Project Management Journal®

In the Current Issue

Editorial
Special Issue: Expanding Research Opportunities for Project Management Researchers from Industry 5.0's Pillars

• By Alejandro Romero-Torres, Shankar Sankaran, Carl Marnewick, Alessandro Paravano, Nathan Johnson, and Tomas Blomquist
  This editorial introduces Industry 5.0 as a paradigm shift in project management research, calling for projects to be understood as dynamic sociotechnical systems that integrate human‑centricity, sustainability, and resilience alongside advanced digital technologies.

Beyond Tech: The Human Element in Industry 5.0 Projects

• By José M. R. C. A. Santos, Filipa S. Freitas, and Gabriela Fernandes 
  This article addresses the soft-skills gap in Industry 5.0 project management by identifying critical social, emotional, and behavioral competencies through a survey framed by the Big Five personality traits and Schwartz’s values theory. The findings show increasing importance of emotional resilience, innovation, cooperation, and social engagement, signaling an evolving professional identity for project managers toward more human‑centric and values-driven roles.

Leading Psychologically Safe Digitally Enabled Project Teams

• By Eleni Papadonikolaki and Bethan Morgan
  This article examines how digitalization reshapes human and social capital in projects, focusing on how leaders cultivate psychological safety to enable creativity, learning, and collaboration in digitally enabled environments. Drawing on qualitative empirical research, it identifies six enablers of psychological safety and shows that effective leadership operates across strategic, horizontal, and project levels, positioning human-centric leadership as central to successful digitalization.

Toward Industry 5.0: A Conceptual Model for Blockchain’s Impact on Interorganizational Trust in Construction Project Management

• By Navid Torkanfar, Ehsan Rezazadeh Azar, and Brenda McCabe
  This article develops a conceptual model explaining how blockchain can address trust and collaboration challenges in construction projects by leveraging its immutability, transparency, and decentralization. The findings suggest that blockchain primarily strengthens system-based trust, which subsequently reinforces affect-based and cognition-based trust among project stakeholders.

Who’s Steering Whom and in What Direction? An Experiment on AI Versus Top Management Decision-Making in Projects

• By Dominik Kögel, Sandro Meile, and Lourdes Canos-Daros
  This article compares human and AI decision-making in project leadership using classical and behavioral decision theories, showing that hybrid human–AI decisions can diverge systematically and steer projects in different directions. Based on empirical evidence from top managers, it proposes a conceptual framework for GenAI-era project decision-making and cautions against uncritical delegation of strategic decisions to AI.

The Future of Project Management in Industry 5.0: A Narrative Literature Review

• By Ibrahim Dani, Yongjian Ke, and Suhair Al Kilani
  This article reviews how Industry 5.0 reshapes project management by shifting it toward human‑centric, sustainable, and resilient practices built on—but extending beyond—Industry 4.0’s digital foundations. It proposes the concepts of project management 5.0 and project manager 5.0, highlighting emerging AI‑enabled, value-driven leadership models while identifying gaps in formal frameworks and future research needs.

What Is Project Management Productivity?

• By Julien Pollack, Ekaterina Anichenko, and Lynn Crawford
  This article reconceptualizes project management productivity in the context of Industry 5.0, showing that it extends beyond efficiency to encompass human‑centric, sustainable, and resilient value creation. Based on practitioner interviews, it demonstrates that productivity is a multidimensional and context-dependent construct, integrating both behavioral and systemic indicators within complex organizational environments.

Industry 5.0 Imperatives and Project-Based Manufacturing: Collaborative Agility as a Translational Capability

• By Nicholas Dacre, Carla Alessandra dos Santos, Tomas Sparano Martins, and Hao Dong
  This article shows that in project‑based manufacturing, service‑dominant orientation supports sustainable competitive advantage only when translated into adaptive capabilities, particularly collaborative agility. The findings highlight partnership agility as the key mechanism through which human‑centric, collaborative values deliver performance benefits in Industry 5.0 environments.