The elephant actually talks - Project organisation from a communication perspective

• Although communication is fundamental to project execution, research on project communication has significant limitations and underinforms the broader field. • Luhmann’s social systems theory can help overcome these limitations and enrich our understanding of project organisations. • Communication-based research can contribute to current and evolving research topics. Although communication is acknowledged as fundamental to project execution, it is researched at minimal levels. Still, communication is often referred to in the research discourse, but only generically and analytically underdefined, fitted into an actionoriented epistemology. Drawing on the key contributions to project studies research on communication, the essay addresses the limitations of this research and questions that remain unanswered. It shows how making actual communication practice the unit of analysis, based on an adequate theoretical foundation in the form of Niklas Luhmann's social systems theory, can help overcome these limitations and enrich our understanding of project organisations. For this purpose, investigative directions and practices are discussed, while attention is given to how such communication-based research can contribute to current and evolving research topics.