project management theorization

1. Component 2 . Theorizing Act of
Project Management

2. Indicative content
• Project management as a tacit knowledge;
• Project management as a application of
predefined models;
• Project management as an interpretive
framawork
• Project management as a reflective practice
and situated theorization.

3. Introduction
• Is the scientific field of project management a knowledge field like
any other? Lalonde, Mario Bourgault & Findeli (2010), reply in the
negative. They propose that the science of project management is
not only a scientific discipline; but also a professional discipline—that
is, a practice.
• In their perspective, theories of project management should in some
way be relevant to professional practice.;
• Like other scientific disciplines, such as engineering, clinical
psychology, the nursing sciences, education, and architecture, which
are fueled by professional practice, the project management field
attempts to develop a body of knowledge that is transferable to
management skills, thereby advancing the practice.

4. • Therefore, Professional and researchers in project management must
dig deeper to better understand the relationship, between theory
and practice in order to discover their logical link.
• In Lalonde, Mario Bourgault & Findeli’s perspective, this problem
concerns less an epistemology of science than an epistemology of
practice.
• Whereas the first epistemology critically considers the scientific
method and its modes of logic and inference (asking questions
about ways of producing and validating scientific knowledge and
about the bases for the produced knowledge and its evolution), the
second epistemology is a sort of critical thinking about the
“transferability” of new theoretical knowledge into practice in order
to solve live problems.

5. • Thus, the objective of this component is to elucidate the nature of
the epistemological debate in project management, and, more
particularly, to shed light on the implicitness of the theory-practice
link.
• After a good synthesis of existing literature on project management
theories Lalonde, Mario Bourgault & Findeli (2010),identified 4
dominant conceptions that influence practices in project
management.

6. 1. Project management as a Heuristic or tacit knowledge
• In this first type of theory-practice relationship, theory plays a minimal role.
• More precisely, project management practice, instead of being based on scientific theory, is
something of an art.
• There is no attempt to theorize the practice in order to support it with rigorous scientific
models and theories.
• Project management exists as a practice (some say that it has existed since the construction
of the Egyptian pyramids), but it takes place heuristically.
• In this type, project management is still not recognized as a scientific discipline. For all,
practical purposes, it produces no theoretical discourse, it has no legitimate specificity, and
it has no need of any rationale outside the practice itself.
• It can therefore be considered self-sufficient.
• Thus, there are no need to take a lot of spending a lot of time teaching scientific theories or
models regarding the professional know-how of project management.

7. • Among others, Argyris and Schön (1974) support this view with their
concepts of theory in practice and theories in use, which are enacted
in the practitioner’s very act.
• In the Schönian reflective action, the practitioner has the ability to
reconsider the theories that guide his practice and eventually change
them in order to become a more effective practitioner.
• But here, contrary to Schön’s (1983) model, it is not a question of
knowing-in-action combined with its reflective counterpart but
rather a knowing-in-action.
• In knowing-in-action, the practitioner’s theory remains tacit, and may
even be said to be buried in the subconscious.
• It is constructed through experience and it exists in the practitioner’s
memory, cognition, and body.

8. • Discussion: Does this mean that there is no theory
whatsoever?
• Yes, if we are looking from the standpoint of an
epistemology of science.
•
• No, if we are looking from the standpoint of an
epistemology of practice, because theories are
operative in all practices even if they are implicit or
used unconsciously.
•

9. • Discussion: Find 2 examples of such enacted
and implicit theories

10. 2. Project management practice as an applied Science
• The model of practice as an applied science arises directly from the
shortcomings of the first type as a systematized production of
discourse regarding project management practice.
• We can trace the origins of this second type in the early days of the
twentieth century, at a time many organizations were formalizing
their “in-house” methods.
• We can cite, for example, the Gantt chart developed during the early
1920s .
• Thus, this know-how was originally possessed by isolated
organizations; knowledge was neither standardized nor diffused.

11. • It was only toward the late 1950s that the “formalization of the arts
and mechanics of managing projects” began to take a “scientific
style”, mainly through the creation of management systems (e.g. the
program evaluation review technique (PERT).
• However, as Garel (2003) writes, project management really reached
its stride in the 1960s, as it moved away from the singularity of the
individual experiences of different organizations and entered the era
of standardized rationalization.
• In effect, with the growing complexity and number of far-reaching
military projects and infrastructures, the pressure was felt to specify
methods and develop more effective techniques to minimize
disastrous budgets and timelines, and hence increase actor control
over project conduct.

12. • The specific objective was to gather all the knowledge that actors could apply to
the project. In this respect, the seminal article by Gaddis (1959), published by the
Harvard Business Review, broke a new ground by introducing a number of key ideas
that would provide the foundations for the conceptual framework of project
management.
• This definition is consistent with that proposed by Project Management Institute
(PMI), according to which “project management” consists of “the application of
knowledge, skills, tools, and techniques to project activities to meet project
requirements.
• Essentially based on a set of quantitative methods derived from operations
research, this first wave of rationalization paved the way for the creation and
development of sophisticated expert systems dedicated to project planning,
scheduling, risk analysis and control.

13. • Conclusion: at the heart of this conception, which is based on
positivist philosophy, we find that the link uniting theory and
practice is conceived as a direct transfer of tested models to the
“field” of operations.

14. • Discussion: what are the limits of this conception?

15. 3. Theory as an Interpretive Framework
• The third type stems from dissatisfaction with the inability of the second
type to deliver promised results through effective project conduct.
• 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.
• In Morris’s view the project management discipline is erroneously
positioned: For this author, it should really be the ‘management of projects’
rather than ‘project management’: i.e. the management of the process of
establishing the project’s objectives and its definition; of assessing it so that
it is set up with the maximum chance of being successful technically,
commercially, socially, etc. for all the parties (‘stakeholders’) it affects; and
of accomplishing it efficiently and effectively.

16. • Thus, the third type builds on the writings that enriched the
mechanist vision of the project by addressing project management
from new perspectives, considering not only financial and economic
aspects of projects, but also political, strategic, social, environmental,
technological, and communicational aspects.
• Because the project changes the relationships of organizational
actors and the power of control on existing activities, it becomes
relevant to consider how these actors react to the new
configuration of power and, how this affect the efficiency and
effectiveness of the project.
• whereas the second type proposes the application of a model or tool
through a prescriptive theory-practice relationship, the third type
suggests drawing on various descriptive theories of project
management through an interpretive theory-practice relationship.

17. • In practice, the interpretive framework provided by these theories should assist
practitioners to make better decisions or, at the very least, to act while taking into
account a broader range of dimensions.
• The idea is that practitioners should be equipped with multi-disciplinary lenses
drawn sociology or psychology in order to adapt themselves to complex and
subjectively sensitive issues.
• Over time, this interpretive framework has clearly expanded and contributed to the
development of new theoretical frameworks : Communicative & stakeholder
models of project management are part of this new generation of models.

18. Limitation of this conception:
• The main shortcoming of this model is the multiplicity of potential
theoretical models that can be employed to interpret project
management situations.
• There are almost an unlimited number of interpretations of what
goes on as a project unfolds.
• The issue here is: how far should we go in taking into account new
interpretations ?
• To sum up, project management as an interpretive framework do
not provide to practitioners a clear guidance on key elements to be
included in the project design.

19. 4. Reflective Practice and Situated Theorization
• The fourth and final type in the project management field arrived only
recently and attempts to respond to the shortcomings of the three
previous types.
• This type is readily linked to the pioneering work of the philosopher
Schön (1983), who proposed a new epistemology of professional
practice that he called “reflection-in-action.”
• As stated above, project management as an applied science propelled
the movement toward the rigor that the third type also sought, albeit
differently.
• Although project management as an interpretive framework the
posits a more complex relationship between theory and practice, it
does not seem to adequately address the problems inherent in this
relationship, and it therefore fails to investigate the theory-practice
link.

20. • The fourth type emerges from the rigor-relevance dispute in
management research and attempts to respond to the shortcomings
of the three previous types.
• It is built on a dialectic between the poles of theory and practice,
which could be represented by the terms reflective practice and
situated theorization.
• This implies that the theorization effort literally ensues from
reflective practice, or put another way, that reflective practice
becomes the main empirical ground on which to sketch theories of
project management practice.
• This dialectic highlights the importance of a mind that can creatively
and rigorously inquire into and experiment with the diverse range of
potential responses to a “situated” problem.

21. • It proposes that accurate thought requires situated thinking, because
reality does not consist of ready-made things, but things that are
continuously being made.
• From this perspective, the fourth type underscores the potential, as
well as the importance, of constructing “pragmatist theories of
project management,” or theories in which practice literally acts as an
instrument of thought.
• Epistemologically, this approach stands apart. Compared to the first
type, with its tacit knowledge, the fourth type adds a reflective
stance that goes beyond the conception of practice as a heuristic and
complements the domain of knowing- in- action.
• Like the third type, this approach enlarges the perspective that
confined the project, its processes, and the actors within the practice
considered as an applied science.

22. • However, its authors do not forget that project
management is also a practice, and not merely a
descriptive scientific discipline like do the third
conception.
• In sum, this pragmatic view of project management
consider that theory on “act of project
management” must be constructed through the
project and through action, and as such, will be
immersed in project practices.
•

23. • Selected readings on component 2
• Lalonde,P,L; Bourgault, M & Findeli,A.(2010). Building pragmatist theories of PM practice:
theorizing the act of project management. Project Management Journal, 41 (5), 21–36 ( this
article is part of the content of the module notes).
• Cicmil, S. (2006). Understanding project management practice through interpretative and critical
research perspectives. Project Management Journal, 37(2), 27–37. (To be summarize by Group
3)
Cicmil, S., & Hodgson, D. (2006). New possibilities for project management theory: A critical
engagement. Project Management Journal, 37(3), 111–122.
• Gaddis, P. O. (1959). The project manager. Harvard Business Review, 37(3), 89–97.
• Garel, G. (2003). Pour une histoire de la gestion de projet. Gérer et comprendre, 74, 77–89.
• Lundin, R. A., & Söderholm, A. (1995). A theory of the temporary organization. Scandinavian Journal of
Management, 11(4), 437–455.
• Pinto, J. K. (2000). Understanding the role of politics in successful project management. International
Journal of Project Management, 18(2), 85–91 .