This study examined how project managers navigate wicked problem dynamics in project environments with ambiguous problem definitions, contested stakeholder interests, evolving constraints, and no definitive solutions. Drawing on eight nested discussion sessions comprising 24 small-group conversations with 168 experienced project professionals across diverse industries, supplemented by 12 follow-up interviews, the study used a theory-informed abductive qualitative design. Adaptive leadership and wicked problem concepts informed the discussion prompts, whereas initial coding remained open to participants’ accounts rather than applying a predetermined adaptive-leadership coding framework. We then iteratively interpreted emergent patterns using wicked problems theory, adaptive leadership, and sensemaking as sensitizing theoretical lenses. The analysis identified five recurring adaptive practices: diagnostic framing, collaborative sensemaking, situational awareness, emotional regulation, and transparent communication. These practices illuminate how project managers develop workable problem definitions, engage competing perspectives, and coordinate action when technical expertise and established plans are insufficient. The study provides an empirically grounded account of leadership practice in temporary organizations and identifies practice-oriented implications for responding to wicked problem dynamics within time-bounded project settings.
Creativity and control are both vital to creative project-based organizations: The former enables innovation, adaptability, and problem-solving in uncertain or novel conditions, whereas the latter ensures alignment, stability, and goal-directed execution within constraints. Nevertheless, it remains controversial how different types of controls shape employee creativity in creative project-based organizations. This study thus aims to examine the independent and interactive effects of organizational controls on employee creativity in the creative project-based organization context. A questionnaire survey was administered in Hong Kong, involving 222 employees of architectural and engineering design firms. Using a latent moderated structural equations approach to test the hypotheses, the results reveal that formal behavior control inhibits, but social control enhances, employee creativity. There is a substitutional relation between formal outcome control and social control, whereas formal behavior control complements the effect of social control. This study extends the control–creativity research to creative project-based organizations and enriches the classic person–process–product creativity framework by incorporating a contextual dimension.
Although nonmarket stakeholders fundamentally shape project performance, their engagement in “unwanted projects”—initiatives perceived by the general public and/or local communities as undesirable due to contested values or negative impacts—remains undertheorized. This editorial advances project studies by establishing a relational process perspective on value creation with nonmarket stakeholders. Rather than viewing stakeholder engagement as a linear delivery mechanism, we argue that it unfolds as an ongoing process of negotiation shaped by contested values, resistance, legitimacy struggles, distributional tensions, and temporality. Drawing on eight contributions in this special issue, we develop a relational process view of unwanted project organizing in which value is continuously cocreated through framing across temporalities, generative conflict, mediative dialogue, sociotechnical mediation, and distributed enfranchisement rather than delivered linearly. Finally, we propose a forward-looking research agenda centered on governing value plurality and temporal dynamics, engaging generative conflict in value creation, cultivating mediate capabilities and internal sensemaking, reconfiguring engagement through sociotechnical infrastructure, and governance of value distribution and stakeholder enfranchisement.
Interdisciplinary project collaboration is often hindered by knowledge boundaries. Although digital technologies (e.g., building information modeling) should facilitate integration, the literature underestimates the political challenges that disrupt collaboration. This research unpacks these challenges and their resolutions through semistructured interviews and abductive analysis. Findings reveal complex, escalating political challenges, specifically the limited power of certain stakeholders and tensions over digital technology development, along with their corresponding resolutions. Theoretically, this research advances project literature by uncovering neglected power dynamics and shifting boundary spanning from technical knowledge exchange to political negotiation. Practically, it equips managers with actionable strategies to navigate these challenges.
Artificial intelligence (AI) is increasingly transforming project management, yet the organizational conditions that enable its effective use in project-based organizations remain insufficiently understood. Drawing on the attention-based view, this study conceptualizes AI orientation as an organizational attentional structure that directs managerial attention toward AI strategy, support structures, and integration priorities. We examine how AI orientation relates to outcomes at both the organizational and individual levels. Using multi-informant survey data from 116 project-based organizations and 358 project managers, complemented by qualitative follow-up interviews, we find that AI orientation is positively associated with business success. This relationship is stronger when organizations are characterized by a positive collective attitude toward AI. At the individual level, perceived AI orientation is positively associated with project managers’ AI use, which in turn is associated with higher perceived AI augmentation in project tasks. Perceived AI orientation also strengthens the relationship between AI use and perceived augmentation. Qualitative insights further show that AI orientation is enacted through strategic prioritization, top-management attention, governance mechanisms, training, and knowledge-sharing practices. The study contributes to research on artificial intelligence in project management by showing that AI-related outcomes depend not only on tool availability but also on strategic orientation, supportive organizational structures, and employee-level uptake.
