The role of digitalization in project management

Digitalization has progressed rapidly, pervading almost all functions in organizations. Whereas digitization denotes the move from analog to digital information advanced by the arrival of new technologies for smart working (Bednar and Welch, 2020; Painter et al., 2016), all aspects of the work environment feel the impact of digitalization, including project environments. Digitalization is a system-wide change process (Gartner, 2013; Ross, 2017), one with fundamental implications as a first step towards digital transformation of how businesses and economies operate (Marnewick and Marnewick, 2022). Digitalization is reshaping the fundamentals of project management, stimulating innovation of new tools, co-working paradigms and learning that collaborates with machine intelligence in addressing the growing complexity of projects and their environment. From initiation to operation, digital technologies afford opportunities to enhance collaboration, decision-making, and sustainability, presenting opportunities for revisiting foundational project scholarship and practice. In this editorial a collection of twelve scholarly contributions are highlighted that showcase diverse perspectives, theoretical advances and societal impact of digitalization across projects.