Social capital and project management success in a developing country environment: Mediating role of knowledge management

ABSTRACT

Despite significant investments in projects by organizations, governments, and international development agencies in developing countries, many of the projects have failed and continue to fail due to budget overruns, inability to complete projects on time, and poor-quality outcomes. We draw on social capital theory and knowledge management to argue that individuals can leverage the resources embedded in the trust among other project participants, and the norms and values shared by the project participants and employees in an organization to enable them acquire, share and exploit knowledge for achieving project management success. Based on data collected from individuals engaged with projects in Ghana, this study tests a model in which knowledge management processes mediate the relationship between social capital and project management success. Our findings indicate that while trust is very important in the acquisition and sharing of knowledge, shared norms are very important in the sharing and exploitation of knowledge for project management success. Further, we find that the impact of norms and trust on project management success is mediated by knowledge sharing, and knowledge exploitation.

KEYWORDS:

• social capital
• knowledge management
• project management success
• sub-Saharan Africa
• structural equation modeling
• bootstrapping techniques

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Kwasi Amoako-Gyampah

Kwasi Amoako-Gyampah (PhD University of Cincinnati, USA) is Professor of Supply Chain and Operations Management, Department of Information Systems & Supply Chain Management, University of North Carolina at Greensboro, USA. His research interests are in Technology Implementation, Operations Strategy, Project Management, and Supply Chain Management. His research has been published in journals such as Information & Management, Journal of Operations Management, European Journal of Operational Research, International Journal of Production Economics, International Journal of Production Research, International Journal of Operations & Production Management, Information Systems Frontiers, OMEGA (The International Journal of Management Science), Computers in Human Behavior and others.

Moses Acquaah

Moses Acquaah is Professor of Management and Head of the Department of Management at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, NC, USA. He received his PhD from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, USA. His research interest includes strategic management, international business, entrepreneurship, and family business. His research has been published in several internationally recognized journals including the Strategic Management Journal, Journal of Business Research, Human Relations, International Journal of Production Research, and the International Journal of Production Economics.

Ebenezer Adaku

Ebenezer Adaku is a Senior Lecturer in Operations and Project Management at the Graduate School of Business, Ghana Institute of Management and Public Administration (GIMPA), Ghana, and currently a Marie Skłodowska Curie Research Fellow at the University of Wolverhampton, UK. He received his PhD from the University of Stuttgart, Germany. His research interest includes causes of construction project cost and time overruns; social capital and its effects on project performance in developing economy environments; and occupational safety and health (OSH) management on construction projects. His research has been published in International Journal of Managing Projects in Business, International Journal of Production Economics, and Production Planning & Control.

Samuel Famiyeh

Samuel Famiyeh is an Associate Professor in Operations and Supply Chain Management at the Graduate School of Business, Ghana Institute of Management and Public Administration (GIMPA), Ghana. He is currently the Acting Dean of the Business School. He has a PhD in Business Administration from the Technical University of Mining and Technology, Freiberg, Germany. His research interest is in the areas related to project stakeholder management, environmental impact assessment of projects, factors influencing project time and costs, service quality, environmental management systems. His research appears in top international journals in management such as International Journal of Managing Projects in Business, Journal of Manufacturing and Technology Management, International Journal of Production Economics, and Production Planning & Control.