The emergent realities of project praxis in socially complex project environments

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to present an overview of a completed doctoral action research thesis that moved beyond focussing on the instrumentality of project actuality to explore project praxis as social process.Design/methodology/approach – Soft systems methodology is selected as the process of enquiry for the thesis, to explore a perceived complex problematic situation. A conceptual framework is designed to guide thinking to explore the social nature of projects, through acknowledging the interconnected nature of human realities, the pragmatism of knowledge and the emergent nature of cognition.Findings – The paper reveals the reality of project complexity as being socially derived, necessitating an emergent project management response to the inherent differences created from human plurality. Organisational resilience emerged as dependent upon recognising and successfully managing the evolving cognition that arises from a multiplicity of human and project environmental interconnections.Pract...