BIOGRAPHY
Dr. Ralf Müller is Professor of Project Management at BI Norwegian Business School and their former Associate Dean for the BI-Fudan MBA programs in China. He is also an Associated Member of the Project Management Research Chair at the School of Management, University of Quebec in Montreal, holds a Haitian (distinguished) scholarship at Dalian University of Technology in China, and is member of the Senate at ISM University.
He is a visiting professor at Tasly Pharmaceuticals Project Management College, China; Tias Business School / Tilburg University, The Netherlands; University of Economics; Vienna, ISM University, Lithuania; and SKEMA Business School, France. In the past, he was Professor of Business Administration at Umeå University, Sweden. Prior to joining the academic world, he spent 25 years in the industry. There he worked in 47 different countries for the improvement of project management in large organizations and governments. He managed global IT projects and consulting organizations, for example, as worldwide Director of Project Management at NCR Teradata. Projects he worked on span from small up to US$ 4.7 billion. In these projects he worked closely with AT&T and Bell Laboratories, USA.
Among the awards he received are the 2016 PMI Fellow of the Institute Award, the 2015 PMI Research (lifetime) Achievement Award, the 2012 IPMA Research Award, the 2009 Best Paper Award by the Project Management Journal, the 2011 Emerald Publishing Best Reviewer Award, and the 2011 AACSB Best Paper in Operations Management Award of the Academy of Business Research Conference, the 2010 Emerald Outstanding Paper Award, the 2010 Highly Commended Award Winner of the Emerald Literati Network Awards for Excellence, the IRNOP 2009 Best Conference Paper Award, the Emerald 2009 Outstanding Reviewer Award. Furthermore the Nimbas University 2005 Best Supervisor Award. His doctoral thesis was ranked by EDAMBA among the top eight best doctoral theses in business and management in 2003.
Ralf Müller received his Doctor of Business Administration (DBA) from Henley Management College / Brunel University, UK, and his MBA from Herriot-Watt University in Edinburgh, UK. He is Senior Editor of the Project Management Journal and a member of the Editorial Review Board of several other academic journals, member of the Academy of Management, Project Management Institute (PMI), the Consortium for Research on Emotional Intelligence in Organizations, and the Royal Institute of Philosophy. He is a co-founder of PMI's first European Chapter in Frankfurt, Germany and co-founder of the Munich Chapter. He contributed to the PMI Standards for Organizational Project Management Maturity (OPM3), as well as Program and Portfolio Management.
Teaching areas
Ralf Müller lectures on leadership, project management and project governance, program and portfolio management.
In addition he lectures research philosophy and design, research methodologies, case study research, as well as qualitative and quantitative analysis techniques at doctoral and Master level all over the World.
PUBLICATIONS
Selected
Müller, Ralf Josef; Sankaran, Shankar, Drouin, Nathalie, Vaagaasar, Anne Live, Bekker, Michiel C. & Jain, Karuna (2018)
A theory framework for balancing vertical and horizontal leadership in projects
International Journal of Project Management, 36(1), s. 83- 94. Doi: 10.1016/j.ijproman.2017.07.003
Müller, Ralf; Zhai, Li & Wang, Anyu (2017)
Governance and governmentality in projects: Profiles and relationships with success
International Journal of Project Management, 35(3), s. 378- 392. Doi: 10.1016/j.ijproman.2017.01.007
Müller, Ralf; Pemsel, Sofia & Shao, Jingting (2015)
Organizational enablers for project governance and governmentality in project-based organziations
International Journal of Project Management, 33(4), s. 839- 851. Doi: 10.1016/j.ijproman.2014.07.008
Joslin, Robert & Müller, Ralf (2015)
New Insights into Project Management Research: A Natural Sciences Comparative
Project Management Journal, 46(2), s. 73- 89. Doi: 10.1002/pmj.21472
Scientific publications
Dwivedula, Ravi; Bredillet, Christophe & Müller, Ralf Josef (2018)
Work Motivation in Temporary Organizations: Establishing Theoretical Corpus
Management and organizational studies, 5(3), s. 29- 42. Doi: 10.5430/mos.v5n3p29
Dwivedula, Ravi; Bredillet, Christophe & Müller, Ralf Josef (2018)
Practopoietic lens to conceptualize temporary organizing
Singapurean Journal of Business Economics, and Management Studies, 6(8), s. 1- 11. Doi: 10.12816/0048621 - Full text in research archive
Yu, Miao; Vaagaasar, Anne Live, Müller, Ralf Josef, Wang, Linzhuo & Zhu, Fangwei (2018)
Empowerment: the key to horizontal leadership in project teams
International Journal of Project Management, 36(7), s. 992- 1006. Doi: 10.1016/j.ijproman.2018.04.003
Drouin, Nathalie; Müller, Ralf Josef, Sankaran, Shankar & Vaagaasar, Anne Live (2018)
Balancing vertical and horizontal leadership in projects: Empirical studies from Australia, Canada, Norway and Sweden
International Journal of Managing Projects in Business, 11(4), s. 986- 1006. Doi: 10.1108/IJMPB-01-2018-0002 - Full text in research archive
Pilkienė, Margarita; Alonderienė, Raimonda, Chmieliauskas, Alfredas, Šimkonis, Saulius & Müller, Ralf Josef (2018)
The governance of horizontal leadership in projects
International Journal of Project Management, 36(7), s. 913- 924. Doi: 10.1016/j.ijproman.2018.06.002
In the media
Müller, Ralf Josef (2019)
Ralf Müller: Soft skills should be in the center of PM
Project Management Review [Fagblad]
Müller, Ralf Josef (2019)
Soft Skills should be in the Center of PM: Interview with Ralf Müller
PM World Journal, vol. VIII, issue 1 [Fagblad]
Müller, Ralf (2017)
Governance and PMOs
Webinar [Internett]
Konstantinou, Efrosyni & Müller, Ralf (2016)
On the role of philosophy in project management
PMI Frankfurt Chapter Newsletter [Fagblad]
Müller, Ralf Josef & Klein, Gary (1)
What Constitutes a Contemporary Contribution to Project Management Journal?
Project Management Journal [Kronikk]
Other
Müller, Ralf Josef (2018)
Perspectives on Governance
[Academic lecture]. Dalian University of Technology - Public lecture.
Müller, Ralf Josef (2018)
Perspectives on Governance
[Academic lecture]. ProjMan Conference.
Müller, Ralf Josef (2018)
Future Project Governance and Leadership
[Academic lecture]. Annual Conference of the Project Management Association of Iceland.
Müller, Ralf Josef (2018)
Balancing Person-centric and Team-centric Leadership in Projects
[Academic lecture]. EDEN Conference.
Bucero, Alfonso & Müller, Ralf Josef (2018)
Factor for project success: Building upper management support
[Academic lecture]. IRNOP XIV.
ACADEMIC DEGREES
2003 Brunel University Ph.D.
1999 Heriot-Watt University M.B.A.
WORK EXPERIENCE
2018 - Present University of Technology Sydney Adjunct Professor
2018 - Present Project Management Journal Editor-in-Chief
2011 - Present BI Norwegian Business School Professor
2002 - Present PM Concepts AB Managing Director
