Honorary International Academic Advisor
Shankar Sankaran, PhD
Author, Editor, Scholar, Professor
School of Built Environment
Faculty of Design Architecture and Building
University of Technology Sydney (UTS), Australia
Shankar Sankaran, PhD is Professor of Organisational Project Management at the School of the Built Environment and an Associate Member of the UTS Robotics Institute located at the Faculty of Engineering and IT at the University of Technology Sydney (UTS) in Australia.
Shankar’s research covers organizational project management, sociotechnical systems and action research. His recently completed research projects are: Investigating the impact of project governance and controls on Environmental Social Governance (ESG) reporting; A practice-based study of project portfolio management and strategic alignment in construction, He is currently working with the UTS Robotics Institute developing human-robot teaming solutions for the construction sector to improve productivity and enhance well-being.
Shankar was a lead Chief Investigator in an ARC linkage grant on Project Governance and a Chief Investigator in an ARC Linkage Grant on Leadership on Leadership of the Not-for-Profit Organizations in Aged and Community Care. He was also a principal investigator in three PMI Sponsored Research Programs: Balancing Person-Centered and Team-Centered Leadership in Projects; Governance of Innovation in Portfolios, Programs and Projects; and Practice-based Study of Portfolio Management and Strategic Alignment in the Construction Sector.
He teaches advanced level subjects in the Master of Project Management Course at UTS, including organizational project management, systems thinking for managers, leading projects in organizations and project management consultancy. He has supervised more than forty-seven doctoral students conducting research in management since 2001.
Shankar is an editor and author of chapters of the Research Handbook for the Governance of Projects Megaproject Leaders: Reflections on Personal Life Stories, both published by Edward Elgar, An Evaluative Study of Action Research Rigorous Findings on Process and Impact from Around the World published by Routledge, Cambridge Handbook of Organizational Project Management published by Cambridge University Press and Novel Approaches to Organizational Project Management Research - Transformational and Translational published by Copenhagen Business School Press. He is one of the authors of the book titled Managing People in Projects for High Performance, published by Springer; Balanced Leadership: Making the Best Use of Personal and Team Leadership, published by Oxford University Press; and Organizational Project Management: Theory and Implementation, published by Edward Elgar. He is the Section Editor of the Management and Organization Section of the Handbook of Systems Sciences published by Springer and an Associate Editor of the SAGE Encyclopedia of Action Research.
Shankar has won several research awards with Ralf Müller and Nathalie Drouin, including the Project Management Institute’s Research Achievement award in 2022; the International Project Management Association research award on Balanced Leadership in 2021; PMI’s David Cleland's Literati Award in 2021 for the book Organizational Project Management; and the Walter Lipke Award for the work on Organizational Project Management and its Validation at the Project Governance and Control Symposium in 2019.
He is on the editorial board of the International Journal of Project Management, The International Journal of Managing Projects in Business and Systems, Project Leadership and Society and Frontiers of Engineering Management. He has guest edited special issues for highly ranked project management and systems research journals.
Shankar joined academia after several years of experience as a major project manager in projects worldwide and served as a technical director of Yokogawa Electric Asia, Singapore.
Shankar was Chair of the Global Accreditation Centre board for the Project Management Institute (2021-2022), a Member of the College of Leadership and Management at Engineers Australia - Sydney Division since 2021, and the Past President of the International Society for the Systems Sciences (2019-2020). He is one of the members of a team of project management professionals working on Engineers Australia's initiative on Project Governance by Engineers that started in 2022. Shankar is Past President of the Rotary Club of North Ryde and is currently involved in a project from the Rotary Club of Sydney to support climate action.
Shankar holds a PhD, Business and Management, from the University of South Australia; Master of Engineering, Systems Engineering, from RMIT, Australia; Bachelor of Science (Hon), Instrument Technology, from Madras University, India; and Graduate Diploma from the Australian College of Applied Psychology, Sydney, Australia. He is PMP certified by PMI and a Chartered Professional Engineer in Australia.
News:
231015 - Prof Shankar Sankaran appointed PMWJ Honorary Academic Advisor in Australia
Profile created October 2023
