Twentieth International Conference on Knowledge, Culture, and Change in Organizations

Abstract

Work motivation remains one of the most researched topics in industrial/organizational (IO) psychology. Over the years, these studies have contributed to managerial practices related to job design, career management, and creating productive work climate. On the other hand, project management is continuing to emerge as a robust academic discipline. More recent research has focused on managing people on projects to successfully deliver the outcomes to the organization. From the academic point of view, this is an opportune moment to reflect on motivation studies in project management, given its significance to influence employee productivity, and affective outcomes. Thus, the purpose of this paper is to evaluate the status of literature on “work motivation” from three major project management journals: International Journal of Project Management, Project Management Journal, and International Journal of Managing Projects in Business. I considered thirty-seven research articles from the International Journal of Project Management, thirteen papers from the Project Management Journal, and eight papers from International Journal of Managing Projects in Business as the theoretical corpus. I apply two qualitative research methods: co-occurrence of key words, and citation analysis. The results from the co-occurrence of key word analysis reveals three major research themes: project work enablers, project work outcomes, and project context. The citation analysis indicates that though research on work motivation in project management is growing more recently, it is sporadic, and lacks a established theoretical base. I discuss these findings in detail, and provide directions for future research.