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Recent research has proposed the position of a project owner as the individual accountable for realizing target benefits. However, there is a lack of understanding in the literature of this role – in particular, the specific responsibilities of the project owner that can enhance benefits realization and operations performance. The paper aims to discuss this issue.

The paper identifies these responsibilities in practice through two studies – a qualitative study, which includes interviews with senior executives who fund projects, and an in-depth longitudinal case study, which describes a company that continuously realizes the benefits from its projects.

The results suggest that a project owner should have 22 key responsibilities across four project phases and that an operations manager is often the most suitable candidate to fulfill this role in operations improvement projects. When performing these project responsibilities effectively, operations managers enhance benefits realization and operations improvement. Finally, the paper proposes five hypotheses for future research.

Based on agency theory, the paper increases our knowledge of the role of the project owner in practice. This new knowledge can enhance the realization of target benefits from projects and ensure a smooth transition from the project to the operations environment.

The purpose of this paper is to resolve a core issue in project management research and practice – inconsistent terminology of key project roles. This inconsistency has negative consequences on the quality and impact of research in this area.

The authors conducted an analysis of the literature and project management standards to identify both agreed-upon and inconsistent project role terms. Based on role and agency theories, the authors propose a consistent terminology.

The authors found consensus regarding four terms: project manager, project team, project management office, and program manager. However, the authors also found conflicting definitions and misuse concerning other terms, as well as use of the same title for different roles (e.g. customer, sponsor, champion). The authors define the ten core project roles and the two project entities with which they are associated.

The proposed role definitions and clear distinction between the two project entities offer clarity, reliance on existing consensus, avoidance of conflicts of interest, and clear separation of principal and agent roles. The implementation of these definitions will improve communications and enhance quality within and between both the research and the practice communities.

Previous research has advanced in two-stage construction project productivity (CPP) evaluation by integrating site efficiency (SE) in the delivery and utilisation effectiveness (UE) in the post-delivery stages. The literature has separately addressed the factors affecting these three constructs. However, the interrelationships among them are rarely discussed together. This study aims to systematically identify the influencing factors of CPP, SE and UE and disentangle interrelationships among the three constructs.

The paper first reviews the literature about the two-stage project productivity evaluation framework for government construction projects. Then this paper proposes hypotheses regarding the relationships between the three constructs and identifies influencing factors associated with the constructs. Based on questionnaire survey from over 200 government construction project professionals in China, the structural equation modelling is adopted to validate the hypotheses.

The paper provides empirical insights that CPP can be directly influenced by UE to a large extent but indirectly impacted by SE through its effects on UE. The findings indicate that CPP is not a simple sum of SE and UE, and consequently reveals the complex, non-linear and indirect relationships between SE and CPP.

Future research should further extend the timeframe boundary to merge the pre-delivery stage (e.g. design and planning), findings of which may propose a more generalised understanding and reduce the bias resulting from pre-delivery activities.

This paper contributes to construction facility management literature by explaining the mediating role of UE on the relationship between SE and CPP. Therefore, this paper offers practitioners an integrated management logic in strategically combining project and facility management into government project management.

The purpose of this conceptual paper is to describe and explain how organisations use internal projects to implement organisation-level strategy objectives.

Theory development with an emphasis on explaining key constructs and their mutual relationships. The theoretical contribution is represented in a diagram along with a detailed verbal account.

The paper develops a dynamic, cross-level framework to illustrate the organisational processes and outcomes that determine project-based strategy implementation within a single organisation. The interplay between the base organisation and the project, and benefits realisation were singled out as key future research areas. The proposed framework engages with central discourses in the fields of project management, strategic management, innovation studies, knowledge management and organisation studies.

Only the contours of an organisation-level theory of strategically motivated internal projects are outlined. Future research must elaborate on the complexities, the non-linear relationships and the boundary conditions that follow from the proposed framework.

Managers are alerted to the strategic role of internal projects, how these projects help connect strategy and performance and what the accompanying organisational processes and outcomes look like.

The paper constitutes an early conceptual treatment of strategy-driven internal projects as a distinct project category, thus addressing a major knowledge gap in project studies. Organisational project-management theory is extended with suggestions for future research.

The contribution of project success and the organisation's efficiency is consensual in the literature. However, the value of project management (PM) brings to the organisation's effectiveness through the alignment with strategy, contributing to its competitiveness and business success, is yet little explored. This study addresses the literature gap that concerns the relationship between PM and the organisation's competitiveness, proposing a holistic conceptual model to understand of how PM brings value to the organisation. This work also aims to demonstrate the practical implications of theoretical contributions to the value of PM. For this, a detailed action research (AR) was planned to show how researchers and practitioners could work and collaborate in a real problem and prove the AR approach's adequacy to the PM field.

The methodology starts with a systematic literature review (SLR), followed by content analysis to develop a conceptual model of PM's value. To validate the theoretical constructs and transfer the results to real context, an AR plan is then carried out to support a specific PM problem presented by an automotive industry company.

The results have theoretical and practical implications. An original conceptual model is developed–the value of PM: Key factors–defending a multidimensional and holistic perspective to understand the PM's value. A set of key factors was identified, structured, interrelated and exemplified their practical implementation in a single company. In addition to the technical key factors identified in the literature review, the AR plan unveils crucial social aspects to improve PM's value, such as leadership, strong communication and open processes. This work shows the central role of PM methodologies in integrating and interconnecting the key factors, emphasizing the projects' strategic level.

The present work was developed in a specific and particular organisational context and industry.

The AR plan presents a company's original programme–Hyper Competitiveness (HC) Temple–implemented in an automotive company. Project management professionals could understand how this company implemented each key factor, defended in a conceptual model and lead the project's results to the business value.

The research originality lies in rethinking PM's value to organisations from a holistic perspective: multi-dimensional, temporal, life cycle, multi-organisational, pointing out a set of technical and social key factors.

Project governance has been linked to project success because top management support is necessary for projects to succeed. However, top managers are time poor and it is not clear which project governance mechanisms are effective for project success. The purpose of this paper is to address this issue and identify project governance mechanisms that correlate with success.

This is a quantitative study. A theoretical model of project governance was developed and tested with secondary industry data gathered from 51 global organisations and 66,817 responses.

The results found five project governance mechanisms (Vision, Change, Sponsor, KPI and Monitor) significantly correlate with project success and are effective at different stages in the project lifecycle.

Earlier research has found a relationship between project governance and project success but it has not been specific enough to guide top managers in practice. This is the first research to take this next step and identify project governance mechanisms that correlate with project success. One finding of this research that has particular value is the identification of when in the project lifecycle a particular governance mechanism is most effective.

Two New I.C.I. Directors G. K. HAMPSHIRE, chairman of Imperial Chemical Industries Ltd.'s general chemical division, and DR. J. S. GOURLAY, chairman of the paints division, have been appointed to the board of I.C.I.

Finishing Equipment Factory. New and larger factory and administration premises have been built at West Howe, Bournemouth, for the Aerograph‐DeVilbiss Co. Ltd. Production of spraying and other equipment has been transferred from Lower Sydenham.