Guest Editors
Dr Nader Naderpajouh, School of Project Management, The University of Sydney
Dr Kirsi Aaltonen, Department of Industrial Engineering and Management, University of Oulu
Prof Erik Hollnagel, Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences, Macquarie University
Dr Young Hoon Kwak, Department of Decision Sciences, The George Washington University
Prof Martina Linnenluecke, Macquarie Business School, Macquarie University
Theme
A rising number of disturbances impact the performance of societies and their businesses. These disturbances are often local manifestations of the impact of societal grand challenges (Brammer et al., 2019) in the form of large-scale, complex and enduring problems (George et al., 2016). Examples of these disturbances include political conflicts, social unrests, disasters, pandemics as well as stressors such as social injustice, climate crisis, and biodiversity loss (Ayub et al., 2020; Brammer et al., 2020; Butzer, 2012; Chih et al., 2022; Xu et al., 2020). These disturbances result in disruptions of the performance of social-ecological, organizational and technical systems that make it impossible to follow their expected performance trajectories (Holling, 1973; Folke, 2006; Hollnagel & Nemeth, 2022).
The range of global and diverse grand challenges impacting societies has led to calls in academia to study the transition to a resilient and just future for all. In this context, resilience is defined as the ability of the systems to sustain performance in the face of such disturbances and changes (Hollnagel, 2006; NRC, 2012). Organizing for resilience refers to the actions associated with anticipation of, responding to, learning from, and monitoring of the variations in the performance of the systems under variety of conditions (Hardy et al., 2020; Naderpajouh et al., 2020; Sutcliffe & Vogus, 2003; Walker et al., 2002). Communities play a central role in establishing the potentials for resilient performance by providing the ecological context for the management of their technical systems. Justice, equity, diversity and inclusion in communities are central to the resilience of the social-ecological and technical systems (Doorn et al., 2019; Field et al., 2022) and highlight the need to study actions that contribute to resilient and just societies and their businesses.
The contingent and transitory nature of these disturbances necessitates temporary organizing not only in response to disturbances (Williams et al., 2017) but also to ensure acceptable performance in the long term (Sydow and Windeler, 2020). Temporary organizing is needed for efficient responses to disturbances (Hallgren et al., 2018) and should not be made difficult by unnecessary bureaucracy and organizational procedures. Temporary organizing has a central role in actions towards a resilient and just future, whether in anticipation, response, learning, or monitoring. For example, communities, businesses, or governing agencies can use projects as interventions (Whyte et al., 2019) in the form of temporary organizing to build resilience (Naderpajouh et al., 2020).
Projects can be understood as a form of temporary organizations developed for a set of specified and predefined objectives and outcomes within a defined timeframe (Lundin & Soderholm, 1995). Projects can play a significant role in the future of the societies (Geraldi & Söderlund, 2018), specifically in building resilience towards expected and unexpected disturbances (Weick & Sutcliffe, 2011), forming their future (Whyte et al., 2022), and addressing grand challenges (George et al., 2016). They are nested systems that typically involve a range of organizations and are highly interlinked within multiple social, technological, and natural settings (Naderpajouh et al., 2020; Artto et al., 2016). A resilient and just future can be shaped through temporary organizing as projects to build resilience and ensure justice and equity by intervening to, for example, increase social capital within communities (Aldrich, 2012), maintenance, repair, rehabilitation, and retrofits of the infrastructure systems (Izaddoost et al., 2021), addressing housing crisis (Ayub et al., 2020), social equity and justice (Jones & Armanios, 2020), or climate adaptation (Wissman-Weber & Levy, 2018), organizational resilience (Linnenluecke, 2017), or sustainable future (Aarseth et al., 2017). As a result, there is a need for further research in the stream of “projects of future,” as the forms of temporary organizing for a resilient and just future of societies and their businesses. Such projects typically extend the boundaries of a single organization and call for focused and coordinated efforts by multiple disciplines and communities to address system-wide problems (Bacq et al., 2020; George et al., 2016).
Within this need, the intersection of Engineering and Management disciplines have been specifically promising and it provides a channel for interdisciplinary contribution of a range of scholars from different disciplines such as Sociology, Ecology, Political Science, Psychology, Urban Sciences, Geography, Law and Economics. However, there is a need for further integrative engagement of interdisciplinary scholars to the Anthropogenic challenges to encourage innovative thinking (Baggio, 2021).
Aims & Scope
In this context the aim of this special issue is to explore the role of projects as an intervention for a resilient and just future of societies and their businesses. Specifically, this special issue aims to instigate a multidisciplinary “collective inquiry” to study temporary organizing for building a resilient and just future across societies and their businesses.
The scope of this special issue includes empirical studies using traditional and non-traditional research methods across engineering and management disciplines. The papers should present rigorous methodological details and justification of the choices within the steps of the research design. We also invite theoretical contributions that present strong theoretical background and conceptualization of the phenomenon. Across these studies, the interdisciplinary nature of the research is specifically emphasized, as the studies are encouraged to engage knowledge, methodology, and perspectives of multiple disciplines in an integrative approach as suggested by Danermark (2019). The accepted manuscripts should lead to novel contributions that advances the research stream of temporary organizing in the form of projects for building resilience.
Indicative list of anticipated themes:
- What is the scope for temporary organizing in shaping resilient and just future for societies and their functions such as businesses?
- How can communities or organizations within communities best use temporary organizing in the face of global grand challenges?
- What are the limitations and challenges of projects of future?
- How can communities or organizations within communities strategically overcome barriers to temporary organizing?
- How can organizations innovate in projects of future?
- How do different actors including corporations, communities and NGOs coordinate and collaborate in projects of future?
Expected impact
This interdisciplinary issue should help to instigate societal transformations and actions in view of the disruptions, to inform these actions, or to provide knowledge and understanding of the associated phenomena. To enhance these impacts, the special collection aims to nudge interdisciplinary research for building a resilient and just future in an integrative manner. The hope is this special issue incentivizes and encourages collaborations across different disciplines within academic research, informs the actions and supports projects for a resilient and just future within communities, informs policy making within the governing bodies, and informs strategies and guidelines to engage in projects for a resilient and just future within the societies and their businesses.
Notes for Prospective Authors
As stated within the aims and scope, we invite submissions with solid methodology and theorizing. All submissions therefore require clear methodological and theoretical support to discuss the observed phenomena. Papers must present a rigorous methodological approach and precise description of the research steps from data collection to analysis and interpretation of the results.
While we emphasize methodological and theoretical rigor, the special issue welcomes a wide range of methodologies to encourage interdisciplinary contributions and adopts a pluralistic and instrumentalist view (Dewey, 1938; Laudan, 1977; Olsson et al., 2015) of the concept of resilience to instigate interdisciplinary research (Naderpajouh et al., 2018). Specifically, problematization of the existing research on the topic as well as the current practices are encouraged.
All the submitted manuscripts will go through a double-blind peer review process for IEEE- Transactions on Engineering Management. The submitted manuscripts should clearly provide: (i) relevance of the problem: description of the real-world phenomena and need for research, (ii) theoretical underpinning: of the research and engaged conceptualization of the problem, (iii) methodology: clear description of the research design including steps from data collection to analysis and interpretation with clear description of the data, and (iv) practical and theoretical contribution to the body of knowledge and practice.
Submission Process
Please prepare the manuscript according to IEEE-TEM’s guidelines (http://ieee-tmc.org/tem-guidelines) and submit to the journal’s Manuscript Central site (https://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/tem-ieee). Please upload the paper on the IEEE TEM Editorial Manager clearly indicating it is submission for the IEEE TEM Special Issue on “Projects of Future: Temporary Organizing for Resilient and Just Societies and Business.”
Schedule
Papers should be submitted by May 31st, 2024 but the incoming paper will be reviewed on a rolling basis to expedite the publication.
Guest Editor Bios
Dr Nader Naderpajouh is a faculty member in the School of Project Management at the University of Sydney where he also serves as a Director of Research Education and Post Graduate Coordinator. He is an Associate Editor of the Journal of Management in Engineering by the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) as well as the Built Environment Project and Asset Management (BEPAM). He is also a member of the Editorial Board of several journals including the International Journal of Project Management (IJPM), while he serves as a referee for over 25 academic journals. Dr Naderpajouh is a scholar of risk and resilience in project studies, with the current main research interest on the topic of “organizing for resilience,” that have been studied through a portfolio of 19 research projects (totaling over A$13,5M) from a range of national and international, public and private organizations. He is passionate about the discourse of social justice and equity, in addition to the climate crisis, and these values are foundational in his active research on the topics of resilience, collective action, innovation and infrastructure management.
Dr Kirsi Aaltonen is an Associate Professor of Project Management and Complex Systems in the Department of Industrial Engineering and Management at the University of Oulu where she also leads Project Business Research Team. She is an Associate Editor of Project Leadership and Society (PL&S) and member of the International Editorial Board of several journals including International Journal of Project Management (IJPM) and Project Management Journal (PMJ). Dr. Aaltonen is a scholar of stakeholder, sustainability and inter-organizational relationship management in project studies. She has published widely on project stakeholder and sustainability management, collaborative project delivery models and management of project networks. Her current research interests include the use of temporary organizing to address societal grand challenges.
Prof Erik Hollnagel is Visiting Professorial Fellow, Macquarie University (Australia), and Visiting Fellow, Institute for Advanced Study, Technische Universität München (Germany). He is also Professor Emeritus from Linköping University (Sweden), Ecole des Mines de Paris (France), and the University of Southern Denmark. Erik has throughout his career worked at universities, research centres, and with industries in many countries and with problems from a variety of domains and industries. He has published widely and is the author/editor of 26 books, including seven books on resilience engineering, as well as a large number of papers and book chapters. Erik has been President of the European Association of Cognitive Ergonomics (1994 – 2000) and co-founder and past chairperson of both the Resilience Engineering Association and the Resilient Health Care Society.
Dr Young Hoon Kwak is a faculty member in the Department of Decision Sciences and serves as a Director of International Center for Project Management at The George Washington University School of Business (GWSB) in Washington, D.C. Dr. Kwak is Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Management in Engineering by the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE), specialty editor for the Case Studies section of the Journal of Construction Engineering and Management (ASCE), and Department Editor for Project Management of IEEE Transactions on Engineering Management. Dr. Kwak’s primary research interests include project and program management; project delivery and project control, engineering and technology management; and management of complex megaprojects.
Prof Martina Linnenluecke leads the Center for Corporate Sustainability and Environmental Finance at Macquarie University. The Centre brings together an interdisciplinary team of leading experts in the areas of corporate sustainability and environmental finance. The work undertaken by the Centre has worldwide reach and impact by demonstrating a financial case for action on environmental and social change, with projects focusing on stranded asset risk, ESG investing, climate policy impacts, as well as adaptation and resilience to global environmental change. Professor Linnenluecke’s research focuses on the strategic and financial implications of corporate adaptation and resilience to climate change impacts. She has published over 100 academic articles, book chapters and conference papers and has been the recipient of numerous awards for her work. She is also the author of the book “The Climate Resilient Organization” and has extensive experience in working with government and industry on climate adaptation strategies. Professor Linnenluecke is a contributing author to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Sixth Assessment Report (AR6 WGII) and is a member of the College of Experts of the Australian Research Council (ARC).
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IEEE Transactions on Engineering Management is journal of the Technology and Engineering Management Society of IEEE, published quarterly since 1954. It is dedicated to the publication of peer-reviewed original contributions, by researchers and practitioners, regarding the theory and practice of engineering, technology, and innovation management.
Editor in Chief
Tugrul U Daim, PhD PICMET Fellow
Professor and Director
Technology Management Doctoral Program
Department of Engineering and Technology Management
Maseeh College of Engineering and Computer Science
Portland State University, Portland OR
United States
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