Editorial

Citation

Walker, D. (2014), "Editorial", International Journal of Managing Projects in Business, Vol. 7 No. 3. https://doi.org/10.1108/IJMPB-04-2014-0031

Editorial

Article Type: Editorial From: International Journal of Managing Projects in Business, Volume 7, Issue 3.

This third issue for 2014, Volume 7 is a special issue (SI) on crisis management and recovery projects and programmes with guest editors Shankar Sankaran, Nilgün Okay and Gerhard Chroust who provide a guest editorial to introduce the four papers accepted for that SI part of this issue. PM has much to offer in assisting to improve management of crises and recovery projects but as project managers, we also need to understand the context of these often highly complex project types. Four papers were accepted for the SI after a rigorous review process in which papers that were originally reviewed and accepted for the EURAM 2013 conference in the stream related to crisis management and recovery projects and then further amended and then separately reviewed and improved through the peer review process.

This issue also presents six additional regular papers. Paper 5, the first of these, is authored by Stephen Fox from VTT in Finland and is entitled “Getting real about BIM: critical realist descriptions as an alternative to the naïve framing and multiple fallacies of hype”. Fox argues that for a number of years now, claims that Building Information Modelling (BIM) will bring about major improvements to the productivity of the building industry have been made, however, while claims for BIM have expanded there is evidence that productivity has actually declined. He reminds us that BIM descriptions often comprise the naïve framing and multiple fallacies of hype. His paper presents much needed critical realist descriptions and explanations of BIM advantages. These present a contrast to current prevailing literature that offers much publicised hype descriptions. Through undertaking a critical-realist reality check he argues that inter-related non-trivial causal factors need to be taken into account to achieve positive business outcomes from BIM implementation action. He also found that factors claimed at the outset to be adequate to achieve outcome from action may be less than adequate. The originality of his paper is that critical realism analysis across six years to present longitudinal data that reveals that for BIM to be more future goal oriented than representing current certainties. The value of this paper is that detailed analysis of hype descriptions is provided alongside critical realist descriptions to present us with a more realistic appraisal of this important tool for project management in a number of industry sectors. His paper helps us better understand linkages between BIM use and potential productivity gains in the construction industry.

The next two papers investigate PM leadership and organisational culture topics. Paper 6, “Cross-cultural intelligence (CQ): it's impact on British expatriate adjustment on international construction projects” is authored by Lukumon Oyedele, Ashwini Konanahalli, John Spillane, Ron Coates, Jason von Meding and John Ebohon. Their paper investigates the relationship between the facets of cultural intelligence (cognitive, meta-cognitive, motivational, and behavioural CQ) and the dimensions of cross-cultural adjustment (interaction, general, and work adjustment). Their study is international in its reach and contributes to much needed insights into cultural aspects of working in multi-national teams. Interviews and questionnaire survey were carried out with British expatriates from the architectural, engineering and construction sector. A total of 191 respondents, with experience from 29 different countries, actively participated in this research. Structural equation model was used to investigate the relationship between elements of CQ and cross-cultural adjustment. Results of structural equation modelling revealed that collectively all the four aspects of CQ have significant influence on general, interaction and work adjustment, particularly motivational and cognitive CQ. Cognitive CQ which empowers the expatriates with in-depth knowledge about different cultures was a significant predictor of interaction and work adjustment, whereas, motivational CQ is a significant predictor for general and work adjustment. However, no support was gathered for meta-cognitive and behavioural aspects of CQ.

Paper 7, “How project managers can encourage and develop positive emotions in project teams” by Jan Terje Karlsen and Morten Emil Berg from Norway provides valuable leadership insights from an exploratory case study taken from the engineering industry into how project managers can use leadership tools to encourage and develop positive emotions among the project team members towards greater overall project success. The aim of this research was to investigate how positive emotions can create good team member relations, reduce stress, develop clearer roles, creativity, and joy at the workplace. The empirical data, gathered from in-depth interviews with three experienced project managers, provides insights about how project managers can use their signature leadership strengths. Their data shows how they can evolve and draw on positive meaning, positive emotions, and positive relations. Various examples of positive meaning, positive emotions, positive relations, and signature strengths have been identified and discussed. Their paper's contribution is to portray and analyse positive psychology in a project management setting. Additionally, the paper assists understanding the connections among positive meaning, positive emotions, positive relations, and signature strengths by presenting and discussing a model.

The next four papers deal with PM decision making and project front-end topics. Bjorn Andersen, Knut Samset and Kjell Austeng provide us with an interesting contribution on managing the front-end of projects. Paper 8 entitled “To which extent do projects explore the opportunity space? A study of conceptual appraisals and the choice of conceptual solutions” helps us understand how conceptual appraisals and choice of concepts are handled, and to which extent the conceptual opportunity space is exploited. The concept development and exploration phase of the front-end of projects is an important phase in which value can be entrenched or dissipated in projects and it is an under-studied topic of PM that this leading Norwegian research team have been investigating for several years. Their study is case-based, and rooted in a number of in-depth case studies of single project cases. They found that the projects do not exploit the opportunity space to a very large extent. The lessons from their findings suggests that the final choice is determined more by decision makers than the analysts, and will often be the result of policy and preferences more than objective reasoning. This contributes to better understanding the lived reality and context of this phase of project development.

Paper 9 by Tim Wilson and Thommie Burström is entitled “‘Requirement managers’ roles in industrial, platform development”. It provides a Swedish perspective based on a case study of an industrial platform project. In all, 68 persons were interviewed and project prerequisites and requirement specifications documents were studied. The roles of specific individuals and their formal role as requirement managers are investigated. Their research findings indicates that the requirement manager's role fulfilment is performed through five major activities described as developing, anchoring, re-organising, routinising, and positioning. These activities are essential in order to manage working with a large flagship project. This paper links in well to the topic of Paper 8 and helps us improve our understanding of the requirements definition phase of the front-end of projects.

Finally, Paper 10 by Mark Mulally from Canada entitled “The role of agency in project initiation decisions” has its focus on the project initiation stage. His paper, based on his recent PhD work, used a grounded theory methodology and sought to understand the influences of individual decision makers on project initiation decisions within organisations. Data collection involved 28 participants who were involved in project initiation decisions within their organisations, who discussed the process of project initiation in their organisation and their role within that process. The study demonstrates that the overall effectiveness of project initiation decisions is a product of agency, process effectiveness or rule effectiveness. The employment of agency can have a direct influence on decision-making effectiveness, it can compensate for organisational inadequacies of a process or political nature, and it can be constrained in the evidence of formal and effective organisational practices. Most examination of agency in this context has framed the discussion as an executive-level or board-level phenomenon. The study results demonstrate that agency is in fact being perceived and operationalised at all levels. Those demonstrating agency in the majority of instances in this study do so in exercising stewardship behaviours. This has important implications for how agency is perceived by executives, and by how agency is exercised by actors at all levels of the organisation.

Derek Walker