Project-as-practice: in search of project management research that matters

Sorting out the essence of owner–contractor collaboration in capital project delivery

“…This study puts a greater focus on the 'actuality of project-based working and management ' (Cicmil et al, 2006, p.675) to stimulate a more reflective and developmental approach to understanding project-as-practice (Blomquist et al, 2010;Hällgren and Söderholm, 2011). We answered the call for new orientation of partnering research in construction from the formal and general conceptualization to the informal and contextual constitution of collaborative working relationships (Bresnen and Marshall, 2002;Bresnen, 2007;Chan et al, 2012).…”

Design boundary dynamics in infrastructure projects: Issues of resource allocation, path dependency and problem-solving

“…The present section presents the selected strategic episodes that illustrate different aspects of how emergent boundary issues were made sense of in the context of design (Blomquist et al, 2010;Whittington, 2006). Following Sandberg and Tsoukas's (2011) advice on practice-oriented organisational research, I selected the episodes to illustrate the (1) overall organisational setting in which the phenomenon takes place, (2) the situational specificity of practitioners' lived experiences, as well as (3) the temporal dynamics of the phenomenon analysed.…”

“…Origins of the practice-based project studies can be traced to the behavioural school of thought in early project management (Söderlund, 2011), but only relatively recently has this movement gained prominence in the mainstream project literature. These studies, for example, argue that a focus on what people actually do in projects rather than what they should do would help in resolving the relevance issue, a shortcoming that has often been attributed to the traditional positivist project management inquiry (Blomquist et al, 2010;Bresnen et al, 2005;Smyth and Morris, 2007). By drawing upon pragmatist philosophy, in particular John Dewey, researchers also began drafting some contours of pragmatist research into project practices as a form of applied science and explicating them through an epistemology of practice (Lalonde et al, 2010).…”

“…By drawing upon pragmatist philosophy, in particular John Dewey, researchers also began drafting some contours of pragmatist research into project practices as a form of applied science and explicating them through an epistemology of practice (Lalonde et al, 2010). Methodological implications of such an approach would thus point to grounded theory building, the use of in-depth case studies and ethnographies that capture significant episodes in which the practices meet both the practitioners and praxis (Blomquist et al, 2010). For example, Pitsis et al (2003) analyse the day-to-day activities to understand the "future perfect strategy" of project delivery.…”

The impact of project management (PM) and benefits management (BM) practices on project success: Towards developing a project benefits governance framework

“…In order to understand "project-as-practice", interpretive research is suggested, in the form either of learning about the experience of project and benefit managers through interviews, observations, or focus groups (Cicmil, 2006); or through the in-depth, in particular ethnographic, analysis of cases, to understand what is going on and differences in practices (Blomquist et al, 2010). However, in this research the benefits of being able to generalise results outweigh the expense of understanding in depth what is going on (Singleton and Straits, 2005).…”