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Little research existed in the field of project management (PM) prior to government and corporate implementation. Practice existed long before PM became an academic discipline or theory. The focus of this research is on theory development within academia, that supports or refutes the PMBOK, with an emphasis upon Project Quality Management (PQM) knowledge area to identify gaps in theory, and simply stated: Has PM theory caught up with praxis?
INTRODUCTION
Project management is the planning, organizing, directing, and controlling of company resources for a relatively short-term objective that has been established to complete specific goals and objectives. This definition is like that of management, however it is focused upon short-term objectives. So, this paper is focused upon management theory as it applies to project management as a sub-discipline, and more specifically the overlap between project management and quality management theory. Understanding how the generic discipline of management evolved strengthens one's knowledge base (Söderlund et.al., 2013), however as reported by Schley and Lewis (2017) project management as a discipline lacked comprehensive theoretical grounding.
Why is theory development for project management important? Theory building helps explain the PM phenomenon, and ultimately has practical application in the business world (Byron, 2016). Initially, there was a dearth of literature in academia related to project management, therefore practitioners, not academics, created the PM theoretical framework via first-hand observations. The baseline attempt at a Project Management Body of Knowledge (PMBOK) included six management disciplines: scope, time, cost, communications, human resources, and quality. Of significance, the PMBOK included Project Quality Management (PQM) as one of the key knowledge areas at inception, including three major project documents: the project charter, the project scope statement and the project management plan. The project management plan includes a quality management plan which incorporates three foci: quality planning, quality assurance and quality control. So, through the adoption of PQM, the project management discipline falls within the optimization school of thought [Bredillet, 2007; Cleland, 1983].
LITERATURE REVIEW AND HYPOTHESIS
Project management was practiced during the planning and execution of the D-Day invasion of Europe, the Manhattan Project that created nuclear bombs, the building the Atlas and Polaris missile systems, and the Apollo moon mission [Gaddis, 1959; Lenfle, 2011]. However, most of these projects did not formally apply...