10.1016/j.ijproman.2025.102782","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.ijproman.2025.102782","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Individual leadership development has been a central area of research for many years. Project environments provide a unique setting for cultivating leadership competences, as their collaborative leadership approaches frequently enable individuals to step into leadership roles. Understanding the way project professionals grow into leadership roles during project work presents a significant opportunity for project-oriented organizations to employ projects beyond their original objectives and proactively leverage them as leadership learning ecosystems. The paper investigates how shared leadership in a project—moderated by organizational-level factors such as personnel development opportunities and servant leadership—relates to the project professionals’ leadership development. Based on a survey of 328 project professionals in German-speaking countries, the study reveals that projects are particularly effective as incubators for leadership growth. Results show a positive relationship between shared leadership in projects and individual leadership development. This association is further strengthened when the organization is characterized by a servant leadership style and provides further personnel development measures. These findings make significant theoretical contributions and open new avenues for future research into leadership development within project contexts.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":48429,"journal":{"name":"International Journal of Project Management","volume":"43 8","pages":"Article 102782"},"PeriodicalIF":7.5,"publicationDate":"2025-11-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145364281","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"管理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}