Abstract
Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to understand the origins and nature of unexpected events that affect complex projects, by relying on a view of projects as social systems. The authors argue that the project relation to its environment is mediated by a model of this environment that is embedded in the communications between project participants. The adequacy of this model to the causal texture of the environment inspired a first, epistemological, dimension for characterizing events: event predictability. The nature of the boundaries between system and environment inspired the second dimension: locus of generation.Design/methodology/approach – This study followed a multiple‐case study approach. The authors collected data in 17 complex projects, in three types of industries: construction, IT/IS, and pharmaceutical.Findings – In total, nine categories of unexpected events were identified from the intersection of two dimensions: event predictability and locus of generation.Research limitations/implicati...
Published Version
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