INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF

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International Journal of Project Management 24 (2006) 175–184

PROJECTMANAGEMENT

Uncovering the trends in project management: Journal emphasesover the last 10 years

Lynn Crawford, Julien Pollack *, David England

Faculty of Design, Architecture and Building, Building 6, level 5, University of Technology, Sydney, 702 Harris Street, Ultimo NSW 2007, Australia

Received 12 November 2004; received in revised form 12 July 2005; accepted 14 October 2005

Abstract

The field of project management continues to develop in response to changing emphases in the management community and thedemands of new project management application areas. This paper uncovers the trends of emphasis within the project management lit-erature over the period 1994–2003, by analysing articles in the International Journal of Project Management and the Project Management

Journal. Trends identified in this study are then compared to trends of emphasis identified in a variety of previous studies of changes tothe field. These results are then synthesised to provide a overall impression of how the field is changing.� 2005 Elsevier Ltd and IPMA. All rights reserved.

Keywords: Research trends; Text analysis

1. Introduction

Project management, as a profession and area ofresearch, continues to grow and develop. In response toproject management being applied in new industries, coun-tries and application areas, the demands on project man-agement continue to change. These changes alter the wayproject management is perceived, the commonly acceptedviews of what it is to practice project management, andthe way the field is represented in the literature.

A variety of previous studies have already examinedchanges to the field, using many different approaches, find-ing diverse and sometimes contradictory results. This studyreconciles these different results and adds new findings,examining the changing development of the field, as repre-sented by keywords identified in the last 10 years of theInternational Journal of Project Management (IJPM) andthe Project Management Journal (PMJ). Tendencies inthe literature are identified, which indicate the future direc-tion of the profession.

0263-7863/$30.00 � 2005 Elsevier Ltd and IPMA. All rights reserved.

doi:10.1016/j.ijproman.2005.10.005

* Corresponding author. Tel.: +61 2 9514 8727/8754; fax: +61 2 95148875.

E-mail address: Julien.Pollack@uts.edu.au (J. Pollack).

2. Previous research

It is arguable whether project management is appliedconsistently and generically. Crawford [1] has found varia-tion in project management knowledge and practicesbetween industries, countries and application areas. Dueto this variation in understanding and application of pro-ject management, it is useful to understand which kindsof projects dominate the literature on project management.

However, it is difficult to establish the conclusive distri-bution of project size or practice over industry sectors, asresponses to surveys are subject to sample bias. The influ-ence of industry bias is identified by Evaristo and vanFenema [2, p. 276], who state that ‘‘. . .the current knowl-edge based on the management of projects emanates fromlarge capital construction projects responsible for only 10%of the projects.’’ Betts and Lansley [3, p. 211] found that inproject management ‘‘. . .by far the most frequentlyaddressed industry was construction, followed by papersrelating to the information and service sector and the pro-cess industries.’’

In a survey by Pinto and Slevin [4, p. 70], it was foundthat the construction industry constituted ‘‘. . .44% of thesample.’’ The two main industry sectors identified in a

176 L. Crawford et al. / International Journal of Project Management 24 (2006) 175–184

study by Themistocleous and Wearne [5, p. 11] wereconstruction (46%); and, services (30%). The two mainindustry sectors in a survey by Zobel and Wearne [6, p.37] were found to be: services (41%); and construction(23%). By contrast, the influence of sample choice becomesclear when the above industry distributions are comparedto research by White and Fortune [7, p. 3] which found thatover 25% of respondents were from the IT industry, 8%were from engineering and 2% were construction.

Regardless of the �true� breakdown of project manage-ment amongst all industry sectors, it is clear from thesestudies that project management practice is heavily influ-enced by research emanating from the construction indus-try. If, as Evaristo and van Fenema [2, p. 276] have found,this sector represents only a small percent of the total num-ber of projects executed, then there is an associated riskthat research conclusions may be unquestioningly andinvalidly transferred between industry sectors.

In order to understand the field of project managementas it currently exists, it can be useful to understand how ithas changed over time. As a field, project management isregularly facing new challenges, as the tools, methodsand approaches to management that comprise the disci-pline are applied to different areas, for different ends, in dif-ferent cultures. As an ‘‘emerging profession’’ [8, p. 3], thefield continues to grow and adapt, and can be said to havecome along way from its origins in the 1950s, as academicsand practitioners add new insight to the already wide rangeof practice options.

During the 1950s, network analysis and planning tech-niques, like PERT and CPM, formed the focus of develop-ment in project management. In the 1960s, these techniquescontinued to be popular in the construction industry, butCost/Scheduling Control System Criteria (C/SCSC) gainedpopularity within the defence and aerospace industries.Developments in the field of project management in the1960s also included the formation of two major profes-sional associations [9].

Shenhar [10] notes a focus on teamwork as a definingfeature of project management in the 1970s, while Stretton[11] notes an emphasis on breakdown structures and sys-tems concepts. The 1980s were typified by a focus on pro-ject organisation, project risk [10], the project front end,external influences to projects, and initial work on thedevelopment of project management standards [12].

Already a wide variety of topics can be seen to haveinfluenced the field, some of which have left a lastingimpression, while others have risen and dissipated asmomentary areas of enquiry. Pascale [13, p. 19] analyseschanges to the general management field since WorldWar II, and notes that the idea of the professional managerrelies on premise of the relevance of generic concepts thatunderlie management in all situations. Managerial tech-niques have become a ‘‘packaged goods industry’’, withthe consequence that management techniques are onlyapplied superficially or while fashionable, often only sur-viving for a short period. A great deal of similarity can

be seen between the forces influencing the general manage-ment and project management communities.

Many of the past management fads have had merit.While ‘‘. . .there are valid aspects to most of these ideas,what is wrong is the piecemeal fashion in which they areimplemented. . .’’ [14, p. 17]. Because of the superficial ortransitory way in which many past management ideas havebeen applied, there has been little chance for in-depthlearning regarding their efficacy. ‘‘Not surprisingly, ideasacquired with ease are discarded with ease. Fads ebb, flow– and even change by 180 degrees’’ [13, p. 20]. Similarchanges can be seen within the project managementliterature.

3. Recent changes to the profession

Change in the practice of project management does notcontinue at a steady pace. The rate at which new ideas areintroduced to a field can be related to a variety of factors.Pascale [13, p. 18] links the consumption rate of manage-ment fads to times of sagging fortunes and managerialpanic. However, the introduction of new ideas to a fieldcan also be related to expansion into new application areasand inclusion of new practitioners, who bring new perspec-tives and challenge established patterns of behaviour. Forinstance, in 2000, Urli and Urli [15, p. 33] indicated thatthe ‘‘. . .field of project management has undergone veryimportant developments during the last 10 years. . .’’involving the extension of project management into newfields of practice.

Seven studies stand out as relevant to an analysis oftrends in the field of project management. Betts and Lans-ley [3] examined the first 10 years worth of articles in IJPM,using a system of weighted classification, covering the years1983–1992. Themistocleous and Wearne [5] have provideda similar study, examining the frequency of project man-agement topics between 1984 and 1998. Their study centreson IJPM, with limited comparison to PMJ. Zobel andWearne [6] used the same method as Themistocleous andWearne [5] to examine topic coverage in four project man-agement conferences between 1996 and 1998. Morris, Pateland Wearne [16] have also completed a survey of interest,documenting the review of, and possible changes to, theUK Association for Project Management�s Body ofKnowledge. Morris [17] provides a portrait of contempo-rary project management research by examining the mostpopular topics in papers and book reviews from IJPM,PMJ and PM Network between 1990 and 1999.

Urli and Urli [15] used a ‘‘scientometric method’’ of textanalysis to analyse changes to the field. This approach wasused to identify tendencies for association of keywords inall papers identified as relevant to project management inthe electronic database ABI-INFORM, published withinthe period 1987–1996. Their study is unique in that theirmethod purportedly elicits ‘‘. . .the most significant themesas defined by academics themselves rather than by an a pri-ori classification’’ [15, p. 34]. Kloppenborg and Opfer also

L. Crawford et al. / International Journal of Project Management 24 (2006) 175–184 177

examined tendencies within the field of project manage-ment, looking for past, present and future trends. Theirstudy purportedly analysed ‘‘. . .the vast majority of pub-licly accessible project management research that has beenpublished in the English language between 1960 and 1999’’[18, p. 52].

Although these studies examine different time periods,using different methods, comparison of the results receivedis interesting. The most significant trends identified in eachof these above six papers have been identified and tabu-lated in Table 1. The category titles that have been used

Table 1Comparison of identified trends in project management

Dates covered by study Themistocleousand Wearne [5]

Zobel andWearne [6]

Urli and Urli[15]

1984–1998 1996–1998 1987–1996

CommunicationCompetencyContext/environment X

Contracts X

CostFinancial managementGoals, strategiesHR projects ››Human factorsIndustrial relationsInformation management X X

Information systems X

InnovationIntegrative managementLeadership ›› X

Legal awarenessLife cyclesManagement by projects ››Managers X

Monitor and control X

Operations research X

Optimising X

Organisational change ››PerformancePERT ››Planning X X

Procurement/purchasing X

Program management X

Project close · ·Project start-up · ·Project organisation X

Quality X››Requirements managementRisk X X

Safety, health, environmentScheduling X››Stakeholder managementStandards/certificationStress ››Success criteria ››Systems managementTeamwork X

Time

Table key: X – An interest in the topic area.· – A lack of interest in the topic area.›› – An increasing interest in the topic area.flfl – A decreasing interest in the topic area.

in Table 1 are taken directly from the relevant authorswork. Four different kinds of trend are identified in thesedifferent papers: topics which are identified as of stronginterest to the field of project management; topics whichare not of interest; those topics of increasing interest; andthose of decreasing interest.

What immediately stands out in cursory examination ofTable 1 is the variation in themes identified. Conclusionsdrawn from this might be that the interests of project man-agers have changed over the different periods studied. This,however, does not explain the differences in results for

Betts and Lansley[3]

Morris et al.[16]

Kloppenborg andOpfer [18]

Morris[17]

1983–1992 Pre 2000 1960–1999 1990–1999

›››› X

X

X

X

·

X

X

›› X

››·X

X

X

X X

›› ››

flfl X

X X

››Xflfl

X X

·X X

X

X

››››

· X

·X

X X

178 L. Crawford et al. / International Journal of Project Management 24 (2006) 175–184

studies that cover overlapping periods. Other possible, butunverifiable, reasons for differences in identified themes ofsignificance might include variation between samplegroups, differences in sampling method and differences inthe ways that themes were identified.

Indeed, different opinions about the nature of projectmanagement abound in the literature. For instance, Urliand Urli [15, p. 40] identified organisational change as ofgrowing interest to project management, while Strettonnoted that the literature ‘‘. . .has surprisingly little materialon organisational change processes, and certainly no uni-versally accepted guidelines for undertaking organisationalchanges as projects’’ [19, p. 1]. These contradictory obser-vations were both published in 2000.

Urli and Urli [15, p. 35] also identified OperationsResearch as the main theme in project management. How-ever their observations about the significance of OperationsResearch are thrown into doubt as none of the other sixmentions Operations Research. Furthermore, a search for�Operations Research� or �Operational Research� in elec-tronic copies of the International Journal of Project Man-agement reveals only three references to either of theseterms [20–22]. A possible explanation of Urli and Urli�s[15] claim concerning the significance of OperationsResearch to project management involves links betweenproject management, Systems Engineering and SystemsAnalysis [23] and the systems field in general [24]. Whenread in the light of an observation by Daniel that: ‘‘Systemsengineering or systems analysis . . .is now regarded as indis-tinguishable in practice from operational research’’ [21, p.79], links identified by Urli and Urli [15] between projectmanagement and Operations Research become apparent.

Comparison of the seven studies does, however, revealsome topics that are consistently regarded as significant.Topics that at least two studies identify as significantinclude: context/environment; information management;leadership; monitoring and controlling; performance; plan-ning; procurement; project organisation; quality; risk; andscheduling.

As is implied by the variation in the results of these dif-ferent studies, the trends in the field of project managementfound by a study is partially dependant on the wayresearchers look for those trends. Different research meth-odologies are like different lenses through which we can seethe world, no one of which gives an exclusive view of thetruth. Rather, an idea of the objective truth can be devel-oped by triangulating the results of different studies, con-ducted by different researchers. In the remainder of thispaper, we uncover more recent trends, then by buildingupon the work of previous authors, we provide a synthesisof trends in project management between 1983 and 2003.

4. Research methodology

This paper examines trends in the project managementliterature using Keyword Analysis, a technique developedin the field of Corpus Linguistics, a branch of Applied Lin-

guistics focusing on the computational analysis of corpora.Keyword Analysis identifies keywords in texts by compar-ing a subject corpus to a larger normative corpus, whichacts as a base line for the study. Using this method multipleseparate corpora can be compared to a single normativecorpus [25, p. 1]. Different lists of keyword created can thenbe created, and can act as the basis for comparison of thesubject corpora.

In this study, four subject corpora were used to createkeyword lists, each one being representative of a five yearportion of either IJPM or PMJ. Subject corpora were com-posed of the titles and abstracts of articles appearing in thedifferent journals. Book reviews were excluded from thiscompilation. Abstracts and titles of journal articles are gen-erally highly indicative of the content of articles. By con-trast, it was found that using the full text of articlesintroduced the possibility of repetitiously worded articlesdistorting results. Furthermore, abstracts tend to be of asimilar length and as such there is less likelihood of theresults being skewed due to an entry being of exceptionallength.

Five year periods were chosen as the basis of this studyso as to align more clearly with previous studies. Betts andLansley [3], Themistocleous and Wearne [5] and Urli andUrli [15] analyse trend data in five year time periods. Fiveyear periods also allowed for the accumulation of sufficientdata to indicate a trend.

A variety of Keyword Analysis techniques can be iden-tified in the Corpus Linguistics literature: v2; log-likeli-hood; t-test; the Mutual Information (MI) statistic; andthe Mann–Whitney test. Of these, the t-test was discountedas it requires samples of the same size. This constraintcould not be met by the samples of journal content, asthe length of journals varies from issue to issue and yearto year. The t-test also requires normal distribution ofwords, ‘‘. . .which is not in general the case for wordcounts’’ [26, p. 104]. MI was discounted as it overemphas-ises rare terms [26, p. 105], which would be common in anindustry such as project management, which has developeda specialised vocabulary. The Mann–Whitney test was notused as it ignores word frequencies [25, p. 2], which are use-ful in understanding the role that words play in a text.

The log-likelihood and v2 tests were both identified asappropriate tests for identifying keywords in this study.These tests are similar, in that the v2 and log-likelihoodtests are two statistics on the same ‘‘. . .continuum definedby the power-divergence family of statistics’’ [25, p. 2].Both of these tests can be used to produce lists of wordsthat are considered to be keywords, based on the analysisof the relative frequencies of words. These tests also pro-duce an index which can be used to indicate how key par-ticular words are to a text. Results in this study weregenerated using both methods. The v2 test was finally cho-sen due to greater correspondence of results with a naturallanguage understanding of keyness in a text.

The v2 algorithm identifies keywords based on the com-parison of the relative frequencies of words in a subject and

L. Crawford et al. / International Journal of Project Management 24 (2006) 175–184 179

normative corpus. The normative corpus provides a base-line frequency for word use. Words in the subject corpusidentified as unusually frequent are tagged as potential key-words. This approach tends to emphasise words not com-mon in general English, such as acronyms and wordswhich could be considered to be project management jar-gon. WordSmith Tools [27,28], an integrated suite of pro-grams for analysing how words behave in texts, waschosen as the text analysis software for this study.

The normative corpus chosen in this study was the Brit-ish National Corpus (BNC), a 100 million word collectionof samples of written and spoken English, from a widevariety of sources, designed to be representative of currentBritish English [29]. As the normative corpus is in English,this study is limited to analysing project management texts

Fig. 1. Number of a

10000

9000

8000

7000

6000

5000

4000

3000

2000

1000

1994 1995 1996 1997 199

Yea

No.

of w

ords

in s

ampl

es

I

Fig. 2. Number of word

written in English. It is recognised that using a British cor-pus might have introduced some bias into the analysis ofthe texts, as IJPM is published in the UK. However, asno truly international corpus of written English existed atthe time of writing, this bias was unavoidable.

The change in the number of articles in IJPM and PMJover the sample period is represented in Fig. 1. The numberof words in each of the sample years is represented inFig. 2. From these, it can be seen that both the numberof articles and the sample size vary significantly over thesample period. The v2 algorithm was also chosen becauseresults generated using this algorithm are not affected byvariations in sample size.

For each of the four five year subject corpora, the v2

algorithm identified in excess of 500 keywords. However,

rticles by year.

8 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003

r

JPM

PMJ

s in sample by year.

Table 2Topics and categories of topics (based on [31, p. 4])

Category of topic Topic

Cost Management � Cost Management

Cross Unit Outcomes � Estimating� Integration Management� Project Context/Environment� Project Life Cycle/Phasing

Finalisation � Project Closeout/Finalisation� Testing, Commission, Handover andAcceptance

Interpersonal � Conflict Management� Leadership� Negotiation� Problem Solving� Teamwork

Legal Issues � Legal Issues� Safety, Health and Environment

Marketing � Marketing

Product Functionality � Configuration Management� Design Management� Requirements Management� Technology Management� Value Management

Program Management � Program Management

Project Evaluationand Improvement

� Organisational Learning� Performance Management� Project Evaluation and Review

Project Planning andControl

� Change Control� Project Monitoring and Control� Project Planning

Project Start-up � Goals, Objectives and Strategies� Project Initiation/Start-up� Success (Criteria and Factors)

Quality Management � Quality Management

Relationship Management � Benefits Management� Document Management� Information and CommunicationManagement

� Reporting� Team Building and Development

Resource Management � Personnel/Human ResourceManagement

� Procurement� Project Organisation� Resource Management

Risk Management � Risk Management

Scope Management � Scope Management

Strategic Alignment � Business Case� Financial Management� Project Appraisal� Strategic Alignment

Time Management � Time Management

180 L. Crawford et al. / International Journal of Project Management 24 (2006) 175–184

due to the limitations of the v2 algorithm, and its tendencyto overestimate the keyness of terms with a frequency offive or less [25, p. 2] [30, p. 25], some low frequency key-words were discarded. Lists of the top 200 keywords foreach subject corpora were used as the basis of analysis.

Identified keywords were analysed for correspondencewith, or indication of attention paid within a corpus to,one of 48 project management topics and 18 categories oftopics (see Table 2). These categories and topics were iden-tified in association with the development of global perfor-mance based standards for project management personnel.Their development is documented elsewhere [31, p. 4], andis based on topic lists used by previous analyses [5,6] ofproject management trends.

However, the v2 algorithm is a statistical technique, andonly produces a list of words which might be of significancein a text. Each of the top 200 keywords, for each of the sub-ject corpora, once identified, were examined for the waythey were used in the titles and abstracts of articles, inorder to ascertain whether the term was being used in away which indicated attention paid to one of these 48 top-ics or 18 categories of topics. Some of the identified key-words could either be rejected or included immediately,but the vast majority required examination of their textualcontext.

This analysis has made use of two forms of triangulationin generating results. Creation and interpretation of resultshas involved both quantitative and qualitative processes:quantitative methods in the generation of keywords; qual-itative methods in the assessment of the way that theywords were used in the text. Furthermore, triangulationof results involved two researchers independently creatingresults, before results were compared. It was found thatvery little reconciliation was needed between the indepen-dently generated results.

5. Results

Results have been analysed both in terms of the 48 indi-vidual project management topics and at the level of the 18categories of topics. Results for the 10 year period of thisstudy are depicted in Fig. 4. The number of bars within aparticular category indicates the number of different key-words found to indicate attention paid to this aspect ofproject management. The height of the bars indicates theranked keyness of the individual keywords.

Results indicate an increase in the keyness of some top-ics over the sample period. Project Evaluation andImprovement shows a slight increase in the attention paidto this topic over the time period in both journals. Interestin Strategic Alignment is also strong in IJPM and shows anincrease in PMJ. An increase of interest is also evident inCross Unit Outcomes, however there is considerable varia-tion in how this interest is expressed at the topic level. Onthe other hand, attention paid to Quality Management andInterpersonal Issues decreases in both journals, showing achange in the trends identified in other studies [15,18].

Other results could not be used to show a general ten-dency within the field, but instead indicated a differencein focus between IJPM and PMJ. For instance, Project

L. Crawford et al. / International Journal of Project Management 24 (2006) 175–184 181

Planning and Control decreases in interest in IJPM, whileincreasing in focus in PMJ. Relationship Management,while remaining strong in both journals, demonstrates thesame tendency. Project Start-up and Time Management,conversely, increase in keyness in IJPM, while decreasingin keyness in PMJ over the study period.

An interesting tendency can be seen in the results forboth Resource and Risk Management. In both cases, inboth journals, the number of keywords identified as indi-cating these categories decreases in the second period.However, in the second period the ranked keyness of theremaining terms increases. This could be taken to indicatestable interest in these topics and a standardisation of theterms used.

No keywords were found within the top 200 to indicateattention paid to Marketing. Only a low level of interestcould be seen in Legal Issues, Finalisation and Scope Man-agement. The lack of interest in Scope can be seen as a con-

Fig. 3. Topic coverage s

tinuation of the trend uncovered a previous study [16]. Thelittle attention paid to Finalisation in the first period van-ishes in the second period. A lack of interest in Finalisationfound in this research confirms the trend of low interestindicated by previous studies [5,6].

Other tendencies are apparent at the level of the 48 pro-ject management topics, which are not apparent in the 18categories of topic. For instance, increased to attentionpaid to Estimating, Organisational Learning and ProjectContext/Environment increases in both journals.Decreases in interest in Controlling, Conflict Management,Problem Solving and Stakeholder/Relationship Manage-ment can be seen in both journals. Although interest inProcurement in IJPM remains strong, attention paid to thistopic drops dramatically in PMJ.

Some topics show opposite trends between the journals.Attention paid to integration increases in IJPM, butdecreases in PMJ. Project Organisation becomes less key

ummary: 1994–2003.

182 L. Crawford et al. / International Journal of Project Management 24 (2006) 175–184

in IJPM, but becomes more key within PMJ. Keywordsindicating a focus on the Project Life Cycle are commonwithin IJPM, but comparatively rare within PMJ.

Other keywords could not be taken as directly indicatingan interest in one of the 48 project management topics, butdid stand out in the keyword lists. For instance, it is clearthat construction and engineering continue to dominate theliterature, with keywords indicating both of these industriesgiving consistently high results in both journals and in bothtime periods. Defence and software both appeared in threeof four time periods. Defence shows a slight decline ininterest, while software shows a slight increase in interestover the study period.

Cost

Cross unitoutcomes

Finalisation

Interpersonal

Legal issues

Marketing

Productfunctionality

Program management

Project evaluationand improvement

Project planningand control

Projectstart-up

Qualitymanagement

Relationshipmanagement

Resourcemanagement

Riskmanagement

Scope management

Strategicalignment

Timemanagement

84 990898887868583

Figure key: Topic is reported as of signifTopic is reported as not signTopic is reported as increasiTopic is reported as decreasi

Fig. 4. Synthesis of project man

Interest in reengineering projects is strong during thefirst sample period in both journals. IJPM even provideda Business Process Reengineering and Beyond special issuein 1996. However, attention to reengineering vanishes inthe second period, with none of the top 200 keywordsindicating interest in this kind of project. Issues of part-nering also stand out, although the results are inconclu-sive. In PMJ, issues of partnering stand out as a topkeyword between 1994 and 1998, but do not appear as akeyword between 1999 and 2003. Inverse results werefound in IJPM, which demonstrated no interest in part-nering in the first period and strong interest in the secondperiod.

989796959493921 0302010099Period this study covers

icanceificantng in significanceng in significance

agement trends: 1983–2003.

L. Crawford et al. / International Journal of Project Management 24 (2006) 175–184 183

The influence of Systems Dynamics can also be seen onarticles in IJPM, with keywords in both time periods. Itappears that the influence of complex systems thinkinghas increased in IJPM, with indicative keywords such as�complexity� and �emergent� making a strong appearancebetween 1999 and 2003.

An understanding of which research methodologies arefavoured within the project management literature can alsobe gleaned from this study. Three of the four sample peri-ods produced keywords indicating a focus on the use ofsurveys or questionnaires and production or use of heuris-tics. Use of heuristics was particularly pronounced in PMJ.These results indicate a general tendency within the projectmanagement literature to focus on the use of surveys toproduce heuristics for practice.

6. Synthesis with previous studies

As can be seen in Table 1, previous studies [3,5,6,15–18]of trends in project management have found results whichvary, and are even directly contradictory, over the same timeperiod. The majority of these studies use different researchmethods, both to each other and to that used in this research.However, the differences in approach can be a strength if thedifferent results can be brought together under a commonframework (see Fig. 4), allowing for broader tendencies tobe seen than are apparent in any one study.

The different areas of significance identified by the otherstudies (the left column in Table 1) have been mapped onto18 categories of topics used in this study. Results for alleight studies, including this one, have then been combined.The same four kinds of trends in Fig. 3 are presentedFig. 4: significance; lack of significance; increase; ordecrease in significance. Information from each of the eightstudies have been included in this figure, where the studyclearly indicated one of these four kinds of trend, in oneof the 18 categories.

In some cases, contradictions are apparent, where con-trary results have been found in different studies. Between1990 and 1999, for example, different studies have foundthat aspects of the category Product Functionality are ofsignificance and not of significance. In such a case, it isunclear whether a clear trend exists, with results in thestudies in question possibly being dependant upon the par-ticular research methods used.

In other cases, cross over between studies has beenfound, where supporting information for a trend has beenfound. For instance, evidence in the different studies hasbeen found to demonstrate an increase in the significanceof the category of Project Evaluation and Improvementfrom 1983 to 2003, without any studies indicating a differ-ent kind of trend over this period. Risk and Cost have alsoshown consistent trends, being of significance and increas-ing in significance, respectively, although these trends donot extent over the whole period.

Relationship Management is consistently reported aseither being of significance or increasing significant, while

the evidence suggests that Resource Management andTime Management are both also central to the field. Stra-tegic Alignment has been found by other studies to be ofsignificance, while this study found it to be increasing insignificance. This suggests that Strategic Alignment couldform an progressively dominant aspect of the field. By con-trast, Finalisation, Scope Management and Marketinghave either been ignored by previous studies or found tonot be of significance in the PM literature.

Interesting trends can also be seen in relation to QualityManagement and Interpersonal issues. Although both ofthese topics have been found by previous studies to be ofsignificance, and increasingly so, this study found adecrease in their significance. As mentioned earlier, fadsebb and flow [13]. Results from the synthesis of these stud-ies suggests that although these topics may be important inmanaging projects well, the significance that is placed onthese topics may have peaked.

7. Conclusion

This paper has examined trends in the literature on pro-ject management. Seven previous studies of trends in pro-ject management have been examined, and the resultscontained in these studies brought under a single consistentframework. More recent trends (1994–2003) in the litera-ture on project management have then been identifiedusing Keyword Analysis, a method of computational anal-ysis from the field of Corpus Linguistics.

The clearest trends uncovered by this study include aclear reduction in focus on Interpersonal Issues and Qual-ity Management in the project management literature overthe last 10 years, while an increase in the significance ofProject Evaluation and Improvement can be seen overthe same period. Differences are also apparent in the fociof the International Journal of Project Management andthe Project Management Journal focus upon. Many topicareas were found that increased in keyness in one journal,while decreasing in the other journal.

More significant results were found when results fromthis study were then compared with previous studies�results, providing a synthesis of trends in the field. Com-parison of results from multiple studies has provided theopportunity for triangulation, and has mitigated againsterrors inherent in relying on a single research method.

Synthesis of results revealed that Relationship Manage-ment, Resource Management, Time Management, CostManagement andRiskManagement all displayed consistentsignificance throughout the study period. However, by con-trast, Finalisation, Scope and Marketing tend to either beignored by writers on project management or identified asnot being of significance. Project Evaluation and Improve-ment and Strategic Alignment are both increasing in theirsignificance to the field. Evidence also suggests that the sig-nificance of Quality Management and Interpersonal Issueshas peaked, and that while these issues have previously beeninterest to writers in the field, this interest is waning.

184 L. Crawford et al. / International Journal of Project Management 24 (2006) 175–184

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