Project Management Journal®
In the Current Issue
- By Johan Ninan, Francesco Di Maddaloni, Johanna Kujala, Jere Lehtinen, and Alfons van Marrewijk
Introduces a new way of viewing stakeholder engagement in controversial projects as an ongoing process of negotiation, conflict, dialogue, and value creation rather than simple stakeholder management.
Takeaway: Resistance and disagreement are not necessarily problems to eliminate; they can become sources of learning, innovation, and more socially valuable outcomes.
Managerial Strategies for Enhancing Stakeholder Social Acceptance in Wind Farm Projects
- By Jukka Raudasoja, Frans Raudasoja, Wilma Haapasalo, Harri Haapasalo
Examines how wind farm projects can improve social acceptance through communication, early engagement, and addressing community concerns.
Takeaway: Project teams should deliberately decide whether their goal is legitimacy, credibility, or full trust with communities, rather than treating acceptance as an afterthought.
- By Mengtong Jiang, Linzhuo Wang, and Haonan Zhang
Studies how TikTok and social media can help developers, tourists, and communities collaborate around controversial tourism projects.
Takeaway: Social media can support value creation by enabling real-time feedback, managing stakeholder expectations, and generating new ideas before project completion.
Lacking Common Ground: Temporally-Situated Value-Systems in an Unwanted Project
- By Jennifer Whyte, Lara K. Mottee, and Wei-Ting Hong
Investigates why project teams and communities often continue to disagree even after project completion, using Sydney's Rozelle Interchange case.
Takeaway: Stakeholders often judge projects using fundamentally different understandings of value rooted in different interpretations of the past and future, making consensus difficult.
- By Louise Worsley and Mark Massyn
Explores what makes stakeholder environments complex across major infrastructure projects
Takeaway: Managers should look for signals related to stakeholder roles, agendas, power structures, and influence networks as early indicators that more intensive engagement is required.
- By Lara Gonzalez-Porras
Examines how different stakeholder views of a megaproject influence engagement patterns.
Takeaway: Different perceptions create different forms of engagement, from collaboration to antagonism, meaning there is no universal stakeholder engagement strategy.
- By Manon Danielle Baartmans, Tim Busscher, Stefan Verweij, and Jos Arts
Investigates how project managers unintentionally include some stakeholders while excluding others during project planning.
Takeaway: Even managers committed to participation often default to familiar voices and technical expertise, potentially sidelining affected communities.
- By Tiziana Gaito
Explores how neutral facilitators can help stakeholders communicate in deeply conflicted projects.
Takeaway: Third-party facilitation can rebuild relationships and make constructive dialogue possible, even where distrust and conflict appear intractable.
- By Tan Hai Dang Nguyen
Examines how project teams respond to collective landowner resistance in Vietnamese construction projects.
Takeaway: Conflict can become a source of value creation when project teams work through objections systematically rather than treating resistance purely as an obstacle./span>
Overview
The Project Management Journal seeks to provide knowledge and explore emerging topics to support PMI members, the wider project profession and help enable project success.
Projects represent a growing proportion of human activity in large, small, private, and public organizations. They are the engine of tomorrow’s innovation, value creation, and strategic change.
Project Management Journal addresses project challenges and opportunities by encouraging the development and application of novel theories, concepts, frameworks, research methods, designs, and teaching case studies. It covers:
- Projects, programs, project portfolios
- Megaprojects
- Project-based organizations, project networks, project business
- The projectification of society
And, it serves audiences in academia and the field:
- Academics and researchers who publish in the journal, as well as cite it in their research
- Students who use the journal in their studies
- Project practitioners who inform project practices through the journal’s research, webinars, videos, summaries, and articles, including Thoughtlets
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We value papers, articles and other contributions from academics and researchers both from within and beyond Project Management to augment and transform theory and practice.
Shaping the Future of Project Studies: Second Call for PMJ College Fellows
The PMJ College for Early Career Researchers in Project Studies, supported by the Project Management Institute (PMI) and led by the Project Management Journal (PMJ), announces its second call for applications (deadline: 1 February 2026).
Launched in 2024, the College is a global, cross-journal initiative designed to support PhD candidates and post-doctoral researchers pursuing academic careers in project studies. It provides mentorship, workshops, international networking, and visibility to strengthen research excellence and diversity—particularly promoting inclusion from the Global South.
The two-year program (plus one year of mentorship) includes:
- Four virtual workshops on reading, writing, methods, and career development
- A self-led seminar series and opportunities to engage with leading scholars
- A participation certificate upon completion
Eligibility: Doctoral students (enrolled for at least one year) or post-docs researching in project studies with a commitment to academia.
Selection criteria:
- Quality and relevance of submitted paper
- Contribution to project studies
- Commitment to an academic career
Diversity in gender, geography, and research topics is prioritized. PMI also offers limited travel support grants for financially constrained participants presenting at major conferences (e.g., IRNOP, Academy of Management, European Group for Organizational Studies, European Academy of Management).
Applications (CV, cover letter, best paper, enrollment proof, and optional funding letter) should be emailed to [email protected]
The College is led by Joana Geraldi, Shazia Nauman, Jörg Sydow, Giorgio Locatelli, Tristano Sainati, Alessandro Paravano, Stewart Clegg, and Jonas Söderlund.
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