Conclusion
In this paper, we tried to provide a better explanation for fundamental philosophical changes which underpin project management studies and practices through a concentration on the concept of power as a central concept in postmodern philosophy. For this purpose, in four selected dimensions including: “project delivery system,” “defining project success criteria,” “organizational structure and decision-making process,” and “project management research method,” we showed how postmodern criticisms have a common origin in the concept of power, and we also explained that participation paradigm through distribution of formal power has been successful to provide comprehensive response to these criticisms. Participation paradigm is still confronting with some important challenges that much of them origin from informal power. This explanation for paradigm change in project management not only encompasses some important aspects of previous studies but also through tracing the destructive role of informal power in communication provides a more logical, philosophical foundation for dealing with some challenges and future development of participative project that has logical coherence with what has happened so far in project management studies and practices. We tried to reveal this fact that in modern paradigm, centralized power has taken a coordinator role in project teams by establishing a communication bottleneck, but in the participation paradigm, information flows freely among all project team members for higher coordination rate. Therefore, focused power is replaced with effective communication. As we showed that communication is most favorable place for the emergence of informal power, project management literature has neglected this important issue.
