Transforming the boundaries of project management: A critique of disciplinary assumptions and mental traps

Through critical engagement with the literature on projects we elucidate the disciplinary assumptions of project management scholarship and practice, arguing that the current orthodoxy likely creates mental traps that render the application of traditional project management assumptions and techniques to organizational change projects problematic. The human element in such projects presents a major source of uncertainty to project managers trained and conditioned to achieve control and predictability and calls for a shift away from assumptions of a bounded rationality where decision makers have full knowledge of all alternatives towards projects as a negotiated and contested space. Accepting such an assertion holds significant implications for the fundamental role boundaries of the discipline and the role of practitioners as it involves the acknowledgement that project management involves much more than organising tasks in a neutral and apolitical way; to be involved in project work is inevitably to be involved in power and politics. In this paper, we take the preinitiation phase of change projects as our focus and suggest a series of research questions that remain as yet unanswered by current scholarship.