Editorial
Project Management Journal
What Constitutes a Contemporary
Contribution to Project Management
Journal®?
Ralf Müller1 and Gary Klein2
This is the first in a series of editorials designed to provide
authors with guidance for future submissions to Project Man-
agement Journal® (PMJ). We start this series with a discussion
of the contributions PMJ® prefers, influenced by the strategic
intentions of the editors, as well as the demands of our readers.
Subsequent editorials will address the rigor and relevance bal-
ance in light of the specific expectations for conceptual, qua-
litative, and quantitative submissions to the journal. The aim of
this series of editorials is to increase transparency of the
requirements and expectations for acceptable submissions in
order to help authors successfully prepare their manuscripts for
acceptance.
One of the triggers for this series of editorials is the large
number of desk rejects encountered since we took over as
Editors-in-Chief at the beginning of 2018. About 60% of all
submissions are desk rejected and not entered into the peer-
review process. Reasons for desk rejection are no different
from those mentioned by editors of other leading journals in
business and management. These reasons include the lack of
theoretical contribution, relevance for the readership, and qual-
ity of academic reporting. The issue of lacking a theoretical
contribution is at the core of this editorial, as it applies to most
of the rejected articles. The other two issues were addressed
recently through an update of our author guidelines (available
at http://journals.sagepub.com/home/pmx), where we also
detail the submission and review process. We encourage
authors to read and follow the guidelines carefully, adhere to
academic reporting conventions, and ground empirical studies
on clearly phrased research questions. Simple issues such as
these easily compromise the credibility of a submission early in
the process and may become decisive in our decision to reject
or review. The revised author guidelines also provide more
clarity on formalities, including the plagiarism check (done for
every submission), the review process, and duties of the editor-
ial office, editors-in-chief, departmental editors, reviewers, and
authors.
At their annual meeting of 2018, the PMJ Editorial Board
made a strategic decision to sharpen the profile of PMJ in terms
of publishing theory. A number of factors contributed to this
decision, including the often discussed lack of theory in project
Vol. 49(5) 3–4
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management (e.g., Jugdev, 2004), which is often discussed at
research conferences, such as IRNOP 2017 in Boston, Massa-
chusetts. In combination with the perception by some academic
circles that project management is a practical profession with
little academic, and thus theoretical, bearing, issues of accep-
tance of project management as a standalone academic field
arise. This discussion is, to a large degree, inappropriate, as
there are well-established theories in this field. Examples
include the theory of the temporary organization, where the
top three articles alone have garnered more than 3,000 citations
in Google Scholar (Lundin & Söderholm, 1995; Packendorff,
1995; Turner & Müller, 2003), or the formal theory of project
management by Rodney Turner (e.g., 2006), to name just a few.
To that end, the discourse should turn from discussions on a
pressing need for a number of theories toward the development
of mid-level theories that are interesting and integrative across
disciplines (as proposed by Weick, 1989). Pfeffer (1993)
showed that such an approach fosters discipline-wide consen-
sus on paradigms, concepts, and worthwhile research questions,
with the potential benefit of more efficient communication
among scholars.
In recent years, PMJ has focused on publishing interesting
articles, as shown by the large number of special issues on a
wide variety of contemporary subjects. This strategy has
increased the impact factor from 0.5 to 2.7. The next natural
step in journal development is to move from interesting articles
to interesting plus theoretical contribution articles, as espoused
by Colquitt and Zapata-Phelan (2007) in their empirical anal-
ysis of increased journal citation rates. They showed that the
potential for higher citation rates per article increases when the
topic of the article is perceived as interesting and simultane-
ously links to the existing knowledge of the readers—with the
latter often being a precondition for an article to make it on the
“to be read” list of academics. Hence, we are looking for arti-
cles that link PMJ’s current momentum on interesting articles
1
BI Norwegian Business School, Oslo, Norway
2
University of Colorado Colorado Springs, CO, USA
4 Project Management Journal 49(5)
with readers’ existing knowledge in order to develop theory
and theoretical contributions.
This leads to the question: What are theories and theoretical
contributions? Definitions of the former span from the simple
relationship between two variables to complex descriptions of
behaviors by abstract phenomena. The latter is often defined as
either theory testing using hypothetico-deductive approaches
or theory building using empirical observations or existing
publications for inductive theory development. A longitudinal
trend analysis over 50 years of the Academy of Management
Journal showed a steep decline in articles that test existing
theories, an increase in articles that test the boundary condi-
tions of theories (e.g., through moderator and mediator vari-
ables), and a strong increase in articles that extend existing
theories (e.g., through refinement or new construct develop-
ment). Simultaneously grounding the predictions from empiri-
cal studies in the study’s own findings and existing theories
bridges new to existing knowledge. Theoretical contributions
have increased during the 50-year period in both hypothetico-
deductive and inductive dimensions (Colquitt & Zapata-
Phelan, 2007).
We see similar developments in PMJ in terms of complex
models tested with advanced analytical techniques, such as
Structural Equation Modeling. However, we see room for
improvement in the ways the results of these tests extend or
create theory. Too often authors fail to provide a theory of their
findings in the form of a descriptive explanation, because they
fail to go beyond the analysis of their data (no matter if induc-
tive or deductive). Along the lines of Sutton and Staw (1995),
we argue that data in tables and figures illustrative of sup-
ported/rejected propositions and hypotheses are not theories.
Theories are made up of three essential elements, namely
the What (variables, concepts, etc.), the How (between variable
relationships), and the Why (reasons behind the relationships).
Together, these three elements provide for description and
explanation of the phenomenon under study, and hence provide
a theory (Whetten, 1989). However, submissions to PMJ often
end with a model or a figure, which describes the characteris-
tics of the What and How, but does not explain the Why. Hence,
they do not provide a theory. With this editorial, we want to
encourage authors of PMJ submissions to take the additional
step from description to explanation in order to develop articles
that provide a solid theory for use by academics and practi-
tioners. For example, by using the theory development method
outlined by Whetten (1989, 2002). Although originally devel-
oped for conceptual articles, this approach is equally usable for
theory development in empirical studies.
With this editorial, we aim to create awareness for more
theory in PMJ submissions. To that end, we strongly recom-
mend that PMJ submissions:
1. Be both interesting and theory related. A solid theore-
tical foundation, typically based on one of the estab-
lished (mid-range) theories, provides for several
benefits, including credibility through the underlying
theory and knowledge of this theory by the reader.
2. Go further than just describing the What and How of the
variables under investigation by providing an explana-
tion for the observed regularities that includes the Why
component of theory.
3. Provide a true contribution to theory by anchoring the
predictions that are made from the study in a combina-
tion of established theory (point 1 above) and the pres-
ent study’s theory additions (point 2 above) for higher
levels of credibility of the study’s outcome.
With this approach, we push toward more “well-rounded” arti-
cles in line with current developments in academic practice and
reporting. In addition to the rare article developing truly new
theory, we develop credible contributions to project manage-
ment theory by anchoring articles in existing theories and
extending (instead of reinventing) them. We will expand on
these ideas in future editorials.
References
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Jugdev, K. (2004). Through the looking glass: Examining theory
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Packendorff, J. (1995). Inquiring into the temporary organization:
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