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As part of a wider study into Human Resource Management (HRM) practices in projectoriented companies, we investigated the issue of employee well-being. Project-oriented organizations adopt temporary work processes to deliver products and services to clients. This creates a dynamic work environment, where additional pressures can be imposed on the employee from fluctuating work-loads, uncertain requirements, and multiple role demands. Those pressures can create issues for employee well-being and ethical treatment, which need to be managed. HRM has traditionally had two roles, a management support role, providing the organization with competent people to undertake the work processes, and an employee support role, caring for the well-being of employees. In this paper we report our results on the HRM practices adopted in project-oriented organizations to fulfil the second role. We find that by and large in project-oriented organizations the management support role dominates, and they are not very good at caring for employees. The need for profit and responding to client demands often takes precedence over employee well-being. However, some of the organizations we have interviewed have adopted HRM practices to care for employees, and we report those. Also providing employees with career development opportunities is as important for the individual as it is for the organization, and we report practices for that.

Purpose -The purpose of this paper is to analyze how various approaches to stakeholder management, as well as sustainable development principles, are included in internationally-used project management standards; and to consider the demands these approaches and principles place on project stakeholder management. Design/methodology/approach -An analytical framework was developed based on stakeholder theory within general management, as well as on sustainability research. Desk research was carried out by applying the analytical framework to three project management standards: ICB, PMBOK and PRINCE2. Findings -The research findings suggest that stakeholder issues are treated superficially in the project management standards, while putting stakeholder management in the context of sustainable development would ask for a paradigm shift in the underpinning values. The current project stakeholder practices represent mainly a management-of-stakeholders approach, i.e. making stakeholders comply to project needs, whereas a management-for-stakeholders approach may be beneficial.Research limitations/implications -As the analysis is based on document studies of bodies of knowledge, the authors cannot be sure to what extent the standards represent real-life practices. However, the standards are developed by practitioners agreeing on common practices. Further, they are used to certify project managers worldwide. Therefore, the authors find it safe to claim that the findings are relevant when discussing project management practices. Originality/value -The value of this paper lies in the enrichment of the understanding of project stakeholder management by applying concepts from general stakeholder theory and sustainable development research.

The topic of what HRM (Human Resource Management) responsibilities are devolved from the HRM department to line managers has attracted much interest in recent years. We report findings from a study on the devolution of HRM practices in four POCs (Project-Oriented Companies) and argue that although HRM practices are carried out beyond the HRM department, they are also carried out beyond the line. While the literature on devolving HRM responsibilities to line management is burgeoning, the HRM responsibilities of managers beyond the line organization are neglected. We make two contributions to the literature.Firstly, our study reveals that some HRM practices are the domain of the project manager rather than either the line manager or the HRM department. The complex interplay of the roles of the HRM department, line management and project management creates challenges and pitfalls where people are managed across the boundaries of the permanent and temporary organization. We identify a potentially powerful role for the HRM department in both monitoring and guiding the different players from the line and project organizations, and in protecting the well-being of employees whose work traverses these organizational boundaries.Our second contribution is that we map the diversity of practices in different POCs for managing the interplay between the three main parties delivering HRM practices and offer project-orientation as a contextual indicator that contributes to diversity in HRM practices.

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PAPERS ABSTRACT ■In this special issue on project stakeholder management, the aim is to advance the understanding of this topic by looking into theory outside the project management field and by presenting findings from case studies. In this overview article, we identify the theoretical roots of the stakeholder concept and the current state of the field. We point to early proponents of stakeholder thinking.In addition, we point to recent concepts and developments outside the project management field that are relevant in the project management context; then, we introduce the articles included in the special issue;and, finally, we identify other relevant publications.

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Building on the work of J. Rodney Turner, our article reports publishing trends on the intersection between HRM (Human Resource Management) and PBO (Project Based Organizing) in the key research-led journals of the project management field. We examine scholarship covering single and multiple practices, and different levels of analysis, to provide a comprehensive overview of key empirical and theoretical contributions published in the