Editorial

From the editor in chief

Over the last nine years, the former Editor-in-Chief Derek Walker (RMIT University) crafted a remarkable body of work to establish the International Journal of Managing Projects in Business (the journal), define its orientation and position it as an innovative and open-minded journal in the field of project management. First and foremost, a special thanks must go to Professor Derek Walker who has accomplished an inspiring and devoted contribution to the journal over these years.

As the new Editor-in-Chief, I have accepted the mandate with great pleasure and enthusiasm. My commitment to the journal, its authors and reviewers is to continue to develop its innovative spirit, imaginative mind-set and to strike the right balance between audacity and wisdom. Thus, it means to welcome papers that follow the path of “Being scientific is being practical” (Fox, 2016). Practically speaking, it signifies that papers submitted to the journal meet the expectations of well-defined research ontologically, epistemologically and methodologically with the underlying basis of innovation, discovery and credibility. It states research as the practice of working in a scientific manner (Mårtensson et al., 2016, p. 594). It articulates research as a conscious action that builds upon existing knowledge, aims for new knowledge, studies one or several contexts, uses one or several well-documented scientific methods and requires transparency (Mårtensson et al., 2016).

This pledge to research is impractical alone. As we all know in project management, the success of a project lies on the shoulders of the involvement and motivation of the team members. These team members are the researchers and the students in the field of project management who submit papers for publication in the journal as well as the reviewers, the editorial advisory board and the Emerald team. I trust these team members to help me reinforce the development and evolution of the journal. I also encourage and welcome researchers from allied fields to nurture the advance of the journal with imaginative and innovative papers based on their domains. Thus, it is to broaden the project management field across different research horizons.

Many thanks to the following well-known scholars for accepting to act as executive editorial board members, a novelty to the journal to have such a Board, to support and challenge me in my new role. These key scholars are:

Stewart Clegg, University of Technology, Sydney.

Stephen Fox, VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland.

Kam Jugdev, Athabasca University, School of Business.

Rolf A. Lundin, Professor Emeritus of Business Administration at Jönköping International Business School and Courtesy Professor-in-Residence at Umeå School of Business and Economics.

Blaize Reich, SFU, Beedie School of Business.

Jonas Soderlund, BI Norwegian Business School.

Derek Walker, RMIT.

This first issue for 2017, Volume 10, comprises ten papers divided into different standpoints such as: infrastructure alliance projects, governmental project failure, value creation in construction projects, partnering, constraints in small-scale PPPs, agile project management; best practices and benefits management, project-space model and theory, to name a few. This illustrates a sample of the diversity of papers that are welcomed by the journal. What follows is a short description of each paper that I hope should inspire you to read it in full.

Paper 1 entitled “Managing integration in infrastructure alliance projects: dynamics of integration mechanisms” by Kirsi Aaltoner, Anna-Maija Hietajärvi and Harri Haapasalo provides empirical evidence of integration dynamics in project alliancing by analysing two infrastructure alliance projects – a complex tunnel construction project and a railway renovation project. The purpose of this study is to understand what kinds of integration mechanisms are used and how they are developed and adjusted during the infrastructure alliance projects.

Paper 2 “Government project failure in Ghana: a multi-dimensional approach” by Isaac Damoah and Cynthia Akwei assesses the extent of failure within Ghanaian Government projects using multiple failure criteria and identified the worst failure criteria.

Paper 3 “Governing value creation in construction project: a new model” by Hallgrim Hjelmbrekke, Ole Jonny Klakegg and Jardar Lohne describes how the concepts of business models and project governance can enhance value creation in building projects. The research reveals that the business model of the design team focusses on efficiency rather than on the client’s strategic objectives.

Paper 4 “Partnering in offshore drilling projects” by Sjur Børve, Tuomas Ahola, Bjorn Andersen and Wenche Aarseth evaluates to which extent partnering practices, observed in earlier research focussing on the construction industry, are applied in offshore development drilling projects. It provides a multi-dimensional and systematic description of partnering practices in this specific context.

Paper 5 “Constraints related to developing small-scale PPPs and how to reduce them” by Lieven De Moor and Wouter Thierie raised the issue that small-scale PPPs have different characteristics compared with large projects and these characteristics should be studied separately. According to the authors, a more thorough understanding of these constraints and how to reduce them would help the subset of small projects to reach its full potential.

Paper 6 “Agile project management with scrum: case study of a Brazilian pharmaceutical company IT project” by Adrialdo Avanha, Ana Rita Argoud, Junior Camargo, João, Pedro Antoniolli analyse the benefits of the agile project management framework compared to the traditional waterfall model, and understand how it can help companies add value and gain competitive advantage. This article provides relevant practical information and experiences to managers interested in implementing agile project management, as well as interested in improving the management of projects.

Paper 7 “Going back to the roots of W.A. Shewhart (and further) & introduction of a new CPD Cycle” by Martin Saier investigates the beginning of project management with a focus on business models similar to the “PDCA” cycle. This paper aims to find an approach that could be used as a new standard procedure for the eradication of projects in Lean project management.

Paper 8 “The reality of adhering to best practices: the case of information system initiatives” by Carl Marnewick determines whether the best practices associated with benefits management are applied to IS initiatives in order to maximise the benefits of these initiatives. Although the research was done only in South Africa, the results open the door for more comprehensive research that focusses on various industries, countries and standards.

Paper 9 “The project-space model: Enhancing sensemaking” by Bronte van der Hoorn and Jonathan Stephen Whitty uses framework analysis to examine the results of a completed action research case study that utilised a tool: the project-space model. Three frameworks are then utilised as an investigative lens to examine how the project-space model influenced sensemaking.

Paper 10 “Is there only one way of project management theorizing, or are there multiple sector-specific project management domains?” by Karlos Artto, Hans Gemünden, Derek Walker, Pirjo Peippo-Lavikka analyses PM content in nine different sectors, where each sector and its inherent research is connected to specific engineering, technological, or industry-related disciplines. The authors conduct an evidence-informed literature review on project management knowledge in the distinct literatures of these nine sectors. The period of analysis is 24 years from 1986 to 2009. More specifically, the authors discuss potential consequences of their findings’ sector-specificity for future PM domain development.

Thank you to the contributors of this issue. I trust that these papers will be of great value for researchers and students to grow their own reflexion and research on these specific topics.

Finally, I would like to draw your attention to two special issues sponsored by the journal. The first one is a special issue call for papers on “Exploring Processual and Critical Avenues at the Crossroad of Entrepreneurship and Project Management”. The Guest Editors are Olivier Germain and Monique Aubry, School of Business and Management, Université du Québec à Montréal. Please follow this link for more details:

www.emeraldgrouppublishing.com/products/journals/call_for_papers.htm?id=6835.

The second is for readers who are interested in EURAM 2017. The next conference will be held from June 21 to 24 in Glasgow (Scotland). We invite you to submit a paper for the Strategic Interest Group Project Organising (SIG 10). We especially welcome papers to the special topic: Managing Major and Mega Projects: Opening up for New Research Eras. The selected papers will be the object of a special issue in the journal. Furthermore, I would like to say thank you to Emerald Group Publishing that will support the Best-Paper Award for this special topic. The deadline for paper submission is 10 January 2017 (2:00 p.m. Belgian time).

I hope you enjoy reading this Issue 1, Volume 10!