The current established historiography of the field of project management dates back to the 1950s and there is little known about the development of this field prior to the Second World War. Critical scholars within this field have challenged the timeline for project management. This historical research provides evidence of project practices prior to the twentieth century by introducing the activities of projectors, who are currently unacknowledged within the field of project management. The title of projector was assigned to initiators and/or promoters of the idiosyncratic activities that combined elements of public and private gain and were known in the period as projects. The research investigates the genesis of the ‘projector' name and maps out the activities of projectors and their involvement within English industrial and economic development. Projectors and their schemes are explored through three different foci. The first focus is archival, exploring a seventeenth-century project within the textiles industry carried out by the projector Walter Morrell. This analysis highlights a number of practices within Morrell's project similar to modern project management, and potentially informs the history of project management. The second focus is through the lens of the late seventeenth-century writer and projector Daniel Defoe, whose seminal publication on projects was reprinted multiple times and consequently shaped public opinion on projectors and the undertaking of projects, this focus was socio-historical. The third focus relates to public-private interest, which played an important role in projectors’ undertakings and strongly influenced the connotation of the title ‘projector’. This theme is examined through existing PhD theses of scholars who studied the activities of projectors in seventeenth-century England. These three foci inform the contribution this thesis makes to project management history. The originality of this work is in acknowledging the activities of projectors within seventeenth century England, which has implications for project management histories.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:bl.uk/oai:ethos.bl.uk:754058 |
| Date | January 2018 |
| Creators | Zekonyte, Kristina |
| Publisher | University of Brighton |
| Source Sets | Ethos UK |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Electronic Thesis or Dissertation |
| Source | https://research.brighton.ac.uk/en/studentTheses/b5d4ae88-7cef-4d52-9cf7-dacb0485f418 |
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