PROJECT MANAGEMENT IN THE PHARMACEUTICAL AND BIOTECHNOLOGY SECTORS: EVOLUTION & FUTURE RESEARCH OPPORTUNITIES

This paper seeks to investigate the main areas of academic research in project management as they relate to the pharmaceutical and biotechnology sector, and specifically how research on project management in this sector has evolved over the period 1990 – 2021. Leveraging a Systematic Literature Review, this paper analyzes academic works to determine areas of insight, future research and key findings through grouping of the results into clusters aligned to the Star Model™ to better understand and to explore the evolution in key research areas, while exploring how and why did the emphasis change from 1990-2021. The implications for academia is that this sector is of particular interest in light of the COVID-19 pandemic where pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies took center stage overcoming traditional limitations to drug development, which included re-thinking traditional project management practices. A valuable contribution of this paper is made by pointing out the key research gaps to position opportunities for the formulation of pragmatic, contextualized ways forward and future research.