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The successful management of change using a project-based intervention is crucial for any organization to succeed in the highly competitive and evolving global business environment. Whilst a number of theories of change management are widely accepted, literature suggests they are falling short of their endeavors as a result of the theories lacking a useful framework to successfully plan, implement and manage change. This paper seeks to address these issues.

This article critically argues the value of project-based management in the change management process with particular focus on PRINCE2 and PMBoK. As such, change management can be considered a project and utilize project-based processes to successfully implement change.

Using PMBoK and PRINCE2 as a reference, a number of PM processes and techniques have been detailed which demonstrate the applicability of project-based processes for implementation of CM initiatives.

It was purported the technical background of traditional project managers has resulted in a focus on tasks and results rather than the human aspects and softer skills of CM, which are equally valuable to project success. Bridging these two gaps could increase the success of CM initiatives and similarly enhance the success of projects-based interventions.

The high failure rate of change interventions suggests improvements could be made to its management, monitoring and control. The analytical focus of this research was in how the common and most utilised CM models could be improved with PM processes in order to appropriately deliver successful change. Using PMBoK and PRINCE2 as a reference, a number of PM processes and techniques have been detailed which demonstrate the applicability of project-based processes for implementation of CM initiatives.

The social science background of CM professionals and the tendency for HR to deliver change initiatives has contributed to the lack of appreciation for formal processes and technical contributions as offered by PM in delivering change. Likewise, theorists developing CM from non-technical backgrounds tend to focus on the human dimensions over all other issues.

The lack of a suitable guiding framework for CM suggests the creation of a CM body of knowledge and alignment of CM processes could enhance the field. Although CM encompasses a broad range of possible change models, the attempts by CM theorists to apply a formal structure to the change process have been scant. Treating change initiatives as a temporary project and subsequently integrating CM with PM processes will capture synergies between the two areas.

This study aims to offer a bibliometric analysis of the already substantial and growing literature on global virtual teams (GVTs).

Using a systematic literature review approach, it identifies all articles in the Web of Science from 1999 to 2021 that include the term GVTs (in the title, the abstract or keywords) and finds 175 articles. The VOSviewer software was applied to analyze the bibliometric data.

The analysis revealed three dialogizing research clusters in the GVTs literature: a pioneering management information systems and organizational cluster, a general management cluster and a growing international management and behavioural studies cluster. Furthermore, it highlights the most cited articles, authors, journals and nations, and the network of strong and weak links regarding co-authorships and co-citations. Additionally, this study shows a change in research patterns regarding topics, journals and disciplinary approaches from 1999 to 2021. Finally, the analysis illustrates the position and centrality in the network of the most relevant actors.

The findings can guide management practitioners, educators and researchers to the most meaningful clusters of publications on GVTs, and help navigate and make sense of the vast body of the available literature. The importance of GVTs has been growing in the past two decades, and Covid-19 has accelerated the trend.

This study provides an updated and comprehensive systematic literature review on GVTs. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, it is also the first systematic literature review and bibliometry on GVTs. It concludes by suggesting future research paths.