Project leadership in becoming: A process study of an organizational change project

In new paper published in Web-of-Science ranked Project Management Journal, Johann Packendorff, Lucia Crevani and Monica Lindgren inquire into what a process ontology as applied to leadership studies may imply, theoretically and methodologically. Drawing on the current research in general leadership, the paper propose that a process ontology is relevant and rewarding for project leadership studies. We argue that project leadership can be studied as the ongoing social production of direction through the construction of actors’ space of action, involving continuous construction and reconstruction of (1) past project activities and events; (2) positions and areas of responsibility; (3) discarded, ongoing, and future issues; and (4) intensity, rhythm, and pace. Through an ethnographic case study of an organizational change project, we show how space of action and hence the project direction are in constant flux and becoming. Read more on the article homepage!.