Exploring the 'lived experience' of project work with continental philosophical perspectives

Exploring the 'lived experience' of project work with continental philosophical perspectives

In this thesis, it is demonstrated that Continental philosophical perspectives can assist in accessing, understanding and communicating the ‘lived experience’ of
project work. For some time now there has been growing dissatisfaction with the theoretical foundations of the project management discipline and with the continued prominence of project failures. In this work, an alternative theoretical approach to the conceptualisation of project work and project managing is provided. It is demonstrated that this alternative approach enables the discipline to better access the realities or ‘lived experiences’ of project work and to develop tools or approaches that respond to these ‘lived experiences’.

This thesis is ‘by publication’ and integrates six studies that have been published in international, peer-reviewed, project management journals. The six studies include both theoretical and empirical work and are thematically related in that their grounding is in Continental philosophy and the ‘lived experience’ of project work. The findings of this thesis include a new conceptualisation of ‘what is a project’ and ‘what is project managing’. The thematic scope of a Continental philosophical agenda for the discipline of project management is also established. There is a contribution to our understanding of what is the experience of project work through the use of an arts-based research method. Finally, a new project management tool: the project-space model is theoretically developed and through an action research case study is found to have efficacy in the case study project.

The thesis has several important implications. Firstly, it provides further evidence of the value of exploring alternative frameworks for thinking about project work and, in particular, the value of the Continental philosophical lens. Secondly, the empirical research provides further evidence that project work is messy, dynamic and challenging, and pushes our capabilities and demonstrates that alternative research methods can be fruitful in disclosing this experience of project work. Additionally, a new tool (the project-space model) that is grounded in the theoretical constructs developed in this thesis is found to be a valuable tool in a case study setting. The project-space model is a new tool for the practitioner community.