This paper demonstrates that project management is a developing field of academic study in management, of considerable diversity and richness, which can make a valuable contribution to the development of management knowledge, as well as being of considerable economic importance. The paper reviews the substantial progress and trends of research in the subject, which has been grouped into nine major schools of thought: optimization, modelling, governance, behaviour, success, decision, process, contingency, and marketing. The paper addresses interactions between the different schools and with other related management fields, and provides insights into current and potential research in each and across these schools. Until the mid-1980s, interest in project management was limited to engineering, construction, defense, and information technology. More recently interest has diversified into many other areas of management activity. Currently, more than 20 % of global economic activity takes place as projects, and in some emerging economies it exceeds 30 %. World Bank (2008) data indicate that 22 % of the world's $55 trillion gross domestic product (GDP) is gross capital formation, which is almost entirely project-based. In India it is 39 % and in China it is 43 %. Gross capital formation is defined as ''outlays on additions to the fixed assets of the economy plus net changes in the level of inventories. Fixed assets include land improvements (fences, ditches, drains, and so on); plant, machinery, and equipment purchase; and the construction of roads, railways, and the like, including schools, offices, hospitals, private residential dwellings, and commercial and industrial buildings. Inventories are stocks of goods held by firms to meet temporary or unexpected fluctuations in production or sales and work in progress… Net acquisitions of valuables are also considered capital formation.'' (World Bank 2008). In many public and private organizations some operating expenditures are also project-based. Project management makes an important and significant contribution to value creation globally.Developing relevant competence at all levels, individual, team, organization, and society is key to better performance (Gareis and Huemann 2007). Grabher (2004a) discusses the processes of creating and sedimenting knowledge at the interfaces between projects, organizations, communities, networks, and the socio-economic environment within which projects operate. He proposes the notion of project ecologies and their constitutive layers of the core team, the firm, the epistemic community, and personal networks. He contrasts two opposing logics of projectbased learning by juxtaposing learning that is geared towards moving from 'one-off' to repeatable solutions with the discontinuous learning that is driven by originality and creativity. He proposes a differentiation of social and communicative logics, wherein ''communality signifies lasting and intense ties, sociality signifies intense and yet ephemeral relations and connectivity indicates t...
