Purpose -The purpose of this paper is show how the management of knowledge in temporary organizations is an increasingly important factor in many industries. This paper aims to examine knowledge management in and between projects.Design/methodology/approach -On the basis of 27 structured interviews with project managers and knowledge management experts in different corporations mainly located in Germany and German speaking countries, the prevalence, the organization and the success factors of project knowledge management are analyzed.Findings -As a result, most interviewees stated an urgent need for a significant improvement of project knowledge management although only in few companies a systematic approach exists. The success of project knowledge management is mainly determined by cultural factors whereas technical aspects like information systems and project management methods are considered to serve as supporting factors only.Research limitations/implications -Future research should include large-scale surveys to systematically analyze the causalities of successful project knowledge management in different types of projects, organizations, and industries. Further research involving companies located in other cultural areas could help extracting possible effects caused by cultural or societal influences.Originality/value -The authors present a cross-sectional study on project knowledge management comprising companies from different industries.

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Contingency theory has influenced organization theory since the 1950s. Project management research has only recently started to consider context factors. In this area, applications of contingency theory still represent a fragmented field with a nonuniform use of terminology. Fully utilizing the contingency theory approach requires a systematic foundation. This article presents an overview of contingency theory in both permanent and temporary organizations. In a bibliometric study based on 1,622 articles from four academic project management journals, we identify dominating authors, prevalent keywords, and different focal areas in project contingency theory as well as the most researched project types.

The increasing projectification of the business world corresponds with a high diversity of theoretical perspectives used in project management research. This diversity is reflected by a variety of influencing factors, which have been the subject of empirical studies. This article aims to systemize the different streams of research on the basis of a literature review and at developing a research framework by integrating multiple theoretical perspectives and influencing factors. We elaborate on the crosslinks between the perspectives and identify fundamental elements of a project management theory. The framework consists of three dimensions: design, context, and goal. Its purpose is to support the combination of different perspectives and the development of strategies for further research.

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