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In this article, we study emotional processes associated with the project management discourse. Employing a constructionist approach where emotions are experienced within an ordering discursive context, the study identifies four distinct emotional processes associated with the invocation of the project management discourse in daily work practices. From a study of theatre and opera house employees, we suggest that the project management discourse tends to normalize feelings of rigidity and weariness in project-based work, while emphasizing projects as extraordinary settings creating thrill and excitement. Moreover, we argue that this discourse is invoked in ways that lead individuals to internalize emotional states related to chaos and anxiety, while ascribing feelings of certainty and confidence to external organizational norms and procedures. The study highlights how employees construct project-based work as a promise of exciting adventures experienced under conditions of rational control, but also how the negative and suppressed aspects of project-based work are constructed as inevitable and to be endured. Through these emotional processes, the project management discourse is sustained and reinforced.

This article addresses the question: Why does disorder tend to simultaneously accompany efforts to create order when organizing? Adopting a communication-centered perspective, we specifically examine the role of texts in the mutual constitution of order and disorder. Drawing on empirical material from three qualitative case studies on project organizing, we show that attempts of ordering through language use and texts (i.e., by closing and fixing meaning) tend to induce disorder (i.e., by opening the possibility of multiple meanings), at the same time. As we contend, these (dis)ordering dynamics play a key role in the communicative constitution of organizations, keeping them in motion by calling forth continuous processes of meaning (re-) negotiation.

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to suggest a situated conception of projects, in order develop finer understanding of how these endeavors emerge and unfold over time. The author proposes that these understandings should be rooted in a process ontology, conceive action as situated and focus on actual practices as they are performed by all project actors. Taken together, these dimensions can renew how one views and approaches projects and their management.Design/methodology/approachThe paper is illustrated with examples taken out of a study of a software development project, conducted in the ethnographic tradition.FindingsThe examples expose how a specific practice, planning, was accomplished differently depending on the moment and was affected by different circumstances and constraints. The paper also discusses how preferring a processual worldview is especially befitting projects. As endeavors instigated to create or to make something happen, projects are perpetually changing and in movement; it is therefore relevant that their conceptualization takes fully into consideration their intimate nature.Originality/valueThe originality and value of the paper lie in the combination of perspectives, which can be both useful in theorizing projects differently, and in enhancing practitioners' reflexivity. This combination, it is argued, can address a wide array of issues in the context of projects, can favor localized reflection on project management prescriptions and tools, and can help practitioners to sharpen their sensitivity to their own practice.