Title: Phronetic judgement, an essential competence for a project manager in a complex project environment!

Authors: Rob Bouwman; René Brohm

Addresses: Open Universiteit, Postbus 2960, 6401 DL Heerlen, The Netherlands ' De Nieuwe Kleren van de Wolf, Patrimoniumweg 4, 3941 BT, Doorn, The Netherlands

Abstract: In this paper, we invite the reader to rethink project management from the perspective of phrónêsis, or practical wisdom, a central notion in Aristotle's philosophy. The turn to Aristotle has been in vogue ever since Martin Heidegger (2009) pointed out the importance of phrónêsis for the humanities and philosophy. Contemporary critical project management literature argues for a rich set of reflections, ones that phrónêsis could provide. This paper is one of the first to illustrate how a reflection based on phrónêsis could inform project management practices. The illustration comes from an inquiry into the practice of the first author in his role as a senior project manager for a large infrastructural project.

Keywords: rethinking project management; phronesis; complexity; phronetic judgement; complex projects; infrastructure projects.

DOI: 10.1504/IJBG.2016.079341

International Journal of Business and Globalisation, 2016 Vol.17 No.4, pp.582 - 596

Received: 03 Feb 2015
Accepted: 11 Aug 2015
Published online: 27 Sep 2016 *

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