Tackling major human resources management projects can be daunting, but now you can learn from the lessons of HR professionals who have encountered roadblocks or challenges in similar contexts. Advancing Human Resource Project Management is an in-depth, thoughtful resource that highlights the knowledge and experience of those who have undertaken large HR projects. This guide illustrates what worked and what didn't, with a focus on evidence and real-world cases to illuminate effective strategies and solutions. Each chapter presents empirical findings complemented by professional judgment and wisdom from human resource management professionals well-versed in global business environments.

Advancing Human Resource Project Management recognizes the importance of context, addresses the practical and professional implications of managing HR management projects in different industry sectors, and provides comprehensive coverage on implementing global development programs and project initiation and planning. Ideal for global Industrial and Organizational Psychology faculty and practitioners, graduate students, and, especially, HR professionals, this resource uncovers the best evidence-based practices available today for effective HR project management strategies. The book includes:

• An emphasis on the implications and challenges of providing solutions for HR business problems on a global scale
• Real-world cases and firsthand professional experiences with summaries of knowledge gained from research and practice
• Advice on tackling challenges inherent in various stages of a project
• Expertise and counsel from HR professionals familiar with large projects and from those who study and work in the field of project management

Let this comprehensive resource guide your approach to initiating and managing large HR projects. With solid, empirical evidence and relatable case studies, Advancing Human Resource Project Management is the ideal professional companion for those looking to strengthen their project techniques, project leadership, and management skills.

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to investigate the practices mobile project workers rely upon to deal with their liminal work situation, i.e. a work situation in which they are “in-between” and do not have a clear long-term belonging to any specific organisation or project.

Design/methodology/approach – The study employs a qualitative approach and draws upon in-depth interviews with 24 engineers working for one of Scandinavia's leading technical consultancies. The aim of the qualitative data analysis was to identify a set of commonalities and differences in their experiences and ways of dealing with liminality.

Findings – The data indicate that mobile project workers experience their liminality in two separate dimensions; one which is primarily technical and task related, and one that is predominantly group related and social. These types of liminality are dealt with either actively, to lower or handle the ambiguity in the situation, or passively when the individual waits for the situation to be dealt with by others. Based on these two dimensions and types, the paper identifies and discusses four kinds of liminality practices.

Research limitations/implications – The paper demonstrates the importance of focusing on individuals in project-based work, and specifically how they deal with work in-between. The paper shows when and how individuals make use of different liminality practices in their work, and calls for further research on the different skill sets and competencies that are needed to deal with liminality.

Originality/value – By identifying four liminality practices applied in situations signified by the experience of being in-between, this study offers an important contribution to the literature on flexible and mobile work conditions. Thus, the paper contributes to the knowledge of threshold-like employment positions that denotes the everyday work situation for an increasing number of individuals engaged in knowledge-intensive and project-based work.

Fascineras du också av mänskligt beteende och hur det kan påverkas? Gillar du att fundera över hur ett företag kan lyftas - både ekonomiskt och socialt - med hjälp av nya rön kring ekonomistyrning? Bra, då är detta en bok för dig!Den här boken tydliggör bredden och mångfalden i dagens ekonomistyrning, primärt genom en tydligt problematiserande ansats. Författargruppen utgörs av ett stort antal av Sveriges skickligaste lärare och forskare inom ämnet. De representerar även olika inriktningar, vilket innebär att ekonomistyrningen belyses ur ett flertal olika perspektiv. Genom denna djupdykning i en rad relevanta ämnesfrågor bidrar boken till att öka förståelsen av ekonomistyrningens komplexa och fascinerande karaktär.

To this point, project management scholars and historians have carried out surprisingly little research on the landmark projects of our past. This paper argues for the need for delineating Project History as a subject area that ties project management with history. The paper presents the need for more research into this area, the nature and the content of this specific subject area, and the potential contributions that might come out of research within it — for history (management history, business history, and technology history) and project management. The paper also gives an overview of the papers included in the special issue, and offers some ideas of future research in Project History.

This special issue is the third in the Scandinavian Journal of Management (SJM) to focus exclusively on the processual nature of managing and organizing. These three special issues offer an approximate genealogy of recent developments in process thinking in the field of management and organization.

Purpose – The aim of this paper is to conceptualize time as an important dimension of institutions and, more specifically, to develop the analysis of institutions, time, and temporal misfits. The paper explores these matters in the context of an inter-institutional project where actors, who represent different organizational fields and respond to different institutional requirements with regards to time and timing, need to collaborate.

Design/methodology/approach – The paper centers on three critical incidents taken from a study of a large-scale telecom project in Norway. The paper is based on an analysis of public documents and 35 interviews with key stakeholders and managers in the focal project.

Findings – This research shows that temporal misfits are a critical, yet understudied, element of project organizing. The paper suggests and discusses three primary measures – detecting, correcting, and escaping – that project management makes use of to resolve temporal misfits among the actors involved. To advance the analysis of problems facing projects in institutionally-bounded settings, the paper proposes a typology of temporal misfits (phase and tempo) and different types of complexity (analyzable and systemic).

Practical implications – Although purposeful in many instances, especially in collaborations across institutional boundaries, timing norms may cause profound organizational problems due to temporal misfits among the actors involved. The paper argues that project managers need to identify and be prepared for such organizational problem by being equipped with a repertoire of resolution strategies to handle them. New concepts and approaches are needed to identify and deal with temporal misfits among important stakeholders in projects.

Originality/value – A number of previous studies on project organizing have emphasized the critical aspects of studying institutions and time; but to date, no comprehensive efforts have been made to combine these ideas in empirical investigations. This study emphasizes the criticality of timing norms and temporal misfits to enhance our understanding of the linkages between projects, institutions, and time.

Project management (PM), traditionally employed to implement projects, has developed into Organizational Project Management, as organizations are increasingly using projects to deliver strategies. The emergence of program and portfolio management has also contributed to this move. PM researchers need to become more innovative in their research approaches. They need to connect with the broader currents of social science in relevant fields, such as organization theory. Outside the specific field, there is a great deal that can usefully be imported, transformed, and translated so that it is fit for project management research purposes. More trans-disciplinary, translational, and transformational approaches for conducting project-related research are required, and this book goes a long way to providing foundations for them. The book encompasses reflections on fundamental questions underlying any research, such as the type of knowledge sought, as well as the epistemological and ontological assumptions. It broadens research methods and theory perspectives, drawing on contemporary approaches, such as action research, soft systems methodology, activity theory, actor-network theory, and other approaches adopted in related scientific and technological areas that are only recently being adopted. To achieve this, the book's editors have necessarily been eclectically interdisciplinary in their contributor list. They have included contemporary research methods and designs from areas allied to project research - such as organization science, organizational studies, sociology, behavioral science, and biology - providing innovative invitations to research design and methodological choice. Overall, this book makes a significant contribution to the maturation and development of project management research as a specialty in the broader social sciences, one that is a less-reliant handmaiden or under-laborer to purely technical issues, but which appreciates that any material construction is always a social construction as well, one that implies episteme and phronesis, knowledge and wisdom, as well as techne or technique. Project managers may not realize it, but the most important aspects of what they manage are the meanings, interpretations, and politics of projects, and not merely the technical aspects.