review and an advisory group discussion were performed to
identify the antecedents of the relationship conflict framework. Afterward, the structural equation model (SEM) was
used to confirm the influence of such antecedents on relationship conflict. Intrapersonal diversity, uncertain project
tasks, organizational culture diversity, and inappropriate
behavior positively influence relationship conflict. These
findings help researchers better understand the drivers of
relationship conflict.
This article is not only of interest for the project management research community, it is also highly relevant for the
innovation management research community and the team
research community. It has been expected that an increasing
cultural and cognitive diversity of a team provides more opportunities for higher creativity and global diffusion of a product
or service. Increasing diversity, however, does not only lead to
task conflicts, which may act as creative tensions, overcoming functional fixations, and opening new ways of thinking;
task conflicts also pose higher challenges and require a more
cooperative and resilient team. The typical observation is that
task conflicts may drive relationship conflicts, which escalate
and cannot be regulated anymore; therefore insights into the
drivers of relationship conflicts are very important for finding
remedies to prevent or stop such escalation spirals. The editor
of this article was Hans Georg Gemünden.
Dirk Basten, Georgios Stavrou, and Oleg Pankratz investigate the following theme: “Closing the Stakeholder Expectation Gap: Managing Customer Expectations Toward the
Process of Developing Information Systems.” Whereas
expectations concerning both process and product are essential for information system development (ISD) project success, research has focused on end-user expectations toward
the product. Based on semi-structured interviews, we shed
light on the relevance of process expectations for customer
satisfaction in ISD projects, concrete customer expectations
toward the process, and approaches to managing these expectations. Our study provides means to managing customer
expectations, thus increasing the likelihood of customer satisfaction. The editor of this article was Hans Georg Gemünden.
The sixth article in this issue by Chuck Millhollan and
Michelle Kaarst-Brown provides “Lessons for IT Project
Manager Efficacy: A Review of the Literature Associated
with Project Success.” The authors state that overall proj-
ect success requires that project managers develop not only
project management skills, but also project success skills.
The article points out that even if one manages the project
successfully, the project can still fail, for example, because
of misalignment with organizational strategy or poor stake-
holder representation. Project managers need to develop a
range of skills outside those proposed in the project manage-
ment literature. Indeed, because we ignore these other skills,
there is often no difference in performance between Project
Management Professional (PMP)® and non-PMP® certified
managers. The article proposes a project manager needs
seven classes of skills:
1. Project management skills (hard skills; temporal)
2. Business and management skills (hard skills; perhaps soft
skills; temporal)
3. Knowledge of the project technical disciplines (hard skills)
4. Interpersonal skills (soft skills; stakeholders’ influences;
temporal)
5. Managing the project sponsor (soft skills; stakeholder
influences)
6. Situational awareness (soft skills; stakeholder influences;
temporal)
7. Integration management, or integrating the previous skills
and knowledge (soft skills; temporal)
This is an insightful literature analysis, which deserves
further discussion and reflection. The editor of this article was
Cecil Eng Huang Chua.
The last article is by Monique Aubry and Maude Brunet
on “Organizational Design in Public Administration: Categorization of Project Management Offices.”
This article aims to enlighten the organizational process
involved in managing multiple concurrent projects within
the public sector and associated with organizational design.
Public administration is not a monolithic entity; rather it comprises a collection of multiple organizations that differ in status, some of them being departments, others being agencies.
Following this, the article proposes an empirical categorization of PMOs based on four types of projects, based on a survey of 114 entities belonging to 42 departments and agencies
within a single public administration. This article contributes
to the relevance of organizational design within the project
management field. The editor of this article was Ralf Müller.
References
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Flyvbjerg, B. (2007). Eliminating bias in early project
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Flyvbjerg, B. (2014). What you should know about megaprojects
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