Open Access

Violetta Pleshakova

• Contemporary society is undergoing a fundamental transition: from traditional information economy we are moving into network society (Castells 2000, van Dijk 2006), also referred to as networked information economy (Benkler 2006). We witness the rise of social media tools, also known as Web 2.0, that bring about collaborative endeavours and crowdsourcing ventures in both the online and the offline domains. It becomes important to understand and conceptualize the new developments and inquire into the possible impact that they have on various aspects of human existence. This research is specifically concerned with project management discourse and practice. By engaging in studying cases of collaboration and crowdsourcing in cross-cultural complex settings, I aim to advance our understanding of the role that network society phenomena, especially collaboration and crowdsourcing, play in project management practice and discource. The point of embarkation for my research is the assumption that phenomena ofContemporary society is undergoing a fundamental transition: from traditional information economy we are moving into network society (Castells 2000, van Dijk 2006), also referred to as networked information economy (Benkler 2006). We witness the rise of social media tools, also known as Web 2.0, that bring about collaborative endeavours and crowdsourcing ventures in both the online and the offline domains. It becomes important to understand and conceptualize the new developments and inquire into the possible impact that they have on various aspects of human existence. This research is specifically concerned with project management discourse and practice. By engaging in studying cases of collaboration and crowdsourcing in cross-cultural complex settings, I aim to advance our understanding of the role that network society phenomena, especially collaboration and crowdsourcing, play in project management practice and discource. The point of embarkation for my research is the assumption that phenomena of network society, in particular collaborative tools and paradigms of Web 2.0, contribute to the rise of collaborative approaches and crowdsourcing endeavours, therefore changing the doing and the being of project management and contributing to a turnaround in project management discourse towards more collaborative, inclusive paradigms. Through employing narrative research methods, I suggest an experimental methodology of antecase studies, building on the ideas of Boje (2001). Exploring three projects in Berlin, I map antenarratives of collaboration and crowdsourcing, and thus derive conclusions about the status quo of project management and implications for discourse. What emerges is a map of antenarratives in the field, and an outline of next practice (Klein and Koerner 2008) of project management. Through this I advance the debate on the future of project management and shed light on the status quo of collaboration and crowdsourcing.…