Study goals
This paper aims to locate, synthesize and identify the theoretical proximity between project management studies in the public context.
Relevance / originality
The study identifies the current map of project management in the public sector.
Methodology / approach
To achieve the aim, the authors resorted to bibliometrics using the relational analysis of citations, performed by the methods of cocitation and bibliographic coupling to discover connectivity relationships between the published papers, and the respective factor analysis were also done.
Main results
The results indicated the prevalence of studies in project management skills and electronic government. The results allowed discussions with the presentation of an agenda specifically directed to public project management.
Theoretical / methodological contributions
Exploratory factor analysis of cocitation and coupling led to 6 factors, indicating an intellectual structure that enabled the generation of a framework for integrating factors from the most frequent citations. This work reinforces the use of the factor analysis to bibliometric study.
Social / management contributions
The article indicates the research agenda for researchers and public managers.