This webinar is being hosted by the Major Projects Observatory at the Telfer School of Management
The world is beset by a plethora of “grand challenges,” those messy, complex, wicked, multi-stakeholder, uncertainty-prone and value-laden problems such as climate change, global pandemics and unsustainable development. As they scramble to mount a response to these pressing problems, global leaders set forth overarching goals and frameworks such as the Paris Agreement and the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Policymakers are often drawn to what we call “grand challenge projects,” which can be a logical next step following the launch of major policy initiatives. The International Journal of Project Management recognizes the importance of managing these projects and devotes a special issue to this topic. Call for papers - International Journal of Project Management | ScienceDirect.com by Elsevier
After a symposium where project management and operations and supply chain management scholars gathered to trade ideas on tackling grand challenges with projects at the Academy of Management (AOM) annual congress in Chicago in August 2024, it is time to help authors develop their papers for the special issue. In this workshop, the guest editors, Lavagnon Ika (Professor of Project Management, Telfer School of Management, University of Ottawa) and Dror Etzion (the Steven Grossman Endowed Chair of Sustainable Business, Grossman School of Business, University of Vermont) will introduce the special issue and clarify their expectations for the submissions.
Lavagnonis Professor of Project Management and Founding Director of the Major Projects Observatory at the Telfer School of Management at the University of Ottawa. He is Extraordinary Professor at the University of Pretoria, Carnegie African Diaspora Fellow, Associate Editor of the International Journal of Project Management, and a former member of the Academic Boards of the international project management associations Project Management Institute (PMI) and International Project Management Association (IPMA). Professor Ika is a key contributor to the most recent debates on major infrastructure delivery (e.g., project behavior or cost overruns and benefit shortfalls), and considered the world leader of the research on managing global development projects (e.g., grand challenge projects funded by the World Bank in Africa). His work on cost overruns and benefit shortfalls has earned him the IPMA Global Research Award in 2017 and 2022. He is the co-author of the award-winning book Managing Fuzzy Projects in 3D and co-editor of the Cambridge University Handbook of Project Behavior. Professor Ika has provided guidance for the World Bank as external advisory panel member on their Results and Performance of the World Bank Group 2023 and for the PMI in 2024 as a lead scholar on how to measure project success.
Prof. Dror Etzion
Dror is the Steven Grossman Endowed Chair of Sustainable Business at the Grossman School of Business (GSB) at The University of Vermont. Dror's research program focuses on “grand challenges”: the unyielding, intractable problems that characterize the Anthropocene. His work suggests that managing for sustainability through local, open, emergent initiatives increases the recruitment of diverse stakeholders, fosters creativity, and yields impactful outcomes. From 2008 – 2023 Dror worked at the Desautels Faculty of Management, at McGill University. He received his Ph.D. from IESE Business School in Barcelona, Spain. Previously, Dror worked for 5 years in the Israeli software industry, and also spent a year at The Natural Step, an international non-profit research and consultancy organization focused on sustainable development.
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