Cultivating crisis research in project studies: Insights from management and organisation studies by Christine Pearson

There is an increasing discussion on the role of projects and temporary organising in the face of global and local crises. Categorically, the temporary, non-linear and complex nature of crisis from its onset has several theoretical and methodological parallels in the study of projects. To provide an outsider perspective in the process of cultivating this research stream within Project Studies, we interviewed Christine Pearson, Professor of Global Leadership at Thunderbird School of Global Management at Arizona State University. Pearson is globally known for her work on organisational crisis and is the author of the seminal work “Reframing Crisis Management.” In this interview, Pearson unpacks the evolution of conceptual frameworks in crisis research and elaborates on the role of projects in the face of crisis, specifically emphasising the non-linear conceptualisation of crisis. She highlights the role of project leadership in the context of crisis and finishes with potential future directions for contribution of the discipline of Project Studies to crisis literature, as she calls this research stream a “fertile territory.” These insights can be specifically used by project scholars in view of crisis associated with man-made hazards, natural hazards, or accidents, as well as broader management scholars to use theories developed in study of crisis by project scholars.