Verktækni - 2019, Síða 103

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A German research group presented a hypothesis about the future of project management in 2025
(Gemünden and Schoper, 2014; Schoper, Gemünden and Nguyen, 2015). This was the outcome of the
collaboration of an expert panel of practitioners and researchers, organized by the team. A qualitative
research approach was used, and the sample used consisted of a diverse group of 338 international
experts, divided equally into project management researchers and international project management
practitioners. The participants were asked about their expectations concerning future trends in project
management. More specifically, the participants reflected on the following statement: “Please describe
the five trends in project management which you consider to be the most important, and which you
expect will be evident between now and 2025.” Analysis of the data produced the following 12 trends:

1. Projectification of societies: Project management will become more widely dispersed in all sectors of
societies.
2. Coping with complexity: Increasing complexity in projects because of, e.g., globalization,
urbanization and increasingly complex systems technologies.
3. Trans-nationalization of project management with alignment to world markets with consistent
standardized concepts.
4. Virtualization of project management: Managing projects increasingly through Information and
communications technology (ICT) support.
5. Women in project management; the growing number of women in all stakeholder functions in
projects.
6. Professionalisation of project management: The occupation of project management will transform
itself into a true profession, presenting the highest levels of competence.
7. Education in project management: The offerings for learning project management by universities,
industry and professional organizations will increase on all levels of skills.
8. Project management research: An increasing volume of research on the existence, antecedents and
impacts of project management practices, as well as the contingencies and dynamics of cause-effect
relationships in projects and project management.
9. Stakeholder management: A more structured analysis of the frameworks for stakeholder
management and the effects on project success.
10. Projects as business: Projects will be increasingly seen as an entrepreneurial undertaking to deliver
business results.
11. Project management goes to the boardroom; Top management of organizations will become even
more focused on the use of projects in achieving organizational goals.
12. Project-oriented organization: In a project-oriented organization, a major part of the value creation
is delivered in projects. Project management is a core competence for such organizations and
business functions are aligned to foster project management.

The case of Iceland
The Icelandic economic system
The Republic of Iceland is a sparsely populated country with an area of 103,000 square kilometers and a
population of 350,000 people. Iceland used to be a part of Denmark, and the country’s legislation is still
largely based on the Danish legal system. Since the country’s gaining full sovereignty in 1944, a close
relationship has been developed with the Scandinavian countries. Iceland has been a member of the
European Economic Area (EEA) since 1994. Iceland is a prosperous country, with a GDP of almost 51
thousand USD per capita in 2015, according to the UN, the 12th highest GDP in the world. The export