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Journal: International Journal of Managing Projects in Business
Guest editor(s): Shobha Ramalingam, Stewart Clegg, Efrosyni Konstantinou, Suhair Alkilani, Shankar Sankaran
Aims and Scope
This special issue invites researchers to investigate projects focused on addressing challenges faced due to societal and humanitarian concerns. The research reported would potentially cover how projects and programs are conceived, developed and implemented, and how they are organized and delivered to contribute to addressing such concerns.
Researchers who are engaged in projects and programs under the scope of this special issue could potentially use novel methods for project management researchers. These could include, but are not limited to:
- Participatory research methods such as participatory action research (Coghlan & Brydon-Miller 2014; Greenwood & Levin 2006) and other participatory approaches such as modelling (e.g. Hossain et al. 2020) and ethnoventionist research (van Marrewijk et al. 2010).
- Storytelling and narrative research (Clandinin and Connely 1989; van Marrewijk et al. 2024) to gather data from vulnerable parts of the society (Iseke 2013).
- Causal layered analysis (Inayatullah 2009) to explore organizational and societal transformation in futures research.
- Exploratory research to unearth glocal and innovative sustainable practices in projects and communities (Larson & Larson 2018; Molina-Maturano 2020).
- Social network methods to address coopetition tensions in project ecologies. (Naderpajouh, et al. 2024).
The methods used to manage such challenging projects and programs may be developed specifically to meet stakeholder needs to address societal and humanitarian concerns (Rossignoli et al. 2017). The methods may be locally contextual and situated in specific practices rather than grounded in theory. The success criteria for these types of projects and programs may be centered explicitly on purpose and value rather than cost. Timeliness and quality from the immediate stakeholders’ point of view will be specifically important (Clegg et al. 2024; Clegg et al. 2021). We expect that this will lead authors to include new theoretical implications from the research being reported. Potential theories that could be relevant include but are not limited to:
- Realist social theory (Archer 1995) and morphogenic sequencing to transformations and contributions to social policy (Carter & New 2005).
- Socio-cognitive theory (Bandura 2011), which considers dynamic interactions between people, their behaviour and their environments.
- Paradox theory (Cunha et al. 2021; Cunha & Putnam 2019; Waldman et al. 2019), which helps in decision making when tensions are present.
- Theories of power, especially process and practice-based approaches to deal with political influences and power plays (Clegg 2023; Avelino 2021; Gheradi 2014).
- Historical perspectives on development projects (Söderlund & Lenfle 2013).
- Sociotechnical transition theories using a multi-level perspective (Geels & Locatelli 2024, 2005) or societal transformation theories (Hölscher et al. 2018).
- Program evaluation (Mertens & Wilson, 2018) to help address issues of social justice and/or sustainability.
- Complexity theory (Byrne & Callaghan 2022) and systems theory (Luhmann 2013) and systems praxis (Sankaran 2023) to address complex issues arising in project and programs (Geraldi et al. 2011).
- Practice theory (Gherardi 2014; Nicolini 2012) to address socio-cultural issues that aim for a fair and inclusive society.
Project studies provide an intellectual framework affording a common home for the different disciplinary, inter- and trans-disciplinary projects addressing societal and humanitarian issues globally. We therefore request the global community of project management scholars to help to meet these challenges by providing theorized empirical case studies of projects oriented to societal and humanitarian concerns caused by conflicts, climate change, dislocations, forced repatriations and the impact of artificial intelligence on employment. We expect articles that are:
- Theoretically well developed
- Include implications for practice
- Original contributions to the corpus of project studies
- Inter- and trans-disciplinary in scope.
Submissions Information
Submissions are made using ScholarOne Manuscripts. Registration and access are available here.
Author guidelines must be strictly followed. Please see here.
Authors should select (from the drop-down menu) the special issue title at the appropriate step in the submission process, i.e. in response to ““Please select the issue you are submitting to”.
Submitted articles must not have been previously published, nor should they be under consideration for publication anywhere else, while under review for this journal.
Key Deadlines
Submissions open: 15th December 2025
Submissions close: 31st October 2026