Trends in Project Management 1966 – 2015

This study charts the trends and changing emphases in project management in the last 50 years. A quantitative, positivistic study, using frequency analysis and 116,202 records from online databases, this paper uses a priori categories to search for project management keywords in the period 1966 to 2015. The key findings were that the categories of project management methods, project success and stakeholder management were likely to see an increase as the topics for publications but that the remaining 13 categories were expected to feature in fewer publications in alignment with the reduction in project management publications generally. The paper provides data on citations in project management publications and lists the 30 most cited authors in project management. It is intended that this paper will be of benefit to those studying project management, to academics who work in this sphere and to others interested in this subject area.