Commercial Management of Projects: Defining the Discipline

The book focuses on commercial management within the context of project oriented organisations, for example: aerospace, construction, IT, pharmaceutical and telecommunications – in the private and public sectors. By bringing together contributions from leading researchers and practitioners in commercial management, it presents the state-of-the-art in commercial management covering both current research and best practice.

Commercial Management of Projects: defining the discipline covers the external milieu (competition, culture, procurement systems); the corporate milieu (corporate governance, strategy, marketing, trust, outsourcing); the projects milieu (management of uncertainty, conflict management and dispute resolution, performance measurement, value management); and the project milieu (project governance, contract management, bidding, purchasing, logistics and supply, cost value reconciliation).

Collectively the chapters constitute a step towards the creation of a body of knowledge and a research agenda for commercial management.

This is the first book to establish a theoretical framework for commercial management. It argues that managing the contractual and commercial issues of projects – from project inception to completion – is vital in linking operations at the project level and the multiple projects (portfolios/ programmes) level to the corporate core of a company.

The book focuses on commercial management within the context of project oriented organisations, for example: aerospace, construction, IT, pharmaceutical and telecommunications – in the private and public sectors. By bringing together contributions from leading researchers and practitioners in commercial management, it presents the state-of-the-art in commercial management covering both current research and best practice.

Commercial Management of Projects: defining the discipline covers the external milieu (competition, culture, procurement systems); the corporate milieu (corporate governance, strategy, marketing, trust, outsourcing); the projects milieu (management of uncertainty, conflict management and dispute resolution, performance measurement, value management); and the project milieu (project governance, contract management, bidding, purchasing, logistics and supply, cost value reconciliation).

Collectively the chapters constitute a step towards the creation of a body of knowledge and a research agenda for commercial management.

Dr David Lowe is Senior Lecturer in Commercial Project Management and leads the Management of Projects Research Group in the School of Mechanical, Aerospace and Civil Engineering at the University of Manchester. He is Programme Director for the highly successful MSc in the Management of Projects, and joint programme director for a distance-learning MSc in Commercial Management, a bespoke programme for a consortium of blue-chip companies.

Dr Roine Leiringer is Research Fellow at the School of Construction Management and Engineering, The University of Reading.

CONTRIBUTORS:
Professor Jan Bröchner Michael Brown Professor Andrew Cox Dr Andrew Davies Dr Richard Fellows Dr Peter Fenn Professor Marc Georgen Professor Michael Hobday Professor Malcolm Horner Dr Will Hughes Dr David Hugill Dr Paul Ireland Dr Kalle Kähkönen Professor John Kelly Dr Malik Khalfan Professor David Langford Dr Roine Leiringer Dr David Lowe Dr Peter McDermott Krisen Moodley Dr Mike Murray Dr Christopher Preece Dr Luc Renneboog Dr Andrew Ross Professor Martin Skitmore Dr Hedley Smyth Dr Will Swan Professor Graham M Winch