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The purpose of this study is to investigate the relationship between the absorptive capacity (AC) of a firm and project success (PS), with particular attention to the mediating role of customer knowledge management capability (CKMC) and the moderating role of environmental complexity (EC). By using data collected from Turkish SMEs across different sectors, the study seeks to understand how AC impacts project success, how CKMC mediates this relationship, and how EC moderates the link between AC and CKMC. The research contributes to both theory and practice by providing insights into these relationships and suggesting future research directions.

This study focuses on Small and Medium-sized Enterprises (SMEs) in Turkey, specifically within the cities of Istanbul, Ankara, Izmir, and Konya. To gather data, the researchers utilized a non-probabilistic convenience sampling method and distributed self-administered surveys to a selected pool of 918 respondents including shift supervisors, project managers, and team members within these SMEs. The surveys were translated to Turkish to avoid language issues. Out of the surveys distributed, 401 valid responses were collected, resulting in a response rate of 43.68%.

The main findings of the study indicate that a firm’s absorptive capacity (AC) positively impacts project success and customer knowledge management capability (CKMC). Furthermore, CKMC plays a mediating role, positively influencing project success. Additionally, the study reveals the moderating effect of environmental complexity (EC) on the relationship between AC and CKMC, suggesting that as EC becomes more complex, it strengthens the link between AC and CKMC. Moreover, CKMC was found to mediate the moderating effect of EC on the relationship between AC and project success, emphasizing the significance of environmental complexity in this interaction.

This study’s limitations stem from its cross-sectional approach, which limits the ability to establish causal relationships between the constructs of absorptive capacity (AC), customer knowledge management capability (CKMC), and project success. It does not examine other potential mediators, such as customer relationship capability and innovation capability. Furthermore, the existing literature on this topic is scarce, suggesting a need for further research, particularly on constructs like team skills for managing CKMC. There is also an unexplored area around the effects of different forms of complexity, such as resource and technical complexity. Finally, further research is needed to understand how SMEs, which often face resource constraints, leverage AC in different functional domains for successful new product development.

The study’s findings have significant practical implications for SMEs, highlighting the importance of absorptive capacity (AC) and customer knowledge management capability (CKMC) in promoting project success, particularly under conditions of environmental complexity. As businesses navigate uncertain environments, external knowledge acquisition becomes crucial for improvement and innovation. Efficient transformation of this knowledge can enhance project success rates. Thus, firms should cultivate a proactive, innovative, and risk-taking climate. Also, firms should regularly assess their AC and CKMC in the face of shifting stakeholder expectations and market competition. The ability to detect, integrate, and apply external knowledge in product and service development can significantly enhance project success rates.

This study’s originality lies in its exploration of the complex interplay between a firm’s absorptive capacity (AC), customer knowledge management capability (CKMC), environmental complexity (EC), and project success (PS). By examining Turkish SMEs across various sectors, the study uncovers the mediating role of CKMC and the moderating role of EC in the relationship between AC and PS. Furthermore, it reveals how the effect of AC on PS through CKMC strengthens with increasing environmental complexity. These findings offer fresh insights into the complexity theory and the factors influencing project success, providing a unique perspective for both academics and practitioners, with practical implications for managing SMEs in complex environments.

The global construction industry has a history of poor project success, with evident and frequent overruns in cost and schedule. This industry is a highly interconnected and complex system in which the components, i.e. suppliers, contractors, end-users, and stakeholders, are delicately linked to each other, the community, and the environment. Therefore, defining and measuring project success can be challenging for sponsors, contractors, and the public. To address this issue, this study develops and analyzes a more comprehensive set of success criteria for medium and large construction projects.

After reviewing the existing literature, this study identified 19 success criteria for medium and large construction projects, which were categorized into five groups. The fuzzy decision-making trial and evaluation laboratory (fuzzy DEMATEL) method was used to gain further insight into the interrelationships between these categories and explain the cause-and-effect relationships among them. Next, this study applied the modified logarithmic least squares method to determine the importance weight of these criteria using the fuzzy analytic hierarchy process.

28 project managers working in the construction industries in Australia and New Zealand participated in this study. Results suggest that “project efficiency” and “impacts on the project team” are cause criteria that affect “business success,” “impacts on stakeholders,” and “impacts on end-users.” Effective risk management emerged as the most crucial criterion in project efficiency, while customer satisfaction and return on investment are top criteria in “impacts on end-users” and “business success.”

Although numerous studies have been conducted on project success criteria, multicriteria analyses of success criteria are rare. This paper presents a comprehensive set of success criteria tailored to medium and large construction projects. The aim is to analyze their interrelationships and prioritize them thoroughly, which will aid practitioners in focusing on the most important criteria for achieving higher success rates.

In this study, the authors sought to investigate how the implicit social ties of both project owners and potential backers are associated with crowdfunding project success.

Drawing on social ties theory and factors that affect crowdfunding success, in this research, the authors developed a model to study how project owners' and potential backers' implicit social ties are associated with crowdfunding projects' degrees of success. The proposed model was empirically tested with crowdfunding data collected from Kickstarter and social media data collected from Twitter. The authors performed the test using an ordinary least squares (OLS) regression model with fixed effects.

The authors found that project owners' implicit social ties (specifically, their social media activities, degree centrality and betweenness centrality) are significantly and positively associated with crowdfunding projects' degrees of success. Meanwhile, potential project backers' implicit social ties (their social media activities and degree centrality) are negatively associated with crowdfunding projects' degrees of success. The authors also found that project size moderates the effects of project owners' social media activities on projects' degrees of success.

This work contributes to the literature on crowdfunding by investigating how the implicit social ties of both potential backers and project owners on social media are associated with crowdfunding project success. This study extends the previous research on social ties' roles in explaining crowdfunding project success by including implicit social ties, while the literature explored only explicit social ties.

This study aims to explore how ethical leadership and innovative climate impact project success through employees innovative behavior. In addition, based on the conservation of resources theory, this study also examines whether time pressure moderates the innovative work behavior and project success nexus.

Data were collected from 403 employees working in Vietnam's information technology (IT) companies. The partial least squares structural equation modeling was used to investigate the impact of ethical leadership and innovative climate on project success, the mediating effect of innovative behavior and the moderating role of time pressure.

Empirical findings indicate that ethical leadership and innovative climate positively impact on project success. Moreover, employees' innovative behavior has a complementary effect on these relationships. In addition, time pressure moderates the nexus between innovative work behavior and project success.

The findings suggest that IT companies can promote innovative work behavior among employees by building ethical leadership and enhancing an innovative climate. Moreover, when designing and implementing a project, project managers should take care to allow enough time for innovative behavior within the team.

This inquiry is probably the first attempt to explore the mechanism linking ethical leadership and innovative climate to project success, with the mediating role of employees' innovative behavior. Additionally, time pressure is an increasingly relevant factor in contemporary business, but so far little explored in research. This study extends the current knowledge by considering the moderating role of time pressure in the innovative behavior and project success nexus.

The aim of the study is to investigate the relationship between humble leadership, project success, and service-oriented organizational citizenship behavior (OCB) and how task complexity may moderate this relationship. The study aims to determine if humble leaders are more likely to promote service-oriented OCB among team members and if this behavior in turn leads to greater project success, especially in complex task environments. These relationships are examined through the lens of the conservation of resources theory.

The data were collected from the employees working in software companies using a closed-ended questionnaire, and a total of 214 complete questionnaires were analyzed. The research model was tested using structural equation modeling with the help of Smart PLS 3 software.

Humble leadership is positively associated with service-oriented organizational citizenship behavior (OCB), which in turn is linked to project success. Task complexity does not appear to have a significant impact on this relationship.

Humble leadership is positively related to IT project success through its influence on service-oriented organizational citizenship behavior and task complexity. Implications include the importance of fostering a humble leadership style to enhance IT project success, as well as the potential benefits of promoting service-oriented behavior among employees. It also highlights the need to consider task complexity when evaluating project success.

The research explores the relationship between “humble leadership” and project success, and how it relates to “service-oriented organizational citizenship behavior” and “task complexity”. It presents an original perspective on the role of leadership in project success and the impact of organizational culture on project outcomes through the lens of the conservation of resources theory.

The purpose of this paper is to qualitatively validate the constructs of a theoretically derived research model while gaining insights to steer the direction of a greater study on methodologies, their elements, and their impact on project success. In doing so, to investigate whether different project environments, notably project governance, impacts the relationship between methodologies and project success.

A deductive approach was applied to validate a theoretically derived research model. In total, 19 interviews across 11 industrial sectors and four countries were used to collect data. Pattern-matching techniques were utilized in the analysis to deductively validate the research model.

There is a positive relationship between project methodology elements and the characteristics of project success; however, environmental factors, notably project governance, influence the use and effectiveness of a project methodology and its elements with a resulting impact on the characteristics of project success.

Project governance plays a major role in the moderating effect of a project methodology’s effectiveness. Contingency theory is applicable to a project’s methodology’s selection and its customization according to the project environment.

Understand the impact of project methodologies and their elements on the characteristics of project success while being moderated by the project environment, for example, the risk of suboptimal project performance due to the effectiveness of methodology elements being negatively impacted by the project environment.

The impact of a project methodology (collection of heterogeneous-related elements) on the characteristics of project success is identified while being moderated by the project environment, notably project governance.

Barnes’ Iron Triangle was one of the first attempts to evaluate project success based on time, cost and performance, which were portrayed as interdependent dimensions. Over time, these criteria were expanded and especially criteria taking the satisfaction of stakeholder groups into account are becoming more and more popular. The purpose of this paper is to find out whether specific patterns for the selection of project success criteria across various fields of applications emerged which has not been regarded in literature before. Furthermore, the authors seek to identify of additional key factors influencing project success assessment next to the choice of project success criteria.

The paper uses a review of recent literature published in academic journals, in standard references and in widespread project management frameworks (Organisational Competence Baseline, PRINCE2 and PMBoK Guide).

The findings show that Barnes’ ideas are an integral part of all approaches investigated in the study. Additionally, the relevance of the so-called “soft criteria” related to the satisfaction of stakeholder groups, could be substantiated. However, the authors found no indications that patterns for the selection of project success criteria have emerged across various fields of applications. Factors influencing project success assessment are not taken into account in the examined articles in a systematic manner. This motivates for further research in this field.

Access limitations, papers not yet digitally available or the interpretations have an impact on the results.

For appropriate project assessment the sound and well-rounded selection of hard and soft criteria and the consideration that not the field of application, but influencing factors yet to be analysed influence the selection of project success criteria are crucial. Project management professionals should choose the criteria suitable for their projects individually on a project-by-project basis.

This paper reveals that no patterns have so far been developed to assess project success in various fields of application. Furthermore, factors influencing project success assessment are not considered in a systematic manner.

The purpose of this study is to determine the effect of conscientiousness and extraversion personality traits on project success. The relationship is mediated by affective professional commitment, whilst the relationship between personality traits and project success is moderated by organizational project management maturity.

The deductive approach is used to achieve the objectives of this study. Data were collected through a purposive sampling technique from 250 respondents with the help of questionnaires from information technology sectors. The structural equation modelling (SEM) in partial least squares-SEM and SPSS is used to analyse the data and to examine the hypothesis.

The outcomes demonstrate the partial mediating impact of affective professional commitment between the relationship of conscientiousness and extraversion personalities with project success. Additionally, it proves the moderating effects of project management maturity between the relationship of conscientiousness and extraversion personalities with project success.

This study reflects that employee personality appears to be a reliable indicator of how an employee is faithful to his profession. This faithfulness or duty decides the employee’s execution in terms of offering a successful project. Thus, achieving employee commitment needs to be done by completing the project successfully by the organizations in the presence of project management maturity systems.

It is the first study of its kind to provide experimental proof of the impact of a manager’s personality traits on project success in the presence of affective professional commitment (mediator) and organizational project management maturity (moderator).

Cooperation is generally purported to be vital to construction project success. However, there has been, as yet, no empirical work done to quantify explicitly the extent to which cooperation, in relation to other factors, determines construction project success. This study attempts to fill this research gap. This paper details a grounded empirical approach to identify important construction success factors using data from 29 interviews, 398 quantitative response and six follow‐up interviews from construction firms in Hong  Kong. Results show how using the grounded approach enables the tapping of unique determinants of project success previously not identified in the literature and point to a potentially fruitful approach for future research in construction management.

Transformational leadership, flexibility and visibility improves project responsiveness to highly unpredictable and impactful events referred as the ‘black swans’ in mega projects (Bloch et al., 2012; Raziq et al., 2018; Zailani et al., 2016). However, these concepts have never been empirically tested in a single framework to determine their significant impact on multi-dimensional project success. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the interactional effects of project flexibility and project visibility on the relationship between transformational leadership and “multi-dimensions” of project success including meeting design goals; impact on customers and benefits to project-based organization.

Empirical data derived from cross-sectional survey of 160 project managers from telecom intensive companies in Pakistan were used to test the conceptual framework developed from recent literature. Partial least squares-structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM) provided detailed analysis of the measurement and structural model. The most recent reflective–formative PLS-SEM approach for higher-order constructs has been introduced.

The results indicate that project managers’ transformational leadership (β = 0.348, p < 0.01), project flexibility (β = 0.221, p < 0.01) and project visibility (β = 0.366, p < 0.01) are positively related with the multi-dimensional project success (second-order formative) construct. Interestingly, the relationship between transformational leadership and project success is influenced by significantly negative moderations established through project flexibility (β = −0.100, p < 0.01) and project visibility (β = −0.093, p < 0.05).

This study in the telecom sector examined the interactional effects of risk mitigating strategies (i.e. project flexibility and project visibility) on the relationship between transformational leadership and multi-dimensional project success. This study creates a basis for future investigations extending to various project types and relevant to different industries especially those involving higher-order (formative) assessments of project success.

The study findings assist project leaders to meet their escalating commitments in achieving project success from a multi-dimensional standpoint. Additionally, this study underscores a renewed perspective of transformational leadership and project outcomes. Despite prevailing understanding developed through prior research, transformational leadership may become less favorable for project success in conditions of increased flexibility and visibility in projects.

Earlier studies have overlooked the multi-dimensional nature of project success (second-order formative) construct, despite several attempts to examine the interplay between transformational leadership and project success. Based on the knowledge gap and non-existence of empirical evidence, the authors introduced and empirically tested the moderating role of project flexibility and project visibility in the relationship between transformational leadership and multi-dimensional project success.