Dr. Janice Thomas

Dr. Janice Thomas is an internationally respected leader in the area of project management. She is Professor of Project Management and Organizational Analysis in the Faculty of Business at Athabasca University.

Janice has over 30 years of management, consulting, planning, research, and academic experience in both the public and private sector. In addition, Janice is in demand as a speaker and teacher who enjoys sharing her experience and knowledge with practitioners and students at venues as disparate as PMI Research Conferences and professional symposiums in Canada, the United States, Europe, Asia, Australia, and South America. She is a member, and has served as a Director, of the Global Alliance for Project Performance Standards and was a volunteer with PMI for many years.

In 2006, she was recognized by PMNetwork as one of the 25 most influential women in project management in the world. Janice co-led a 48 academic strong team in Researching the Value of Project Management that assessed the project management practices of 65 organizations world-wide and was completed in 2009. In 2010, Janice was awarded the prestigious Research Achievement Award by the Project Management Institute for contributions to the practice and theory of project management. In 2014, her research team (including Stella George of Athabasca University and Svetlana Cicmil of the University of the West of England) won the International Project Management Association’s award for Global Research Contributions.

Her research explores topics that enhance organization’s and individual’s abilities to, first understand and then, improve their ability to deliver innovative projects and realize the benefits of strategic initiatives. Her focus on understanding and improving practice makes her research valuable to fellow researchers and practitioners alike.

Discover my research

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Research interests

• Team Development and Leadership
• Management Innovation
• Critical and Design Thinking
• Project Initiation
• Organizational Change
• Project Governance (interface of project management and corporate governance)
• Role of power, influence and interests in project management and outcomes through a Critical Lens

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Educational credentials

• Phd, Organizational Analysis, University of Alberta
• MBA, University of British Columbia
• BSc, Econometrics, University of Victoria

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Professional affiliations

• Member and former Director, Global Alliance for Project Performance Standards
• Member, Project Management Institute

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