Applications of Game Theory in Project Management: A Structured Review and Analysis

Mahendra Piraveenan
Additional contact information
Mahendra Piraveenan: Faculty of Engineering, University of Sydney, Sydney, NSW 2006, Australia

Mathematics, 2019, vol. 7, issue 9, 1-31

Abstract: This paper provides a structured literature review and analysis of using game theory to model project management scenarios. We select and review thirty-two papers from Scopus, present a complex three-dimensional classification of the selected papers, and analyse the resultant citation network. According to the industry-based classification, the surveyed literature can be classified in terms of construction industry, ICT industry or unspecified industry. Based on the types of players, the literature can be classified into papers that use government-contractor games, contractor–contractor games, contractor-subcontractor games, subcontractor–subcontractor games or games involving other types of players. Based on the type of games used, papers using normal-form non-cooperative games, normal-form cooperative games, extensive-form non-cooperative games or extensive-form cooperative games are present. Also, we show that each of the above classifications plays a role in influencing which papers are likely to cite a particular paper, though the strongest influence is exerted by the type-of-game classification. Overall, the citation network in this field is sparse, implying that the awareness of authors in this field about studies by other academics is suboptimal. Our review suggests that game theory is a very useful tool for modelling project management scenarios, and that more work needs to be done focusing on project management in ICT domain, as well as by using extensive-form cooperative games where relevant.

Keywords: decision-making; game theory; project management (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/2227-7390/7/9/858/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/2227-7390/7/9/858/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jmathe:v:7:y:2019:i:9:p:858-:d:268042

Access Statistics for this article

Mathematics is currently edited by Ms. Emma He

More articles in Mathematics from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().