This study uses information gleaned from a sample of 102 public sector project managers to assess the interrelationships among project manager roles, responsibilities, and competencies in the planning and implementation stages of the project life cycle. The results of confirmatory factor analysis and structural equation modeling revealed that project managers use different subsets of their skills to influence outcomes at these two stages of the project. For example, while the project manager's organizational and technical skills tend to have some influence during the project planning stage, managerial, leadership and people skills appear to have more influence during the project implementation stage. Implications of these and our other findings for the practice of project management in public sector organizations are discussed.

This research studies the competencies of International Development (ID) project managers from their perspectives, taking into consideration the contextual factors and the challenges that they face when managing ID projects. The study adopts a constructionist ontological viewpoint and an interpretivist epistemological philosophical assumption. The nature of the research is exploratory with an inductive approach, using qualitative research method. The data was collected through semi-structured interviews with experienced project managers in International Development projects. Template analysis strategy was used to analyse the data. The findings show that contextual factors have a significant influence on the challenges that ID project managers face when managing projects. Contextual factors are operating environment, large network of stakeholders and intangible goals of ID projects. Five challenges were identified as the results of the context, namely stakeholder management challenge, beneficiary needs analysis challenge, the challenge of balancing strategic and operational views, capacity building and training challenge and sustainable funding challenge. To overcome these challenges, seven ID project manager competencies were identified management skills, personal qualities, interpersonal skills, stakeholder engagement skills, capacity building skills, and change management skills. These competencies are found to be interrelated and complementary. While the role and responsibilities of ID project managers were also uncovered during the research, the findings on contextual factors, challenges and competencies help to better understand the ID project manager role and responsibilities. This study makes the contributions from both theoretical and practical point of view. With regards to theoretical contribution, our findings expanded on ID project manager competencies as well as relating them to the context and challenges in ID projects. The role and responsibilities of ID project manager is another theoretical contribution in this study. From a practical point of view, this thesis’s findings would be useful for various organizations who deliver ID projects, particularly human resources management. In addition, it can act as knowledge sharing with ID project managers and help in designing and enhancing educational programmes in ID project management. Overall, this could result in better delivery and overcoming the challenges of International Development projects.

This paper examines how the advance of Artificial Intelligence (AI) technologies may affect the role of project managers. It draws on a narrative literature review and semi-structured interviews conducted with seventeen project managers from various industries in Sweden. The theoretical framework of the study is based on Wachnik's stages of AI development and categorization of core competencies for project success of Alvarenga et al. The results of this paper suggest that even though the current uptake of AI technologies is still low in project management practices, project managers can already start preparing for the potential paradigm shift by focusing on developing competencies such as communication, leadership, and understanding the technological context. Moreover, the authors developed the Holistic Competencies Triangle model to navigate project managers through the competencies needed for successful and effective project management when AI is more widely adopted. / Denna studie undersöker hur utvecklingen av artificiella intelligensteknologier (AI) kan påverka projektledarens roll. Studien är byggd på en narrativ litteraturöversikt och semistrukturerade intervjuer som genomfördes med sjutton projektledare från olika branscher i Sverige. Studiens teoretiska ramverk baseras på Wachniks steg för AI-utveckling och kategoriserade kärnkompetenser för projektframgång av Alvarenga et al. Resultatet tyder på att även om den nuvarande användningen av AI-tekniker fortfarande är låg inom projektledningspraxis, kan projektledare redan börja förbereda sig för det potentiella paradigmskiftet genom att fokusera på att utveckla kompetenser som kommunikation, ledarskap och förstå den teknologiska kontexten. Dessutom har författarna utvecklat en holistisk kompetens-triangelmodell för att navigera projektledare genom kompetenserna som krävs för en lyckad och effektivt projektledning när AI blir mer utbrett.