Research methodology for the assessment of the influence of organizational culture aspects on project success

Abstract

Recently the global trend to organize the activities of companies in different spheres and sectors of the economy on the project principle has become more relevant and acute. Heads of companies currently pay particular attention to the assessment of the result of the project and find the factors that affect its success. At the first stage of development of this problem, the researchers focused on the study of the indicators of the “iron triangle”, on the achievement the strategic goals of the company or on the meeting the interests of the project customers. Contemporary scholars focus on a wider range of project success factors, their ambiguity and multi-dimensionality. Organizational culture of a project is one of the most important factors as, on the one hand, its impact is well recognised, but on the other hand it is difficult to identify its impact as the culture interacts with other factors. Therefore, it is difficult to determine the boundaries of the impact. However, extending the success factors of a project to include aspects of organizational culture provides managers with an additional tool to achieve project results. The purpose of the article is to test the OCPS (Organizational Culture – Projects Successful) method that has been modified by the author according to the features of the Russian economy. The method allows determining the impact of organizational culture on the project success in different branches of activity. The research is based on a systematic and synergistic approach that considers the project success as a complex system in which the effect of the control action is not directly proportional to the efforts made. This is due to a wide range of possible factors that affect the success of the project, a high degree of uncertainty of the environment, as well as a variety of internal impulses of an organization. The method has been applied and tested in the case study of companies operating in a construction industry as a project is the main type of business for them. In this sector of economy, projects can attract large cash flows. However, unsuccessful projects lead to financial instability of a company. Qualitative and quantitative methods have been used in the study. The main results that have been obtained are 1) the determined aspects of organizational culture that affect the project success in the organisations operating in construction industry of economy: teambuilding, external communication and leadership; 2) the generation of criteria for their assessment and recommendations on the use of the identified aspects of organizational culture in order to increase the probability of success of construction projects. For this purpose a matrix of levels of success of construction projects has been proposed. The application of the matrix allows quickly responding to the problems existing in the project team. The obtained scientific results will allow project managers to get an additional tool to study the aspects that affect the success of an organization’s projects, as well as to identify the elements, influencing on which increases the opportunity to achieve project results. Further studies will be devoted to the testing of the suggested method in the case study of projects made by companies operating in other branches of economy. Subsequently, it will verify the method in the context of applicability to organizations regardless of their sphere of activity.

Keywords

project management, project success, organizational culture, organizational culture aspects, project efficiency, OCPS methods, construction industry of economy, institutional peculiarities

For citation

Isopeskul' O.Yu., Ponomarenko E.A. Research methodology for the assessment of the influence of organizational culture aspects on project success. Perm University Herald. Economy, 2019, vol. 14, no. 3, pp. 495–512. DOI 10.17072/1994-9960-2019-3-495-512

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