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International Journal of Project Management 34 (2016) 688 700
www.elsevier.com/locate/ijproman
Abstract
Project management research is characterized by dominance of determinism, decision-theoretic approaches, and weak theories. The growth of
research interest in non-deterministic paradigms through the lenses of complexity and uncertainty is recent, and could provide stronger theoretic
explanations. However, analysis of select project management literature reveals that the constructs of complexity and uncertainty are yet to be
grounded in terms of denitions and constituent variables. We argue that denitional clarity is necessary for the non-deterministic research to move
forward. In this paper, we propose taxonomy of constituent terms of complexity and uncertainty based on semantic analysis of select literature and
show that the two constructs are broadly confounded in their constituent terms. While our nding may appear to align with complexity theoretic
concept of strong interrelationship between complexity and uncertainty, we argue that such confounding represents intermingling of varying
ontological and epistemological preferences within the community of project management scholars rather than a broad adherence to the complexity
theory. The paper contributes to project management literature by facilitating further research toward stronger construct denitions and theorybuilding efforts. The paper also contributes to research methods by offering a novel methodology to elicit taxonomy of terms and to illuminate
the confounding and separating terms across multiple constructs.
2016 Elsevier Ltd. APM and IPMA. All rights reserved.
Keywords: Project management; Uncertainty; Complexity; Taxonomy; Research methods
1. Introduction
The field of project management research is characterized by
the dominance of deterministic paradigm and decision-theoretic
approaches. A review of literature reveals two themes anchored in
determinism. Much of the early project management research
lasting until late 1980s employs conceptual or analytical methods,
and focuses on scheduling optimization, resting on the premise that
project activities and their interrelationships are fixed and measurable (Kolisch, 1996; Herroelen et al., 1998; Kolisch and
Padman, 2001; Herroelen and Leus, 2004, 2005; Hartmann and
Briskorn, 2010). Subsequently, empirical studies seeking success
or failure factors have gained prominence in 1990s (Kloppenborg
Corresponding author. Tel.: + 91 495 2809421, + 91 9400050850, + 91
9971494440.
E-mail addresses: milinp07fpm@iimk.ac.in (M. Padalkar), saji@iimk.ac.in
(S. Gopinath).
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.ijproman.2016.02.009
0263-7863/00/ 2016 Elsevier Ltd. APM and IPMA. All rights reserved.
and Opfer, 2002; Tesch et al., 2003; Turner and Mller, 2005;
Jugdev and Mller, 2005; Rozenes et al., 2006; Huemann et al.,
2007; Ika, 2009; Mller and Jugdev, 2012). The search for success
or failure factors has also led to expansion of the research domain
to broader organizational contexts, behavioral and interdisciplinary
themes, organizational and external actors, strategic benefits, risk,
etc. (Belout and Gauvreau, 2004; Turner and Mller, 2005;
Huemann et al., 2007; Aloini et al., 2007; Littau et al., 2010;
Padalkar and Gopinath, 2015). On the backdrop of determinism, a
small non-deterministic stream is evident from 1960s. This
includes critique of PERT and of beta distribution (Grubbs, 1962;
MacCrimmon and Ryavec, 1964; Schonberger, 1981); modeling
of uncertainty in project phenomena by relaxing the assumptions
about fixed attributes (Martin, 1965; Burt, 1977; Cook and
Jennings, 1979; Williams, 1992; Bowman, 1995; Cho and Yum,
1997; Elmaghraby et al., 1999; Chapman and Ward, 2000); use of
system dynamics to model the nonlinear effects of feedback loops
689
p. 968; Vidal et al., 2011, p. 718; Brady and Davies, 2014, p. 22);
or uncertainty (Williams, 1999, p. 271; Perminova et al., 2008, p.
74; McLain, 2009, p. 61). A review of recent papers confirms that
definitions of complexity continue to be ambiguous (Ramasesh
and Browning, 2014, p. 193; Browning, 2014, p. 232; Qureshi and
Kang, 2015, p. 166; Saunders et al., 2015, p. 468).
Second, the two constructs appear to be associated with a large
number of terms and may be terminologically confounded with
some of these terms. For instance, Baccarini (1996) views
complexity as consisting of many varied interrelated parts (p.
202), while Williams (1999, p. 271) treats number of elements
and interdependence of elements as constituents of structural
uncertainty which is proposed as an element of complexity. Ward
& Chapman (2003, p. 99) regard number of influencing factors
and their interdependencies as constituents of complexity, which
in turn contribute to project uncertainty. Shenhar (2001, p. 397
399) regards the two constructs as orthogonal to each other, while
Tatikonda & Rosenthal (2000, p. 7879) view complexity as
consisting of interdependence among the product and process
technologies, novelty of goals, and difficulty of goals and thus
contributing to project uncertainty. Sommer & Loch (2004,
p. 13351336) treat complexity and unforeseeable uncertainty
as separate constructs, while noting that the use of the term complexity is not consistent in the PM literature. Complexity as an
element of uncertainty is reiterated by Atkinson et al. (2006,
p. 688689), while Geraldi & Adlbrecht (2007, p. 33) and Geraldi
et al. (2011, p. 976) support uncertainty as an element of complexity. Vidal et al. (2011) claim that complexity can be viewed as
a property of the system that makes it difficult to understand
(p. 719). Pich et al. (2002) define complexity as information inadequacy when too many variables interact (p. 1009). Perminova
et al. (2008, p. 76) equate complexity to systematic uncertainty.
Brady et al. (2012) argue that the two constructs are distinct. De
Meyer et al. (2002, p. 6163) regard uncertainty as a continuum
from simple variations (foreseeable uncertainty) to chaos (unforeseeable or epistemic uncertainty). However, other authors associate epistemic uncertainty with unknown variables or unknown
relationships, as part of complexity. For example, Brady & Davies
(2010, p. 155) refer to unexpected interactions semantically
adjacent to unknown interrelationships as part of complexity.
Thus, three broad strands of argument are visible from literature:
(i) uncertainty as a component of complexity, (ii) complexity as a
component of uncertainty, and (iii) independence of the two
constructs.
It is clear that there is an absence of inter-subjective agreement
among project management researchers on the constructs constituent terms and also about how the constructs relate to each
other. The question of such absence of agreement motivates this
paper. Grounding of construct definitions is critical for theorybuilding effort, as definitional weaknesses could lead to divergence
in research without obtaining strong theories. While clear construct
definitions by themselves may not be sufficient for theorybuilding, they are necessary to obtain a robust ontological and
epistemological frame to aid further research progress. Noting that
project management research offers a rich set of terms, words, or
phrases to describe the two constructs, building taxonomies
would be a pre-requisite to proposing strong definitions.
690
975 articles
complexity OR
uncertainty
in titles
> 200 citations
691
Corpus articles
189 articles **
36
15 articles **
27 articles @
65 articles @
111 articles @
78 articles @
[2006, 2015]
547 articles
51-200 citations
* October 2015
** Browse articles
@ Browse abstracts
520 articles
455 articles
26-50 citations
11-25 citations
[2013, 2015]
194 articles
58 corpus
articles
> 1 citation
9 additional
corpus articles
Separate snowball
49 corpus
articles
692
Assessed on 29-October-2015
We allowed double-tagging, .e. if a paper mentioned both the terms, both
corresponding tags were set to 1.
2
Corpus
(58 articles)
Read &
extract
191 semantic
clusters
Semantic
reduction
74
keywords
Sample 1
Re-coded by
Researcher 1
Sample 2
Re-coded by
Researcher 2
Sample 3
Re-coded by
Researcher 3
693
Scopus
Coding
3709 citing
Papers*
Synthesis from
literature
13 unique
codes
Semantic analysis of
abstracts to obtain
construct weights
2-dimensional
framework
Plotting
Table 1
Distribution of code weights from citation analysis.
Codes
Complexity
weight
Uncertainty
weight
Total
weight
Level 1: Deterministic
Interdependence (L1S)
Size (L1S)
Organizational resources (L1S)
Diversity (L1S)
Nonlinear dynamics (L1D)
Complexity theoretic processes (L1D)
Pace (L1D)
0.2569 (H)
0.2148 (H)
0.0687 (M)
0.0615 (M)
0.0690 (M)
0.0587 (M)
0.0164
0.1031 (H)
0.0735 (M)
0.0210 (L)
0.0133 (L)
0.0193 (L)
0.0192 (L)
0.0076
0.3600
0.2883
0.0897
0.0748
0.0883
0.0779
0.0240
Level 2: Stochastic
Information availability (L2S)
Structural uncertainty (L2S)
Dynamic uncertainty (L2D)
0.0648 (M)
0.0067
0.0014
0.0622 (M)
0.0172 (L)
0.0061
0.1270
0.0239
0.0075
Level 3: Epistemic
Missing information (L3S)
Novelty (L3S)
External uncertainty (L3D)
Total
0.1677 (M)
0.0523 (L)
0.0823 (M)
1.1212
0.1448 (H)
0.0276 (L)
0.0542 (M)
0.5691
0.3125
0.0799
0.1365
1.6903
694
Complexity
Uncertainty
Novelty
Level 3 (Epistemic)
Missing information
Information availability
Structural uncertainty
Interdependence
Organizational resources
Diversity
Size
Level 2 (Stochastic)
Level 1 (Deterministic)
Dynamic uncertainty
Non-linear dynamics
Pace
Structural
External uncertainty
Dynamic
Strong
Medium
Weak
Framework synthesized from Williams (1999); Shenhar(2001); Xia & Lee (2005); Geraldi et al. (2011)
Table 2
Decadal trends in conceptualizations of complexity and uncertainty.
Complexity
Uncertainty
Codes
19962005
20062015
19962005
20062015
Level 1: Deterministic
Interdependence (L1S)
Size (L1S)
Organizational resources (L1S)
Diversity (L1S)
Nonlinear dynamics (L1D)
Complexity theoretic processes (L1D)
Pace (L1D)
0.1383 (H)
0.1644 (H)
0.0236 (L)
0.0294 (M)
0.0413 (M)
0.0037
0.1186 (H)
0.0504 (M)
0.0451 (M)
0.0320 (M)
0.0277 (L)
0.0587 (M)
0.0127 (L)
0.0690 (H)
0.0599 (H)
0.0052
0.0076 (L)
0.0135 (L)
0.0039
0.0342 (M)
0.0136 (M)
0.0158 (M)
0.0057 (L)
0.0058 (L)
0.0192 (M)
0.0037
Level 2: Stochastic
Information availability (L2S)
Structural uncertainty (L2S)
Dynamic uncertainty (L2D)
0.0286 (M)
0.0002
0.0362 (M)
0.0065
0.0014
0.0356 (M)
0.0018
0.0265 (M)
0.0154 (M)
0.0061 (L)
Level 3: Epistemic
Missing information (L3S)
Novelty (L3S)
External uncertainty (L3D)
Total
0.0759 (M)
0.0205 (L)
0.0103
0.5362
0.0917 (H)
0.0318 (M)
0.0720 (M)
0.5849
0.0769 (H)
0.0173 (M)
0.0187 (M)
0.3095
0.0679 (H)
0.0104 (L)
0.0355 (M)
0.2600
695
24
Research Policy (1)
Research Technology Management (1)
Total
Cooke-Davies et al. (2007); Geraldi and Adlbrecht (2007); Maylor et al. (2008);
Williams and Samset (2010); Saynisch (2010a, 2010b); Brady and Davies (2014);
Thamhain (2013);
Hobday (1998)
Maylor et al. (2013)
34
Journal source*
*From snowball search, one article was taken from Kybernetes published by
Emerald).
Mummolo (1997); Jaafari (2001); Ward and Chapman (2003); Atkinson et al. (2006);
Jensen et al. (2006); Perminova et al. (2008); Howell et al. (2010); Petit (2012); Acebes et
al. (2014); Chapman (2006); Lenfle (2011); Martinsuo et al. (2014); Sanderson (2012);
Saunders et al. (2015); Turner and Mller (2003)
Gosling et al. (2012)
Gidado (1996)
De Reyck and Herroelen (1996)
Williams (2005)
Cho and Yum (1997)
Geraldi et al. (2011)
Baccarini (1996); Williams (1999); Austin et al. (2002); Bosch-Rekveldt et al. (2011);
Danilovic and Browning (2007); Giezen (2012); Browning (2014); Geraldi (2008);
Vidal et al. (2011); Ahern et al. (2014); Lu et al. (2015); Qureshi and Kang (2015);
Thomas and Mengel (2008); Winter et al. (2006)
Construction Management and Economics (2)
European Journal of Operational Research (1)
IEEE Transactions on Engineering Management (2)
International Journal of Production Research (1)
International Journal of Operations and Production Management (1)
International Journal of Project Management (31)
Complexity
Uncertainty
Journal outlet
696
697
Organizational resources
Experience
Resources
Personal specialization
Capability
Roles, prototypes
Skills, competencies
Pace
Pace
Pace of work
Project timescale
Size
Number of elements
Number of specialties
Number of units
Number of variables
Scale
Size
Number of hierarchy levels
Number of distinct actions
Distinct elements
Number of inputs and outputs
Structural uncertainty
Known-unknown
Stochastic network
Path criticality
Structural uncertainty
Uncertain control and communication
Uncertain motivation & alignment
Uncertain quality and reliability
Uncertain resource availability
Unclear design
698
699
700
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