Project Studies Beyond the Straitjacket: An Escape Artist’s Manual

Abstract

This article provides insights into ways in which project studies can be extended to make further impact on and contributions to other research domains, including more general management and organization studies. Inspired by literature on the phenomenology of science, publication practices, logics of research communities, and theory building, we analyze some examples of project studies that reach beyond the project domain. Based on this analysis, we present an “escape artist’s manual” consisting of strategies and practices for how researchers could think about and design project studies to enable contributions beyond the home domain.

Bright and Dark Spots in Project Studies: Continuing Efforts to Advance Theory Development and Debate

“…The other two articles were published in the first special issue. Mattias Jacobsson and Anders Söderholm (2020) propose an “escape artist manual” to help project scholars break out of project studies and frame possible contributions to the larger academic community. Such “escape” could facilitate project studies reflexivity as it allows theorizing to be in contact with different perspectives and views and, through such contrast, creates reference images that can be used in fixing identity (Hardy & Clegg, 1997, p. S14).…”

Internal projects as strategic tools: an organisation-level perspective and a research agenda

“…The ambition of this paper, however, extends beyond its primary audience of projectmanagement scholarship (Jacobsson and S€ oderholm, 2020). Responding to sustained calls for integrative research (Brady and Davies, 2004;Cattani et al, 2011;Hanisch and Wald, 2011;Hobbs, 2012;Killen et al, 2012;Kwak and Anbari, 2009;Miterev et al, 2017;Sicotte et al, 2014;S€ oderlund, 2004 Indeed, the emerging literature stream on organisational project management (Aubry et al, 2007(Aubry et al, , 2012Aubry and Lavoie-Tremblay, 2018;Crawford, 2006;Drouin and Besner, 2012;Drouin and Jugdev, 2014;M€ uller et al, 2019a, b;Sankaran et al, 2017) centres on an organisation-level perspective on project management while acknowledging strong connections to strategic management, organisation science and behavioural science (Sankaran et al, 2017).…”

“…Following earlier project research (Jugdev and Mathur, 2006; Killen et al ., 2012), the present study “borrows” its research question, several of its constructs and its analytical outlook from fields such as strategic management, innovation and organisation studies. Thus, in a situation where insights from project studies are only sparingly exploited in mainstream business scholarship (Jacobsson and Söderholm, 2020), this paper deliberately synthesises scholarship from both fields.…”

Why Do Business Organizations Participate in Projects? Toward a Typology of Project Value Domains

“…The assumption of a steady progression of industries, economies, and societies toward temporary organizational forms and practices based on projects is problematic because it falls short of adequately explaining why organizations choose to undertake projects in the first place. It is also problematic when projects, as a category of organizing economic production, have been repeatedly criticized for their poor track record in performance compared with other organizational forms (Flyvbjerg, 2006), and when project scholarship has found it difficult to gain traction among the ranks of general organization and management research (Jacobsson & Söderholm, 2020). The aim of this article is therefore to revisit the foundational question around organizational participation in projects to reinvigorate the debate and theoretical discussions in project studies (Geraldi & Söderlund, 2018; Geraldi et al, 2020) and help maintain the relevance and meaningfulness of project studies as a maturing scholarly field in line with Alvesson and Sandberg (2011).…”

“…In conclusion, we argue that this article raises a number of interesting questions that the project scholarship community should address to continue to advance the theory and debate in project studies (Geraldi et al, 2020). This research should revisit long-standing questions and controversies (Kreiner, 2020), thus helping our scholarly community to solidify its traction in the mainstream scholarship on management and organizations (Jacobsson & Söderholm, 2020) as well as in the community of practitioners and policy makers.…”