Projects are unique because of the level of risk and uncertainty around delivering the required outcomes or desired change and the urgency due to the time constraints. Moreover, projects necessitate integration and coordination between the project and the organization, resulting in the dual embeddedness of project resources and employees within the project and the organizational setting. This uncertainty, urgency and integration make the management of people different than within traditional organizations where operations are more routine and repetitive.
Relatively recently, scholars in organizational psychology, human resource management, and project management have started to bridge the gap in the fields by looking at project manager career paths, recruitment and project management, psychological contracts, and, the role of HRM practices on projects. This list is not meant to be comprehensive or exhaustive but simply to highlight some of the extant work, all of which acknowledges the large gap in our understanding of human resource activity and management in the important context of projects.

Projects and project-based organizations (PBO) have long been practiced widely across industries. Schoper et al. estimated the ratio of project work to total work in western countries at 28-35%. The nature of the project as a temporary organization is recognized as significantly different than traditional organizations and yet our understanding of the experience of people working in projects and the most effective way to manage these human resources has not kept pace.
The purpose of this special issue is to consolidate what we know about human resource management (HRM) and employee behaviors in this context and examine how advances in organizational psychology address this specific context. Given the increasing use of this organizational form in addressing important contemporary challenges now is the ideal time to dedicate a special issue on HRM in the context of the project and temporal organizations.

In order to examine the topic in further detail, the project teams collaborating on digital platforms and in an international sphere can be a proper context.

This call is relatively broad, and we are excited to see the kinds of papers that come forward. That said, the focus here is on HRM issues and management within the specific context of temporary organizations labeled projects. Some ideas about possible topics of interest include:
• Motivation of contract/gig employees in a project context
• Time management and tracking in the project context and its impact on the employment and psychological contracts
• Managing mental health in a project context where urgency and productivity are both necessary and prevalent
• Within the project context, how transferable are HRM practices between construction and IT or theatre or climate change projects or short or long-term (mega) projects? What are the variables that are common, and which are different across project contexts?
• Understanding the role of differing understandings of time across the temporary and traditional organizations and its impact on HRM practices.
• How is hiring for temporary projects different than for traditional ongoing jobs?
• What is a career in a project world where people often move from project to project across organizations for the “best” work?
• How is identity impacted in this context?

We welcome both original articles analyzing empirical data and review/conceptual papers exploring and theorizing how to bridge the gap between our understanding in traditional organizations with the context of projects.

Submit your idea

Impact

Frontiers in Psychology

Participating Journals

Impact