Understanding front-end project workshops with Social Practice Theory

Stimulated by the growing interest in understanding the actuality of project managing and the need to better understand how front-end project workshops can be efficacious, we aim to turn workshops-as-practice into a meaningful object of inquiry. We operationalise Social Practice Theory by studying the intertwining of materials, skills and meaning in video-recorded micro-episodes in a front-end project workshop. Our findings illustrate how material elements provide sensitive assistance as professional skills are enacted in structuring the project-specific urban development challenge. Our theoretical, methodological and empirical approach makes the characteristic tension of practice between transformation and reproduction accessible for empirical inquiry and theorising from practice, thereby helping to develop project management knowledge that resonates with the experience of the project practitioner.