I have received queries from students quite often asking me to suggest on research topics in project management.
There are some good journal articles written by Christophe Bredillet which could be a recommended starting point.
According to Bredillet (Jun 2007, Aug 2008, PMJ), there are nine schools of project management research.
Optimizatin school - The project as a machine. Optimize the outcome of the project using mathematical process. Operations research.
Modeling school - The project as a minor. Use of hard and soft systems theory to model the project. Systems theory.
Governance school - The project as a legal entity. Govern the project and the relationship between project participants. Corporate governance.
Behaviour school - The project as a social system. Manage the relationships between people on the project. Organization behaviour.
Success school - The project as a business objective. Define success and failure. Identiy causes.
Decision school - The project as a computer. Information processing through the project life cycle. Decision science.
Process school - The project as an algorithm. Find an appropriate path to the desired outcome. Information systems, Strategy.
Contingency school - The project as a chameleon. Categorize the project type to select appropriate systems. Contingency theory, Leadership theory.
Marketing school - The project as a billboard. Communicate with all stakeholders to obtain their support. Stakeholder management.
From one of the schools, one should able to identify what interest them and to conduct further literature review on the research topic. For me, the Success school has triggered me to write the journal paper on integrating project management with knowledge management for project success.
Reference:
Bredillet, C.N. (Jun 2007 - Aug 2008). From the eidtor: Exploring research in project management: Nine schools of project management research. Project Management Journal.
Hi David, it is a very good ideas by combing all the schools and extract them in smaller portion that suit your research. It is a similar case to PMBOK and PRINCE2, these are recommended guide or framework but could customize to what you really need to implement in your projects. If you are using the 9 schools of PM research for research, perhaps to use exploratory factor analysis to extract the relevant factors.
The idea of the 9 schools is to provide perspectives of project management to stimulate research. It does not get down to coming methodologies nor was it intended to do so. When I did my PhD Prof Turner presented the 9 schools as part of our class and its an interesting approach to show how metaphors are linked, the history of research around the metaphors and how you can abstract these into the practitioner world. At the time I thought of 2 more potential metaphors which were not covered and I will be teaching the 9 or 11 Schools of Project Management at a DBA class.
The idea of 9 schools of project management was presented during the EDEN Doctoral Seminar in Lille, France in 2008. It was such a great event that I've ever participated. We've been exposed to this new idea and I thought it was very beneficial for everyone in the field of project management. We need to explore more on this idea.
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