The Dark Side of Projects: Dimensionality, Research Methods, and Agenda

Abstract

This article presents the dark side of projects, engaging project scholars and practitioners in discussions about sensitive, confusing, uncomfortable, challenging, and questionable phenomena, such as corruption, sexism, money laundering, modern slavery, waste of resources, and organizational politics. The dark side impacts people’s lives, questioning the legitimacy of projects as forms of work organization and the political and ideological systems shaping the projects’ context. Project scholars and practitioners need to be aware of the harm the dark side of projects may promote. Ultimately, we aim to build awareness, promote research, and help sensitize our community to the dark side of projects.

The Dark Side of Projects: Uncovering Slavery, Corruption, Criminal Organizations, and Other Uncomfortable Topics

“…Our fellow board editors were actually correct. The Special Issue Call for Papers (Locatelli et al, 2020) attracted 27 proposals, from which 15 were invited for full submission. However, 5 of the 15 full submissions failed to meet our expectations regarding relevance to project studies or the actual quality and were therefore rejected.…”

“…Our article, "The Dark Side of Projects: Dimensionality, Research Methods, and Agenda" (Locatelli et al, 2022), provides the foundations for scholars interested in joining our efforts to shed light on the dark. In this article, we introduce the dark side of projects, their relevance, potential avenues for future research, and methodological strategies "to see in the dark."…”

“…The two examples are just the tip of the iceberg; the business world has dark stains, and projects are no exception. For instance, construction projects employ modern slaves (Amnesty International, 2021;Gulf News, 2019;Pattisson et al, 2021), are involved in corruption scandals (Lehtinen et al, 2022;Olken, 2007Olken, , 2009, and are sometimes used for money laundering (Locatelli et al, 2022). The dark side of projects, that is, "any illegal, or unethical phenomena associated with projects" (Locatelli et al, 2022), as those exemplified above, is real, relevant, and merits further investigation.…”

“…on the dark side of projects and invite you to join our efforts. To this effect, our article (Locatelli et al, 2022) has been designed to support researchers' first steps in studying the dark side, including an introduction to the ontological dimensions and definition of the dark side and the research lenses that researchers can use.…”

“…Such papers had a limited relationship with the dark side in projects and, despite reviewers' suggestions pointing to forms to strengthen the relationship, the authors maintained a focus on empirical phenomena and interpretations that were unrelated to projects. At the same time, while managing this process, we wrote our own paper (Locatelli et al, 2022).…”