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In 2006, the “Rethinking Project Management” network called for a paradigm shift in project research, and proposed five research directions. The directions inspired research and marked a milestone in the development of the field. The purpose of this paper is to reflect on the past decade and to rejuvenate these research directions.

The authors propose the umbrella term: “project studies” to denote the research related to projects and temporary organizing. Project studies is conceived not only as a body of research, but also as a social process embedded in research communities, and contemporary Zeitgeist. Based on Sandberg’s interpretative approach to the fit between work and works (in this case research-researcher) and Habermas’ three types of human interests: technical, practical, and emancipatory, the authors develop a conceptual framework circumscribing three types of research in project studies.

The conceptual framework is used to craft future research directions, in the lines proposed by Winter et al. (2006b).

The authors conclude by proposing for a sixth theme on the practice of theorizing, and call for engaged, ambidextrous scholars, who’s “job” goes beyond the writing of articles and research applications, and includes shaping discourses of project research, nurturing new project scholars, contributing to project practice and carefully considering the legacy of projects and project studies in society.

This paper positions research as a social process, and the role of researchers as actors shaping research in project studies.

The purpose of this paper is to review and analyze Albert Hirschman’s landmark book Development Projects Observed, share its insights for managing big projects, discuss its theoretical implications and how it may contribute to the current understanding of project behavior, project management (PM), and in what way it may encourage the rethinking of PM.

The paper is based on an in-depth analysis of Hirschman’s book. The paper draws on the writings of Jeremy Adelman who authored Hirschman’s biography, Cass Sunstein and Michele Alacevich who, respectively, wrote the foreword and afterword of the Brookings Institution classic published in 2014. It also profits from the work of Robert Picciotto who first met Hirschman in 1964, and Bent Flyvbjerg who recently offered a test of validity for Hirschman’s “Hiding Hand” principle.

Albert Hirschman was an original thinker and, the authors argue in many ways, a father of PM scholarship. His ideas had profound implications for social sciences and lasting influence in academy, policy, and practice. Although, to a great extent based on studies of projects, his ideas have had surprisingly little impact on modern writings of PM. This paper contributes to amending this weakness in current literature on PM. The authors identify in Hirschman’s book a set of core ideas that possess analytical power for explaining problems in contemporary PM. They include the principle of the Hiding Hand, the power of context, the role of complexity and uncertainty, the unexpected project effects, project traits, and latitudes/disciplines. For all his work and way of research, the authors conclude that Hirschman is not only an early behavioral theorist in PM but equally an early rethinker of PM.

This is the first paper that offers a discussion of Hirschman’s ideas on contemporary projects, how to understand them, their behavior, including the principle of the Hiding Hand and other important nuggets of wisdom in his research such as the significance of project traits, latitudes, and disciplines. The authors discuss in what respects these ideas may enlighten PM practice and theory. This paper also conveys the novel idea that Hirschman is an early rethinker of PM.

This chapter addresses the challenges associated with temporary organising under conditions of institutional complexity. The authors draw on findings from an in-depth case study of a megaproject initiated to reshape healthcare in Sweden. At the centre of this transformation was the construction of a new, ‘world-class’ hospital to replace the former (historical and renowned) university hospital. The authors posit that organising such projects is largely a matter of creating, responding to, and re-creating temporal institutional complexity. Thus, their study identifies four distinct response strategies – innovating, partial decoupling, avoiding, and surfing – on which project actors relied when dealing with the multiplicity of temporal institutional requirements. The authors propose a model for explaining how these strategies affected the temporal institutional complexity faced by the project. Their chapter adds to the literature on temporary organisations by highlighting the nature and dynamics of temporal institutional complexity and by revealing how inter-institutional temporary organisations cope with such complexity.

The purpose of the paper is to examine how members at different levels in a multi-level loyalty program react when they are allowed the opportunity to compare the rewards they receive with the rewards received by other members. The authors believe this is crucial, as previous research often ignores the social setting in which exchanges concerning loyalty rewards take place. The authors believe such interactions in social settings are likely to induce justice perceptions, which in turn will affect customer satisfaction and repatronizing intentions.

The research question was addressed through a between-subjects experiment in an airline setting.

The results show that belonging to the top-tier level of a multi-level loyalty program seems to boost perceived justice. Participants assigned to this level in the experiment perceived the program as more just than did participants assigned to the lower level. Importantly though, members assigned the second-tier who compared themselves to the top-tier did not perceive to program as more unjust than did second-tier members comparing themselves to other second-tier members. The levels of customer satisfaction and repatronizing intentions followed the same pattern. In social settings, multi-level loyalty programs thus seem to be able to increase justice perceptions, customer satisfaction and repatronizing intentions of top-tier members, while at the same time avoiding the potential drawback of alienating second-tier members.

The study bridges the gap between research on perceived justice, loyalty programs and the effects of social settings on consumer interactions. In doing so, it brings valuable insights to both researchers and practitioners.

The purpose of this paper is to argue for the need of continuously revisiting and reformulating the contributions of past research. In particular the focus is on project management writings. In addition, the purpose of the paper is to introduce the reader to the special issue on Classics in project management and give an overview of the different contributions.

The paper is based on literature in related fields and the approach is paradigmatic, illustrating the value of common literature and common language to develop a knowledge domain.

The authors provide an introductory framework and arguments for the need to revisit the contributions of the past. Since “the past” and readings of it will continuously change and develop, exploring it is not a “one‐off” job, but part of the dialogue within the academic community. From an evolutionary perspective, the authors make the point that an important role for scholars is to “store” knowledge from the past to tell the stories found in prior research, the influential ideas and their development within the knowledge domain/discipline. In a critical realm, the authors also see the role of critical engagement with the past to question what we take for granted to be able to improve our collective ability to think and from that end develop project management thinking and research. In that sense, revisiting the past might provide avenues to future research and adventurous explorations.

The authors introduce the idea of classics in project management as an ongoing and important debate among scholars within the field. This discussion has so far received only limited attention among scholars in the field of project management.

Knowledge creation is increasingly singled out as an important activity in a wide range of sectors. At the same time, projects are considered to be the loci where much of knowledge creation takes place. The aim of this paper is to give an overview of the current issues within this area and point out a few directions for future research.

This paper is based on a literature review and a summary of the papers included in the special issue. The aim of the literature review consists in pointing out the key themes in the continuing debate on knowledge creation in projects.

The paper argues that research needs to be developed along the following lines: the preconditions of effective knowledge creation mechanisms; the organizational practices able to support knowledge creation mechanisms; the contribution of communities of practice to knowledge creation in projects; the role of time and timing in projects knowledge creation; and the challenges associated with inter‐organizational projects and knowledge creation.

This paper (and the special issue) provides an understanding of the context of knowledge creation, of the requirements that different contexts place on knowledge creation, and of the suitability of such mechanisms in peculiar contexts. These issues have received only limited attention to date in the project management literature.

There has been a growing interest in the field of strategic management to understand the relationship between the organizational capabilities of firms and (a) the direction of strategies pursued and (b) the impact on competitive performance. Much of this literature has been influenced by the resource-based view of the firm. As indicated in early formulations of this theory, one implication is that the organization of resources is equally important as the resources themselves. Accordingly, the organizational and integration of resources and knowledge can be viewed as a core facet of the organizational capabilities of firms that are difficult to imitate for competitors. This paper explores a particular kind of organization referred to as the “P-form corporation” (Project-Form), its organizational capabilities and options for strategic alternatives. The chapter addresses three broad questions: (1) What are the main characteristics of P-form corporations? (2) What are the capabilities acquired and developed by P-form corporations and how are these acquired? (3) How do these capabilities vary across different strategic alternatives in the P-form corporation? The chapter concludes with a discussion about the implications for strategy and management.

The purpose of this paper is to review the content and contributions of the book by Sayles and Chandler entitled Managing Large Systems: Organizations for the Future. The paper seeks to uncover the elements of the nature and elements of project organizing presented in the book.

The paper presents the main ideas in the book, along with a few important issues to organization theory, including interdependence, timing, and the role of project management.

The paper demonstrates that the book by Sayles and Chandler presents an early attempt of formulating a theory of project organization. The embryonic theory is based on insights about the importance of interdependence and time in understanding different forms of project organizing and the role of project management.

The present paper is especially concerned with the ideas presented in the book that relate to time and timing in project organization. Although these issues are well addressed in the book by Sayles and Chandler, they are currently pressing, yet typically ignored in much project management research. Previous research has given limited attention to the insights presented in this book published more than 40 years ago. In that respect, the ideas presented in the book by Sayles and Chandler seems to have had more impact on organization theory than on project management, although, the book as such is undoubtedly a study of project organizing and the management of projects. This observation thus sheds some new light on the conventional thinking, and somewhat simplified idea, about the unidirectional relationship between organization theory and project management.

The aim of this paper is to conceptualize time as an important dimension of institutions and, more specifically, to develop the analysis of institutions, time, and temporal misfits. The paper explores these matters in the context of an inter‐institutional project where actors, who represent different organizational fields and respond to different institutional requirements with regards to time and timing, need to collaborate.

The paper centers on three critical incidents taken from a study of a large‐scale telecom project in Norway. The paper is based on an analysis of public documents and 35 interviews with key stakeholders and managers in the focal project.

This research shows that temporal misfits are a critical, yet understudied, element of project organizing. The paper suggests and discusses three primary measures – detecting, correcting, and escaping – that project management makes use of to resolve temporal misfits among the actors involved. To advance the analysis of problems facing projects in institutionally‐bounded settings, the paper proposes a typology of temporal misfits (phase and tempo) and different types of complexity (analyzable and systemic).

Although purposeful in many instances, especially in collaborations across institutional boundaries, timing norms may cause profound organizational problems due to temporal misfits among the actors involved. The paper argues that project managers need to identify and be prepared for such organizational problem by being equipped with a repertoire of resolution strategies to handle them. New concepts and approaches are needed to identify and deal with temporal misfits among important stakeholders in projects.

A number of previous studies on project organizing have emphasized the critical aspects of studying institutions and time; but to date, no comprehensive efforts have been made to combine these ideas in empirical investigations. This study emphasizes the criticality of timing norms and temporal misfits to enhance our understanding of the linkages between projects, institutions, and time.