PROJECT MANAGEMENT RESEARCH TRENDS OF ALLIED DISCIPLINES

This study looks at project management from the perspective of its relationship to allied disciplines in the management field. By exploring, identifying, and classifying management journal articles of project management-allied disciplines, the evolution and trends of project management research are revealed. This study specifically investigates the research in allied disciplines from the management academy’s viewpoint, instead of looking at project management research trends from the project management community’s perspective. The goal of this research is to better understand project management from the management world, and argues that project management is a legitimate academic discipline by reviewing research trends of its allied disciplines. To thoroughly investigate project management research in allied disciplines, it is necessary to review major journal publications in the management and business field. Because the management and business field is very broad, this research identified and defined eight different categories of allied disciplines in project management. Then, we selected 18 top business and management academic journals that published articles related to project management to review and categorize journal articles into these eight different areas. By chronologically analyzing and categorizing more than 500 journal articles from the 18 journals in the business field published from the 1950s to the summer of 2007, this study analyzes publications trends of different domains (operations research vs. organizational behavior vs. practice) and different journals and predicts the future of project management as an academic discipline in the mainstream management research