Special issue on ethics in project management
Article Type: Call for papers From: International Journal of Managing Projects in Business, Volume 6, Issue 1
Guest Editor: Ralf Müller, BI Norwegian School of Management
We hereby invite scholars to submit empirical research and conceptual papers on the subject of ethics in projects and project management. Aim is to: fill the present lack of understanding about the types, magnitudes, and implications of ethical issues in projects; and to reflect about these learnings in order to derive a more theoretical and solid understanding of ethics in projects and their management.
Background
Discussions about the ethicality of business practices are paramount in today's society. The results of legally right but morally questionable decisions or practices often surface somewhere between a large scandal and a small misdemeanor. For more than 2,500 years have philosophers, academics and practitioners devoted considerable attention to the subject of ethics, the dealing with ethical dilemmas, and the particularities of ethical issues. Recent years showed a growing interest of business and management journals in this topic. This is also because practitioners, when faced with ethical issues, often turn to academics for advice. The temporary nature of projects and their management adds a further dimension, that of temporality, to this already complex issue. Despite the severeness of the consequences and the need to understand the complexities of the subject, only little has been written or researched in the field of ethics in projects.
Submissions
We encourage submission that that go beyond the typical categorizations of normative and behavioral ethics and ethical issues (where the former addresses what a person or organization ought to do in a given situation, and the latter investigates why individuals behave unethically in the workplace) and investigate the link between existing theories with the types, magnitudes, or implications of ethical issues in projects. This may include issues caused by the underlying assumptions of existing theories, for example those that assume humans to be rational and self-interested utility maximizers, that is, a homo economicus perspective. Related studies may investigate the implications of these assumptions for governance structures, organizational discourse, business ethics, ethical issues and decision making. Other topics may include, but are not limited to, the establishment of legitimacy of ethical decisions in projects from the perspective of institutional theory, or the ethical dilemmas related to particular leadership theories in the context of projects and their management,or the impact of power and authority on ethics in projects.
Methodological-wise we encourage authors to submit papers that go beyond descriptive case studies by applying contemporary approaches such as reflexive methods (e.g. Alvesson and Sköldberg, 2009; Flyvbjerg, 2001), narrative methods (e.g. Clandinin and Connelly, 2000), or conceptual work based on systematic literature review (e.g. Tranfield et al., 2003).
Submission details
Submissions should be in line with requirements of the International Journal of Managing Projects in Business. All papers are subject to the journal's blind-review process.
Submission is done through www.manuscriptcentral/ijmpb
When uploading the paper indicate that it is for the special issue on Ethics
Deadline for submission: July 1, 2013.
Publication is estimated for: October 2014 (Vol. 7 No. 3)
Further questions can be addressed to the guest editor Professor Ralf Müller,BI Norwegian Business School, e-mail: ralf.muller@bi.no
