So what’s wrong with asking questions about what might be wrong with the current ways of managing MOST projects and then proposing areas of inquiries (which is the sole intent of Koskela and Howell in their papers). Particularly in view of the disastrous results, not only for IT-SW projects but also on all other types of projects subject to the pressure of the real world (unless some are still capable to execute projects in the past, before globalization - or just put the blame of failure on outside forces, which they actually failed to take into consideration in their project Master Plans !!!).

I am glad you mentioned Max Wideman. He is a top notch, very curious mind, who really looks forward to continuous improvement. As a former president of PMI, he was on the team that produced the first version of PMBoK in 1987, and he has continued to add, in his own manner, to this body of knowledge. His web site, that you hyperlinked in your text, is one of the best sites on project management that can be found and a source of sound, well-organized advice to the managers of real-life projects. Instead of siting happily on the PMBoK contents and implicit Newtonian paradigm, he keeps questioning and improving on it. As you pointed out, he also agrees with the need for an EXPLICIT theory.

And he is not the only one, besides Koskela and Howell. Professor Christophe Bredillet of the Project Management & Economics Group UTS - Lille Graduate School of Management (France) is also one other eminent project management specialist who is making a case about it. You can find a very interesting paper by him titled : Killing the false gods of Project Management - Ordo ab Chaos (Order out of Chaos) at http://www.pmforum.org/library/papers/cbwhitepaper.htm . He argues (like the less eminent myself) that ‘project management is becoming the way to manage the development of organizations’ but that ‘the project management knowledge field is not that clear because it is evolving in depth and breadth, so that standards, using a broad definition of this term, as social constructs, need ongoing adjustment’. He offers his reflections on the subject with nice conceptual graphics opposing two views of the world-paradigms (positivism vs constructivism) in order to,as he says, ‘open up discussion’.
Project management is serious business in a world that desperately needs better management frameworks to face globalization, rapid change and innovation. It is thus very important that we discuss about it and have real conversations to find ways to help not only project managers but whole organizations. And let’s face it, the ‘official’ non-explicit way of doing projects IS NOT SUFFICIENT and there are a lot of very serious studies as proof of it. As a project management professional with the very serious responsibility to help my clients and my profession, I, for one, cannot promote half-defined shooting-from-the-hip solutions, not taking into account the forces at play in our globalized, complex, uncertain and facinating world. So, I am open to discussion and conversations with my clients for more agile management solutions, and with anybody who can provide real help for them.
Thus, when you say, like more and more concerned managers, ‘Let new theory emerge’, I say : ‘I’ll gladly drink to that’

Salut!