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International Journal of Project Management 33 (2015) 278 – 290
www.elsevier.com/locate/ijproman
Rethinking project management: A structured
literature review with a critical look at the brave
new world
Per Svejvig ⁎, Peter Andersen
Department of Business Administration, Aarhus University, Bartholins Allé 10, 8000 Aarhus C, Denmark
Received 28 September 2013; received in revised form 4 June 2014; accepted 10 June 2014
Available online 28 June 2014
Abstract
This paper presents the results of a structured review of the rethinking project management (RPM) literature based on the classification and
analysis of 74 contributions and in addition takes a critical look at this brave new world. Through the analysis, a total of 6 overarching categories
emerged: contextualization, social and political aspects, rethinking practice, complexity and uncertainty, actuality of projects and broader
conceptualization. These categories cover a broad range of different contributions with diverse and alternative perspectives on project
management. The early RPM literature dates back to the 1980s, while the majority was published in 2006 onwards, and the research stream appears
to be still active. A critical look at this brave new world exhibits the overall challenge for RPM to become much more diffused and accepted.
© 2014 Elsevier Ltd. APM and IPMA. All rights reserved.
Keywords: Rethinking project management; Literature review; Project management research; Classical project management
1. Introduction
The management of projects is of considerable economic
importance and dramatic growth has occurred in project work
across different sectors, industries and countries (Turner et al.,
2010; Winter et al., 2006c). Projects have become an important
way to structure work in most organizations (Bakker, 2010) and
constitute one of the most important organizational developments (Winter et al., 2006c). Despite the substantial increase in
the importance and propagation of projects, the conceptual base
of models and methodologies for project management has
remained fairly static in the past (Koskela and Howell, 2002)
and has long been dominated by a technocratic and rationalistic
viewpoint (Morris et al., 2011b; Packendorff, 1995) – hereafter
denoted classical project management – which has received
⁎ Corresponding author. Tel.: + 45 20 82 44 93.
E-mail addresses: [email protected] (P. Svejvig), [email protected]
(P. Andersen).
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.ijproman.2014.06.004
0263-7863/00/© 2014 Elsevier Ltd. APM and IPMA. All rights reserved.
substantial criticism for its shortcomings in practice (Koskela
and Howell, 2002; Sahlin-Andersson and Söderholm, 2002).
Accordingly, several scholars have started to think more
widely about projects and project management as a reaction to
the classical view, but also as a response to the challenges of
carrying out projects in practice and the poor track record of
previous projects (Morris et al., 2011b). This wider thinking
has developed many new insights over the years, such as
moving from the “project as a tool” approach to the idea of the
“project as a temporary organization” (Packendorff, 1995) and
understanding project management as a holistic discipline for
achieving organizational efficiency, effectiveness and innovation (Jugdev et al., 2001). This more holistic and pluralistic
understanding of project management holds a great deal of
potential for enhancing and expanding the current knowledge
and practice within the field and has been labeled “rethinking
project management” (RPM) (Winter et al., 2006c). RPM
has evolved over many years, despite the hegemony of the
dominant view and often in contrast to this view. The early
P. Svejvig, P. Andersen / International Journal of Project Management 33 (2015) 278–290
literature dates back to the mid-1980s (Lichtenberg, 1983), and
the recent RPM literature indicates that the research stream is
still highly active (Saynisch, 2010a).
It is time to take stock of what we know about RPM and look
critically at the brave new world – and there are several reasons
for such a structured literature review. First, RPM is a diverse
research area and a literature review can offer useful input to the
conceptualization of the RPM concept by establishing a more
integrated view and setting boundaries. Second, an understanding
of the development of RPM over time makes it possible to
elucidate RPM with all its sub-versions from a broader historical
perspective, enabling us to see how the components of the current
stock were added and basically how we arrived at the current
situation. Finally, we analyze the past in order to prepare for the
future (Webster and Watson, 2002) with the aim of keeping this
research area viable and stimulating theoretical as well as
professional development. We formulate our research questions
from the above: (1) How can we conceptualize RPM and how has
it developed over time? (2) How can future research expand the
RPM research area?
We conducted a literature review consisting of two parts in
order to address the research questions: the first part was an
explorative and less structured literature search for alternatives
279
to classical project management; this was followed by the
second part, which was a rigid structured literature review
consisting of four phases, starting with the definition of the
review scope, the conceptualization of RPM, literature searches
with key words and finally the literature analysis. In particular,
the scoping and selection represented a challenging process in
order to establish a more integrated view and set appropriate
boundaries for RPM, in which we included as examples the UK
RPM initiative (Winter et al., 2006c), the Scandinavian school
of project studies (Sahlin-Andersson and Söderholm, 2002) and
practice studies (Blomquist et al., 2010), but excluded for
instance the making projects critical research stream (Hodgson
and Cicmil, 2006).
This review consists of 74 contributions, which we classified
and analyzed. We set out to provide an overview of the existing
RPM body of knowledge by focusing on the basic principles
behind the RPM literature and how it is differentiated from the
classical view. Through the analysis, a total of 6 overarching
categories emerged: contextualization, social and political aspects,
rethinking practice, complexity and uncertainty, actuality of
projects and broader conceptualization. These categories cover a
broad range of different contributions with diverse and alternative
perspectives on project management. A critical discussion about
Table 1
Comparing classical project management with rethinking project management.
Author
Classical Project Management
Rethinking Project Management
Packendorff (1995, p. 328)
Project metaphor: the project as a tool
Process: linear, with the phases plan, control and evaluate
Jugdev et al. (2001, p. 36)
Project management: as a set of tools and techniques used to
achieve project efficiencies
Project metaphor: the project as a temporary organization
Process: iterative, with the phases expectation setting, actions
and learning
Project management: as a holistic discipline used to achieve
project/program/organizational efficiency, effectiveness and
innovation
Success: a multidimensional construct measured by efficiency,
effectiveness and innovation
Sell project management: be an advocate and champion of
project management by aligning its value with the firm's
strategic business priorities
New models and theories that recognize and illuminate the
complexity of projects and project management, at all levels.
The new models and theories are explicitly presented as only
partial theories of the complex terrain
Approach: adaptive project management
Project goal: achieving multiple business results and meeting
multiple criteria
Management style: adaptive approach, one size does not fit all
Perspective: organizational perspective
Project definition: a project is a temporary organization
established by its base organization to carry out an assignment
on its behalf
Main focus: value creation. Create a desirable development in
another organization
Project type and target: novel strategic project with a general
vision and direction, but detailed goals not known and partially
emergent
Examples of domain of relevance:
Success: measured by efficiency performance metrics
Practice project management: focus on the project details at
the operational level and tactically
Winter et al. (2006c, p. 642,
original emphasis)
Shenhar and Dvir (2007, p. 11,
original emphasis)
Andersen (2008, p. 5, 10, 49)
Lenfle and Loch (2010, p. 45)
Simple life-cycle-based models of projects, as the dominant
model of project and project management with the (often
unexamined) assumption that the life-cycle model is
(assumed to be) the actual terrain
Approach: traditional project management
Project goal: completing the job on time, on budget and
within the requirements
Management style: one size fits all
Perspective: task perspective
Project definition: a project is a temporary endeavor
undertaken to create a unique product, service or result
(Project Management Institute, 2004, p. 5)
Main focus: execute the defined task
Project type and target: routine execution, target given and
defined from above
Examples of domain of relevance:
• Known markets and customer reactions
• Known performance drivers of developed systems
• Known environmental parameters
• New markets and unknown customer reactions
• Unknown technology
• Complexity with unforeseeable interactions among drivers
and variables
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P. Svejvig, P. Andersen / International Journal of Project Management 33 (2015) 278–290
the brave new world follows the analysis, in which we exhibit the
overall challenge for RPM to become much more diffused and
accepted.
The remainder of this paper is organized as follows. The next
section describes how we conceptualize classical project management versus rethinking project management. The methodology for
the literature review process is then reported, followed by an
analysis of the 74 papers classified into 6 categories. We continue
by taking a critical look at “the brave new world” of RPM research
in order to suggest future research areas, and finally we present the
conclusion.
2. Conceptualizing classical project management versus
rethinking project management
We will abstain from defining classical project management
and rethinking project management as both concepts are
understood and used very broadly. We will instead pursue the
conceptualization of both concepts in terms of their important
features and how they supplement each other.
We draw on several scholars who have specified alternative
views and compared them with the classical view. Some of
these are summarized in Table 1:
Table 1 illustrates the understanding of the classical view
as execution- and task-oriented while the rethinking view(s)
reflects a broader and more holistic perspective in which
projects might be conceptualized as temporary organizations
(see also Bakker, 2010). The relationship between the classical
and the rethinking view should not be interpreted as dichotomic
but on the contrary as dualistic, combining “old truths and new
insights” (Jugdev et al., 2001). Söderlund (2011) argued, in line
with this, for a pluralistic understanding of project management
and presented seven schools of thought – for example, one of
the schools mentioned is the optimization school, which to
some extent resembles the classical view. Although the schools
of thought are interesting, the insight from the pluralistic
understanding is more important in the rethinking context and
can be compared with pluralism in organizational theory (Scott
and Davis, 2007).
One way to describe these multiple perspectives is to use
metaphors. Morgan proposed eight metaphors for an organization
(e.g. machine, organism and brain) and stated that metaphors
imply “a way of thinking and a way of seeing … but also a way of
Classical Project Management
Executability, simplicity, temporarity,
linearity, controllability and instrumentality
not seeing” (Morgan, 1997, pp. 4–5). We have to use several
metaphors in order to study organizations as each way of seeing
will provide unique insights with strengths and limitations
(Morgan, 1997, p. 352). Turner and colleagues (Turner et al.,
2010) took up the metaphorical approach and presented nine
metaphors for project management — for example, they
characterized the optimization school as the project as a machine,
which embeds the view that the project is a system requiring
optimization (in line with Söderlund, 2011).
The schools of thought (Bredillet, 2007; Söderlund, 2011)
developed within academia, based on reviews and maps of
project management research — this certainly stimulated the
rethinking agenda for research (which also appeared to be the
purpose). However, a UK-based research network followed a
different approach to rethinking project management, involving
many leading researchers in project management and senior
practitioners from industry. The network's aims were: (1) to
develop the field of project management and improve the
real-world practice and (2) to define an interdisciplinary
research agenda to enrich and extend the field beyond its
current foundations (Winter et al., 2006b, p. 650).
The main findings from the network resulted in a framework of five directions to develop the area intellectually
(see also Winter et al. (2006c) in Table 1). These areas are
project complexity, social process, value creation, conceptualization and practitioner development. Each of these has an
impact on the themes that were identified as being key:
projectification, programs, the actuality of projects, uncertainty,
business projects, professionalization and practitioner development (Maylor, 2006, p. 636). The five directions and associated
themes thus summarize their proposal for rethinking project
management.
We distilled the above-mentioned findings into some important
features representing the classical and rethinking project management concepts, as shown in Fig. 1 below:
The features in Fig. 1 are not meant to be exhaustive for the
two concepts, but on the contrary to highlight the important key
characteristics. We adapt the understanding put forward by the
UK rethinking initiative (Maylor, 2006) that the classical
concept is embedded in the rethinking concept, which means
that the rethinking concept enhances the classical concept
rather than discarding it (Winter et al., 2006c). Furthermore, we
understand both concepts as non-monolithic entities, implying
Rethinking Project Management
Learnability, multiplicity, temporarity,
complexity, uncertainty and sociability
Fig. 1. Important features of the classical and rethinking project management concepts.
P. Svejvig, P. Andersen / International Journal of Project Management 33 (2015) 278–290
multiple interpretations with many sub-versions (inspired by
Meyer and Hammerschmid, 2006).
This conceptualization forms the basis for the paper's
methodological approach to a structured literature review
about rethinking project management.
281
2. Conceptualization of topic
3. Methodology for the literature review process
3.1. Part 1: Explorative and unstructured literature review
An explorative and unstructured literature search about
alternatives to the classical view initiated this study. We
discovered the rethinking initiative in the UK (e.g. Winter et al.,
2006c) fairly early on in this initial process. We sought out
knowledge about the UK process, as well as other ways to
rethink project management, in an explorative fashion,
which provided us with knowledge about the field and a
foundation for further studies. Through the initial process,
we found 26 different articles, textbooks, etc. to be relevant,
offering new alternative perspectives and new insights into
the traditional approach (some of them are referenced in
Table 1).
3.2. Part 2: Framework for the structured literature review
Part 2 followed a more structured and systematic approach.
Conducting a systematic literature review needs an explicit
research method that uses literature as an input, instead of
observations, interviews or questionnaire data in empirical
studies (Müller et al., 2014). Tranfield et al. defined a systematic
review as “a replicable, scientific and transparent process … that
aims to minimize bias … by providing an audit trail of
the reviewers decisions, procedures and conclusions” (Tranfield
et al., 2003, p. 209). By consulting literature reviews (Bakker,
2010; Müller et al., 2014; Söderlund, 2011) and research methods
about literature reviews (Brocke et al., 2009; Hart, 1998; Pawson
et al., 2005; Tranfield et al., 2003), it is possible to synthesize a
pattern for the literature review as follows: (1) plan the review,
(2) clarify the scope and conceptualize the topic, (3) search,
evaluate and select literature, (4) analyze the selected literature
and finally (5) report and disseminate. More specifically, we
adapted the approach in Fig. 2 below (inspired by Vom Brocke
et al., 2009):
Fig. 2 presents the four phases used in the structured
literature review. Although it is possible to separate the phases
analytically, the actual research process was iterative, but is still
presented in a structured manner. The four phases are discussed
in the following.
Phase 1: The study's review scope (Vom Brocke et al.,
2009) focused on the research outcomes and theories of the
rethinking literature. The coverage of the structured literature
review was rather comprehensive with the purpose of including
most of the literature within the defined scope.
Phase 2: As stated above, it is possible to describe the
project management literature as either classical project
management or rethinking project management; however, the
two categories are not monolithic and all-inclusive (i.e. many
1. Definition of
review scope
3. Literature
search
4. Literature
analysis
Fig. 2. Framework for the structured literature review.
project management topics are not included in the two
categories). The present review's intention is to present an
assessment of the alternative perspectives that have emerged
as a result of, for example, the rethinking initiative in the UK
(Winter et al., 2006c). For this reason, the outset of the
current study was the identification of key terms and topics
from the UK study that could be used in further search
processes. Initially, we decided that the key concepts would
be rethinking project management and reinventing project
management.
Phase 3: In part 2, the goal was to create a search process
that, ideally, would both encompass the literature from the
initial search process in part 1 and capture other relevant
literature. Consequently, we identified relevant search strings
for each of the 26 publications found through the initial study,
which was a highly iterative process. The iterative development of search strings is listed in Appendix A. Table 2 presents
the results:
The next step involved selecting the relevant contributions
(articles and books) from the search result with 1279 entries in
the four databases, as shown in Table 2 above. Each of the
authors separately evaluated the result against the RPM
conceptualization presented in the previous chapter, thereby
performing triangulation (i.e. multiple investigators) (Bryman,
2008, p. 379). This entailed first examining the title and, if
necessary, the keywords and the abstract. The authors presented
the selected lists to each other and through a joint process this
Table 2
Results from the structured literature review process.
Databases
Scopus
EBSCO
ProQuest
ScienceDirect
Search results from part 2
Coverage of initial 26
publications from part 1
425
19
385
16
305
13
164
16
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P. Svejvig, P. Andersen / International Journal of Project Management 33 (2015) 278–290
resulted in 110 contributions consisting of “included” and
“maybe included” contributions. The authors scrutinized
the “maybe included” contributions again and selected a net
list of 74 contributions (these are marked in the reference
list with an asterisk). We will discuss the criteria for
including and excluding contributions in more detail in the
following.
Inclusions: (1) The core of the conceptualization of RPM
is the UK-based network initiative from 2004 to 2006, which
is documented in the “Special issue on rethinking project
management” (e.g. Winter et al., 2006c), and it is easy to
identify and include papers in this category. (2) The next area is
the Scandinavian school of project studies, which shares many
ideas with the UK initiative, such as a broader conceptualization beyond mere execution (Sahlin-Andersson and Söderholm,
2002) and seeing projects as temporary organizations embedded in permanent organizations and wider environments (the
contexts) (Lundin and Söderholm, 1995; Packendorff, 1995).
The area includes several papers taking temporary organizations as their outset; however, inclusion requires rethinking or
the setting of new directions, and many papers use the term
temporary organizations only as a synonym for projects and
do not provide these new directions, and therefore are not
included. (3) Projects-as-practice papers (Blomquist et al.,
2010) are included as they build on the actuality of projects'
theme from the UK initiative (Cicmil et al., 2006). Blomquist
et al. (2010, p. 7) explained the relationship as follows: “We
thus build our thoughts [projects-as-practice] on the following
in both the practice turn in social science and management
research, as well as in the recent ‘rethinking project management’ ….” (4) A totally different area is the complexity turn in
project management research focusing on complex dynamic
systems (Cooke-Davies et al., 2007) and beyond — this has
been coined by Saynisch (2010b) as “Project Management
Second Order (PM-2)” and sets new directions. (5) There are
finally more scattered inclusions, e.g. “reinventing project
management” (Shenhar and Dvir, 2007) and “perspectives on
projects” (Turner et al., 2010).
Exclusions: (1) It was fairly simple to identify and exclude
papers belonging to classical project management (CPM).
However, some of these papers needed more investigation
when they described new methods, tools, practices, etc., but as
long as they built upon CPM thinking, we still excluded them.
(2) A rather different approach involved excluding “making
projects critical” (MPC) (Hodgson and Cicmil, 2006). This
exclusion might be less obvious, but in line with Blomquist et
al. (2010) we see this approach mainly as a criticism of both
CPM and RPM; although some writings might be in the gray
zone between RPM and MPC, we decided to exclude MPC
research. (3) Several empirical studies (e.g. with an ethnographic approach) might reach the conclusion that CPM is
insufficient and incomplete, but as with MPC, a criticism of
CPM does not in itself make it a candidate for inclusion. (4)
Finally, we excluded editorials, book reviews and the like as
they lack the level of detail that we were pursuing.
The selection process was challenging, as the discussion of
inclusions and exclusions above entirely illustrates. However, it
is the authors' belief that the final list of contributions is largely
representative and includes relevant sub-versions of RPM,
despite the likelihood of omitting potential contributions.
Phase 4: We divided the literature analysis into two coding
processes. First, we conducted an inductive analysis (Patton,
2002, pp. 453–454), with the goal of identifying overarching
topics and then categorizing each contribution within one of the
associated categories. We identified six categories through this
process. Though some contributions touched upon different
categories, each contribution was only associated with the main
category of the contribution. For example, Aritua et al. (2009)
described how new approaches, techniques, etc. are necessary
in relation to multi-project management. Thus, we identified
the main category for this contribution as contextualization —
concerned with how projects need to expand beyond the goals
of isolated projects and encourage thinking about projects
in a broader context. However, the contribution also explored
the relationship between multiple projects and complexity
theory; thus, the contribution had complexity as a secondary
category, which was the case in several other papers in which
the complexity of projects or their environment, for example,
acted as an underlying argument for rethinking, but still played
a secondary role in the paper. This forced the authors to focus
on a narrow set of categories that were distinctively different.
At an earlier stage, a larger number of the contributions were
overlapping. This obliged the authors to reconstruct the
categorization or merge categories. For example, we later
merged two categories, called reflective practice and rethinking
education, into one category, called rethinking practice, since
the two categories were highly linked. For example, some
papers were concerned with the link between practice and
education (Berggren and Söderlund, 2008), others were
concerned with educating reflective practitioners (Crawford
et al., 2006), while still others were related to reflective practice
in general (Kreiner, 2012). After a long discussion about
the categorization, the authors in this case agreed that the
development and rethinking of both practitioners and education
are so tightly linked that another category – encompassing both
of the old categories – would be more fitting. Second, we
carried out a deductive coding process to classify the
contributions into yearly distributions and their paradigmatic
stance (inspired by Chen and Hirschheim, 2004) — looking at
whether the identified literature overall could be categorized as
being either subjectivistic or objectivistic; we carried out this
task using Burrell and Morgan's (1979) distinctions.
Part 1 took place over a long period ranging from autumn
2011 to autumn 2012, while part 2 was more concentrated,
from October 2012 to January 2013 (i.e. determining 74
contributions), although with subsequent revisions. Finally,
the authors finalized the writing up of the literature review in
May 2014.
4. Analysis of rethinking project management research
This section presents the results of the inductive analysis,
followed by the yearly distribution of papers and the categorization of papers according to their paradigmatic standpoint.
P. Svejvig, P. Andersen / International Journal of Project Management 33 (2015) 278–290
283
Table 3
Categories identified through the inductive analysis.
Categorization
Description
Contextualization
Expanding the conception of the project to encompass elements such as the environment and organizational strategy (e.g. Dille and
Söderlund, 2011)
How social and political processes shape projects, e.g. power structures, emotionality and identities (e.g. Smith, 2011)
Offering or suggesting alternative methods, perspectives and ways to rethink practice, e.g. through education or reflective practice
(e.g. Crawford et al., 2006; Kreiner, 2012; Thomas and Mengel, 2008)
Outlining the complexity of projects, their environment, etc. and new methods to cope with complexity (e.g. Lenfle and Loch, 2010)
Outlining the need to study how projects are actually carried out or empirical studies of the actuality of projects (e.g. Blomquist et al.,
2010; Packendorff, 1995)
Offering alternative perspectives on projects, project management and project success or outlining how the field is broadening
beyond its current limits (e.g. Sahlin-Andersson and Söderholm, 2002)
Social and political aspects
Rethinking practice
Complexity and uncertainty
The actuality of projects
Broader conceptualization
The inductive analysis resulted in the six categories shown
in Table 3 below. Since these categories are rather broad – the
aim was to identify few, but broad categories with little
overlapping – they will be elaborated upon in the following.
Contextualization covers literature that describes how
projects need to expand beyond the narrow goals of isolated
projects and encourage thinking about projects in a broader
context by focusing on the management of multiple projects, the
organizational strategy and the project environment. For example,
Dille and Söderlund (2011) described how the conventional
analysis of project organizations has neglected the institutional
environment and how institutional arrangements can severely
limit projects. Another example is the work of Alderman and Ivory
(2010), who examined how the meta-project context impacts
on service-led projects. By existing within the context of a
meta-project, these projects encompass considerations of activities
beyond the normal remits of the project manager. Another
subtheme within this category is the management of
multiple projects. For example, Aritua et al. (2009, p. 72)
argued that the management of multiple projects “presents
challenges that are fundamentally different from single
project management.” In connection with the management
of multiple projects, Aritua et al. (2009) proposed the use of
complexity theory to understand how it is possible to see
the multi-project environment as being made up of complex
adaptive systems. Yet another example from this category is
the work presented by Maylor et al. (2006), who pointed out
that programs and portfolios are a mechanism for management in organizations and that they create issues that reach
beyond the problems associated with single projects. Hence,
project management skills and techniques are not necessarily transferable to the management of multiple projects. A
different example within this category is the use of Kaikaku
project management, which integrates the corporate strategy
into the project by seeing it as an open value system (Ohara
and Asada, 2009).
The category social and political aspects includes literature
with a focus on social and political processes rather than the
traditional focus on specific tools and procedures. For example,
Leybourne (2007) described how the emphasis is changing
from a dominating focus on tools and techniques towards the
social and behavioral elements of the management of projects
and how research within project management is expanding.
On the other hand, Clarke (2010) explored how emotions can
potentially influence project managers' behavior and decisions
when playing their role in relationship management in projects.
The author suggested that project managers should use their
understanding and awareness of their emotions and those of
others more actively in projects. Sense (2009), on the other
hand, focused on learning in relation to projects and more
specifically on the importance of social learning within projects
and project teams through an alternative characterization of
projects. Small and Walker (2010) showed how project
complexity is socially derived with differences created from
human plurality. This implies that the project management
strategy should go through continual adaptation in order to
respond to the changing power and politics within project
practice.
Rethinking practice encompasses literature that suggests
alternative methods, perspectives and approaches to rethink the
ways in which practitioners work with projects, for example,
suggestions on how to educate project managers to enable them
to cope better with the increasing complexity and uncertainty in
project environments (Thomas and Mengel, 2008). Berggren
and Söderlund (2008) showed how educational practices can be
developed in order to stimulate knowledge co-production
between practitioners and academia in order to improve project
management education. Louw and Rwelamila (2012) examined a
sample of South African higher education institutions to
determine whether they had incorporated some of the thoughts
and concepts from, for example, the rethinking process in the UK
into their curricula. The different ways of rethinking education
are often linked to the concept of the reflective practitioner or
similar concepts. This is the case for Louw and Rwelamila (2012)
since they, among other rethinking topics, examined whether the
educational institutions linked project managers with reflective
practitioners. Yet another example is the case of Sewchurran
(2008, p. 316), who presented “an alternative to the prescriptive,
model based, instrumental approaches” with the aim of achieving
better-educated, self-organizing and reflexive project practitioners. Apart from literature more focused on the educational
side of project management, this category also encompasses
literature dealing with reflective practice in general, improvisation and contingency approaches and ways to rethink or improve
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practice. It is related to the work of authors such as Crawford et al.
(2006), who stressed that increasing project complexity demands
the education of more reflective project practitioners, in touch
with the newest theory and research, rather than solely focusing
on technical skills. Similarly, Thomas and Mengel (2008) argued
that complexity, uncertainty and chaos play an increasingly
important role in projects and project environments. While
project management training programs focus on standardization
of the field, the increasing complexity requires other forms of
professional development of project managers. Kreiner argued
that “Achieving desired goals flexibly in unfolding realities, and
implementing prior plans, are both important aspects of the
project manager's work.” This dilemma is, according to Kreiner,
important to keep in mind as a project manager since he otherwise
risks “taking the plans literally” (Kreiner, 2012, p. 715). Instead,
the project manager should be prepared to adapt the plan since it
might be rendered inadequate and imperfect by a changing and
turbulent environment. In a similar way, Leybourne (2010), for
example, argued in his study that managers within successful
organizations allow their employees significant freedom to
experiment, for example with task management and unstructured
practices of work.
The category complexity and uncertainty consists of contributions that deal with the increasing uncertainty and complexity
in projects, project environments, etc. These are evident in the
work of Atkinson et al. (2006, p. 687), who, based on discussions
that took place as part of the RPM network in the UK, identified a
wide range of sources of uncertainty and stated that: “More
sophisticated efforts to recognize and manage important sources
of uncertainty are needed.” To deal with such increasing
complexity, these authors proposed alternative perspectives and
theories, such as evolutionary management and self-organization
(Saynisch, 2010a), and systems thinking (Sheffield et al., 2012).
As Kreiner (1995) pointed out, people involved in projects
must recognize that the originally intended outcomes will not
necessarily remain relevant over time since the environment often
drifts, thereby risking and undermining the success of the project.
Cooke-Davies et al. (2007) conducted a review of the major
ideas within complexity science and evaluated their potential
relevance to the project management field, focusing especially
on ideas with direct relevance to social complexity associated
with the people who are involved in delivering complex
projects. Though the contributions often did not identify
complexity as a main category, it frequently served as an
underlying argument for rethinking practice (e.g. Sheffield et
al., 2012).
The actuality of projects covers literature that underlines
the need for empirical studies of projects as its own point of
departure. A general argument within this category is that: “while
a great deal is written about traditional project management, we
know very little about the ‘actuality’ of project based working
and management” (Cicmil et al., 2006, p. 675). Blomquist et al.
(2010, p. 5), for example, also pointed this out, by stating
that research into projects is “[…] insubstantial when it comes
to understanding what occurs in projects.” For this reason,
Blomquist et al. (2010) outlined the project-as-practice approach
to research. The authors argued that whereas traditional project
research departs from some overall concepts and models from
which action is derived, the practice perspective begins with the
individual actions and asks what overall models and concepts
result from those actions. Similarly, Packendorff (1995)
argued that the research on project management is not
sufficiently empirical. While project management research
generally views projects as similar, these simple classifications are mainly due to the fact that research has only made
empirical observations to a limited extent (Packendorff,
1995).
Broader conceptualization deals with contributions that offer
alternative perspectives on, for example, projects, project management and project success, outline how the field is broadening
beyond its current limits or describe the existing perspectives
within the field. Turner et al. (2010) outlined nine different
perspectives of projects, for example the project as a machine, the
project as a mirror, etc. On the other hand, McLeod et al. (2012)
explored the evaluation of project success from a subjectivist
perspective. Through a longitudinal case study, the authors
investigated how different stakeholders perceived the project
outcomes and how they evaluated success, from which
they derived a conceptual framework. Kolltveit et al. (2007)
studied the project management literature and showed how the
dominance of each perspective has changed over time.
Through a case study, Koppenjan et al. (2011) showed how
project managers acknowledge and combine different competing perspectives in practice in order to meet the requirements of control and flexibility.
The categorization of the 74 contributions resulted in their
distribution among the 6 different topics, as shown in Fig. 3
below:
Fig. 3 reflects the main categories within the different
contributions. Still, some papers touched upon more than one
category. As mentioned, complexity and uncertainty and rethinking practice were often related. As also shown in Fig. 3, each topic
covered at least six contributions, while the most represented
topics were broader conceptualization followed by complexity
and uncertainty. While broader conceptualization on the one hand
is a broad category in itself, it is also by far the largest, with a total
of 27 contributions. One argument for this could be that the
research stream has been preoccupied with more conceptual and
theoretical research since there was an initial need to define
projects and broaden our understanding of projects and their
setting. On the other hand, social and political aspects together
with the actuality of projects were the least represented categories.
It is interesting that while many of the authors within the RPM
research stream argued for alternative approaches to project
management rather than the rationalistic one employed within the
classical approach, only a minority of the rethinking
literature has a primary focus on the social aspects related
to projects. Again, this might be related to the fact that
there was an initial need for the research stream to
establish itself and its view on projects before endeavoring
to undertake further studies of practice. The fact that social
and political aspects together with the actuality of projects
were also rather small themes within the research stream
suggests that a well-grounded empirical understanding of
P. Svejvig, P. Andersen / International Journal of Project Management 33 (2015) 278–290
285
30
20
10
0
Expanding
context
Social and
polical aspects
Rethinking
pracce
Complexity and
uncertainty
The actuality of
Broader
projects
conceptualizaon
Fig. 3. Distribution of the contributions among the topics.
analysis in this regard showed that only a small fraction of the
identified RPM literature employed an objectivistic view —
we identified a total of 6 papers as objectivistic and 62 as
subjectivistic, while 6 papers from the literature review was
not classified as either objectivistic or subjectivistic. This
seems to relate to the changing nature of project management
from a hard paradigm to a soft paradigm (Pollack, 2007), for which
the RPM literature generally subscribes to the subjectivistic soft
paradigm.
Departing from the findings from the analysis, the next
section will take a critical view of RPM research.
projects is not particularly strong within the RPM research
stream and that there has been a primary emphasis on the
theoretical base.
The development of the RPM literature over time is shown
in Fig. 4 below:
Fig. 4 shows the increase in RPM literature since 2006, and
this is most likely to be a result of the RPM initiative in the UK,
which lasted from March 2004 to May 2006 (Winter et al.,
2006c). In consequence, the above figure illustrates that the
research stream has been active since the RPM initiative in 2006.
Accordingly, 59 of the 74 contributions were published after
2005, which amounts to approximately 80% of the identified
literature. While we could argue that the move towards more
alternative thinking is a product of significant efforts by central
actors within the project management community, as the above
Fig. 4 would suggest, there might be other explanations for such a
significant movement within project management research. One
might be a general movement in the field away from objectivistic
views towards a more subjectivistic understanding and enquiries
on projects, which in turn would lead to more heterogeneous
and situated views and concepts on projects in general. Our
5. A critical look at “the brave new world”
Although the rethinking concept might be seen as a
promising road for project management for both research
and professional practice, it is also essential to take a critical
look at “the brave new world” and use this critical look to
discuss how future research can expand and advance RPM
research.
14
12
10
8
6
4
2
Fig. 4. Distribution of the RPM literature since 1983.
2011
2012
2010
2008
2009
2007
2005
2006
2004
2002
2003
2001
2000
1998
1999
1997
1995
1996
1993
1994
1992
1991
1990
1989
1987
1988
1986
1985
1983
1984
0
286
P. Svejvig, P. Andersen / International Journal of Project Management 33 (2015) 278–290
The overall challenge for RPM is to become much
more diffused and accepted as a useful enhancement of CPM.
Although we have a solid body of knowledge for RPM, it is still
lacking wide diffusion into practice, and this is really a major
change for the profession and academia, which will be discussed
in the following.
First, the rethinking literature generally assumes that classical
project management is the dominant view; for example, Morris
et al. (2011b, p. 2) stated that classical project management “is the
tradition that still dominates many of the textbooks to this day and
whose positivist, normative character arguably underlies the
dominant professional model of the discipline — its body of
knowledge (Project Management Institute, 2008),” and this view
is supported by others (Andersen, 2008; Packendorff, 1995). This
line of thought is easy to follow and indirectly supported by this
literature review, as most of the literature that we encountered
initially appeared to follow the classical view (we selected only
74 out of 1279 contributions obtained in the search process).
However, it would be surprising if the early studies on the
rethinking view (Lichtenberg, 1983; Lundin and Söderholm,
1995; Packendorff, 1995) have only had a slight influence on
academia and practitioners.
Furthermore, Fig. 4 indicates an increase in the rethinking
literature from 2006, so the classical view might face increasing
challenges, although it has been in existence since before the
Second World War (Lenfle and Loch, 2010; Morris, 2013) and
is certainly highly institutionalized. There is thus a danger that
the assumption of the dominant view has become a rationalized
myth (Boxenbaum and Jonsson, 2008; Meyer and Rowan,
1977) that is reiterated repeatedly, while both scholars and
practitioners are in fact in motion.
Especially experienced practitioners might be aware of the
challenges of the classical view (Svejvig, 2012) and able to
apply practices that circumvent some of the problems
encountered in the classical approach. One example is a study
by Hällgren and Söderholm (2011, pp. 508–509), in which the
project plans were obviously a rational part of the project
management toolbox for progress reporting (the classical view),
but they observed that the project plans also fulfilled the
broader purpose of enhancing understanding and facilitating
negotiations (the rethinking view). The findings from the study
indicate that the project plans were used further than in the
classical view and were able to illuminate the complex terrain
in praxis (Winter et al., 2006c). This limited example
illustrates the potential gap between the dominant classical
view as the majority of the literature (the theoretical view)
has described and presented and how it is enacted in practice.
We thus need to understand the degree to which CPM is a
rationalized myth legitimizing project management as “proper” (Boxenbaum and Jonsson, 2008), while practitioners
might enact project management in a different way, closer to
RPM thinking.
Second, a natural question that follows concerns the current
status of RPM in practice. The UK initiative was launched back
in 2006, but we do not know much about the diffusion and
acceptance of RPM either in the UK or in other countries on a
broader scale. Pollack (2007) discussed the changing nature of
project management from the hard paradigm (objectivistic) to
the soft paradigm (subjectivistic), and this study clearly
confirms that the RPM literature belongs to the soft paradigm
(62 out of 74 contributions were subjectivistic), but we lack a
better understanding of how the potential paradigmatic change
is reflected in practice.
Several of the papers in this literature review discussed project
management education and practitioner development (Berggren
and Söderlund, 2008; Crawford et al., 2006; Louw and
Rwelamila, 2012). Education is one of the main areas to address
if we want to set RPM on the agenda and to imprint future
and current project managers and project participants. The
senior-level education programs described by Berggren and
Söderlund (2008) seem promising, and the same applies to the
diverse MBA programs with a focus on developing reflective
practitioners, e.g. at Manchester University (Crawford et al.,
2006). However, these are scattered examples, and we need a
more thorough understanding of the share of RPM-inspired
education compared with more traditional project management education including certification and commercial
training, as well as how to increase this share. To this end,
Crawford et al.'s (2006) paper provides interesting recommendations for practitioner development within project
management.
CPM is highly institutionalized and strongly supported by
“de facto standards” or “best practices,” like PMBok (Project
Management Body of Knowledge) (Project Management
Institute, 2008) and PRINCE2-2009 (Projects in Controlled
Environments) (Office of Government Commerce, 2009).
Certification programs are associated with PMBok, PRINCE2
and others, and they retain and reinforce the classical view of
project management. We need to consider how we can
influence the project management associations around the
world in order to critique, contribute to and update this formal
body of knowledge and the associated certification programs
with RPM thinking (Morris et al., 2006), as this might be a
necessary, but also very difficult, road to a higher degree of
diffusion of RPM.
Third, classical project management has been criticized
for being insufficient for praxis and the practices applied
(Koskela and Howell, 2002; Morris, 1994; Morris et al.,
2011b; Winter and Szczepanek, 2009). Morris (1994, p. 2)
argued:
Modern project management emerged between the 1930s
and the 1950s … Despite its long development, the concepts
and techniques of project management now available to the
general practitioner, however advanced and specific they
may be, are often inadequate to the overall task of managing
projects successfully.
Morris and colleagues more or less reiterated the statement
in the recent Oxford Handbook of Project Management
(Morris et al., 2011b), thereby indicating that the practices
did not develop much between 1994 and 2011 —
furthermore, other authors back this up (Lenfle and Loch,
2010; Saynisch, 2010b).
P. Svejvig, P. Andersen / International Journal of Project Management 33 (2015) 278–290
With this in mind, it would be logical for the RPM research
stream to focus particularly on offering alternative practices,
which have been proven in praxis, showing superiority to
classical project management. However, only 7 out of 74 papers
have this detailed practice focus on researching the actuality of
projects, and this certainly prompts more practice-oriented studies
(Van de Ven, 2007). We need these more practice-oriented
studies in order to convince industry and practitioners about the
potential value of rethinking project management. Classical
project management is so highly institutionalized that changing
the mindset is a real long-term institutional change (Van de Ven
and Hargrave, 2004).
It furthermore appears to be highly relevant to discuss
performance achievements from classical project management versus RPM, because a real driver of “RPM in practice”
could be that it outperforms classical project management.
However, performance, value and success are complex
concepts that can be considered as multi-dimensional,
dynamic and relative (inspired by Berg, 2001), making
them difficult to compare in a sensible way, and this has to
be taken into account. Multidimensionality might mean
measuring efficiency, effectiveness and innovation (Jugdev
et al., 2001) and have a performance perspective far beyond
traditional value creation and benefit realization (Bradley,
2010; Breese, 2012; Ward and Daniel, 2012). In any case,
“RPM in practice” and the performance of RPM (compared
with classical project management) are important themes for
RPM research.
This critical look at the brave new world has posed several
questions and highlighted unexplored avenues that can be
used to expand and advance RPM research and practitioner
development.
6. Conclusion
In conclusion, this paper presented the results of a structured
literature review of the published RPM literature based on the
classification and analysis of 74 contributions and in addition
took a critical look at this brave new world. The first research
question regarded how RPM could be conceptualized and how
it has developed over time. The conceptualization of RPM was
distilled into important features representing the classical view
and how RPM embeds the classical view (i.e. enhancing rather
than discarding it) (see Fig. 1), and this was further elaborated
with the 6 overarching categories from the literature analysis
of the 74 contributions: contextualization, social and political
aspects, rethinking practice, complexity and uncertainty, actuality
of projects and broader conceptualization. RPM has developed
287
over time, with scattered contributions until 2006, after which it
became more consistently represented with a few yearly
contributions. An important outcome of this paper is thus a
more integrated view with clearer boundaries for RPM. The
second research question concerned how future research can
expand RPM, and this was answered by taking a critical look at
this brave new world in which the overall challenge for RPM is to
become much more diffused and accepted. This has several
ramifications, such as: (1) a potential misleading assumption
of the dominant classical view embedded in the RPM
literature, in which practice is enacted in a different way,
closer to RPM thinking; (2) insufficient knowledge about the
current status of RPM in practice, the share of RPM thinking in
project management education and the apparent lack of RPM
influence on the formal body of knowledge and certification
programs; and (3) finally, a need for more practice-oriented
studies (Blomquist et al., 2010; Cicmil et al., 2006; Van de
Ven, 2007) in order to convince industry and practitioners
about the value of RPM and to support reflective practitioner
development.
There are some limitations to this paper. First, the
conceptualization of the RPM research stream is broad and
readers should consider it as non-monolithic with many
sub-versions. This implies a great diversity of the literature
reviewed, with the danger of being too inclusive, but also
invites further studies of conceptualizations of RPM and
the positioning of RPM within project management
research, which can bring greater clarity to RPM. A
second limitation is that we might have missed some
potentially relevant literature, although we followed a
detailed and structured search process as presented in the
methodology section and appendix. We aimed to present
our literature review in a very transparent way in order to
exhibit any potential shortcomings in our search process
(Tranfield et al., 2003), which can then be addressed in
future studies.
Funding source
The paper has been funded within the “IT Project Management
and Innovation”, part of Aarhus University, and the funding is
public funding i.e. not conflicting with any private interests
(funding).
Conflict of interest
We, the authors, declare that we have no conflict of interest.
288
P. Svejvig, P. Andersen / International Journal of Project Management 33 (2015) 278–290
Appendix A
Table 4 below shows the iterative development of the search string with the search expressions in bold. The development process
included the 26 contributions from part 1 (the explorative and unstructured literature review) in the search results — the number in
brackets in Table 4 shows the coverage of publications identified in part 1. The search period was from the database start period to
2012. The search number 11 below makes up the final result, also shown in Table 2:
Table 4
Iterative development of the search string.
Search Additions to the search string (Scopus search format)
number
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
ALL (“rethinking project”)
Scopus EBSCO ProQuest ScienceDirect
Host
140
(13)
OR TITLE-ABS-KEY (“reinventing project”) OR TITLE-ABS-KEY (“beyond project”)
180
(13)
OR TITLE-ABS-KEY (“project” AND “competing theories” OR “project” AND “competing 194
perspectives”)
(13)
OR TITLE-ABS-KEY (“project management” AND “relevance” AND “change”)
250
(14)
OR TITLE-ABS-KEY (“conventional project management”)
282
(16)
284
OR TITLE-ABS-KEY (“project management theory” AND “comparison”)
(16)
OR TITLE-ABS-KEY (“project management” AND “control” AND “emphasize” OR “emphasise”
338
AND “control” AND “project management”)
(17)
OR TITLE-ABS-KEY (“perspectives on projects”)
355
(17)
OR TITLE-ABS-KEY (“temporary organisation” AND “project management”
357
OR “temporary organization” AND “project management”)
(18)
OR TITLE-ABS-KEY (“project management” AND “complexity theory”)
376
(18)
OR TITLE-ABS-KEY (“project management” AND “second order”)
377
(18)
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Further Reading
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organizational perspective on project success. Proj. Manag. J. 42, 17–30.
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Manag. J. 41, 4–20.
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project management: an example of stakeholder involvement using Hierarchical Process Modelling methodology. J. Oper. Res. Soc. 61, 893–904.
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Int. J. Proj. Manag. 26, 586–589.
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Project Management. Oxford University Press, Oxford.
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development and improvementWorld Scientific Publishing Company,
Singapore,.
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complexity framework for managing projects. Emergence Complex.
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