Editorial
Article Type: Editorial From: International Journal of Managing Projects in Business, Volume 6, Issue 1
About this issue
This first issue for 2013, Volume 6 comprises ten papers: one regular paper,a Thesis Research Note and two special issue sets of papers. The first special issue edited by Professor Rolf Lundin and Dr Markus Hällgren provides a collection of six selected papers from the 2010 Nordic Academy of Management Conference that have been further revised and enhanced through a double blind review process. These papers provide leading edge perspectives on project management from a Nordic perspective. Their editorial follows in which they explain the context of this special issue section and introduce the papers. The second special issue set of papers is edited by Professor Miia Martinsuo,Professor Hans Georg Gemünden and Dr Martina Huemann. They provide a guest editorial that explains the theme, papers and knowledge contributions of two papers that were inspired by the EURAM 2011 Conference project organising track. Papers one to six represent special issue section one and papers seven and eight comprise special issue section two.
This special issue is supplemented by an additional paper. It is a regular paper entitled “Evaluating the organizational impact of product development projects” by Miia Martinsuo, Petri Suomala and Juho Kanniainen. This paper argues that evaluation of product development projects is quite intuitive and subjective because it analyses decision makers’ value perceptions of organisational impact before and after a project to explain how post-project value perceptions are formed. The research is based upon questionnaire data from 126 risky product development projects. Reported results reveal two moderating effects by using a product development control system and different product types. One important implication of this work is that initial value priorities of the managers have an important role in escalating commitment, and such value priorities can be reflected in the use of formal evaluation criteria and so this papers practical impact is that it provides a better understanding of the formation and evolution of the perceived organisational impact during the project.
The Thesis Research Note entitled “Principled success: eco-feminism and systems thinking come together for better project outcomes” by Anne Stephens from The Cairns Institute at James Cook University in Australia provides reflections on a PhD on an interesting aspect of project management. The PhD thesis reported upon in this paper is “Feminist systems thinking:principles and practice”, conferred in April, 2012 by the University of Queensland, contains a set of five practical principles, to assist in policy directions for enhanced community development and project management. Anne can be contacted for her thesis on e-mail: anne.stephens@jcu.edu.au; stephens.liley@gmail.com. The paper will be of interest to readers who are seeking ways in which to undertake their research ideas that are outside present traditional PM research methods as it uses adapted constructivist grounded theory to complete Part A of the work, a theoretical imbrication of cultural ecofeminism and critical systems thinking. Part B of the thesis is a set of four applied case studies utilising participatory action research. This is of interest because it exposes us to a poorly research perspective in PM and therefore extends boundaries in both PM theory as well as access to other research approaches that have been successfully applied to PM related topics.
Volume 6 Issue 2 will include a special issue on organisational mechanisms for effective knowledge creation in projects and is supplemented by selected regular papers so that readers can gain a bonus from previous volumes by having additional papers to read and absorb and a have both access to the special themes as well as benefit from contributions of regular papers.
We also draw attention to readers about two upcoming specials that are also promoted in this issue and on the IJMPB web page, the first is on“project management maturity” with SI editors, Dr Beverly Pasian,Utrecht University of Applied Sciences and Dr Nigel L. Williams, University of Bedfordshire with abstracts expected by January 11, 2013 and full papers by August 13, 2013. The second special issue call, to be guest edited by professor Ralf Müller, is for papers on “Ethics in project management”with paper a submission date of July 1, 2013. Please read the notices of forthcoming special issues.
Derek H.T. WalkerSchool of Property, Construction and Project Management, RMIT University, Melbourne, Australia, e-mail: derek.walker@rmit.edu.au
