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This study examines the relationship between employees' perceptions of informational fairness and project performance. Furthermore, it examines if this relationship is sequentially mediated by (1) knowledge sharing and role clarity and (2) communication openness and role clarity.

Data are collected from 302 full-time employees of seven project-based construction organizations in Pakistan. Data are analyzed through variance-based structural equation modeling technique and the Preacher and Hayes' bootstrapping procedure.

Results indicate that project employees' perceptions of informational fairness positively predict project performance. Moreover, this relationship is sequentially mediated by (1) communication openness and role clarity and (2) knowledge sharing and role clarity.

This study provides further insights on the informational fairness and project performance relationship by examining their underlying mechanisms. It draws on the much ignored context of Pakistan, and offers some implications for managers and researchers with regard to how behavioral factors may further enhance project performance.

Embracing big data has been at the forefront of research for project management. Although there is a consensus that the adoption of big data has significantly positive impact on project performance, far less is known about how this innovative information technology becomes an effective driver of construction project quality improvement. This study aims to better understand the mechanism and conditions under which big data can effectively improve project quality performance.

Adopting Chinese construction enterprises as samples, the theoretical framework proposed in this paper is verified by the empirical results of the two-level hierarchical linear model. The moderated mediation analysis is also conducted to test the hypotheses. Finally, the empirical findings are validated by a comparative case study.

The results show that big data facilitates the development of technology capability, which further produces remarkable quality performance. That is, a project team's technology capability acts as a mediator in the relationship between organizational adaptability of big data and predictive analytics and project quality performance. It is also observed that two types of project team interdependence (goal and task interdependence) positively moderate the mediation effect.

The questionnaire study from China only represents the relationship within a short time interval in the current context. Future studies should apply longitudinal designs to properly test the causality and use multiple data sources to ensure the validity and robustness of the conclusions.

The value of big data in terms of quality improvement could not be determined in a vacuum; it also depends on the internal capability development and elaborate design of project governance.

This study provides an extension of the existing big data studies and fuels the ongoing debate on its actual outcomes in project management. It not only clarifies the direct effect of big data on project quality improvement but also identifies the mechanism and conditions under which the adoption of big data can play an effective role.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the effect of humble leadership on project success. In addition, we examine the mediating effect of organisational learning on the relationship between humble leadership and the success of international development projects.

This study adopted a quantitative research methodology based on questionnaire data collected from 80 international development project managers from different sectors in Senegal (West Africa). The variance-based structural equation method, following the partial least squares approach, was used to test the research hypotheses.

The results showed that humble leadership is positively related to project success. Furthermore, organizational learning mediates the relationship between humble leadership and project success.

This research has several limitations. The authors did not examine the role of organizational culture as a moderating variable. However, the authors believe that the cultural variable can have an impact on project success and team building, and future studies should consider this aspect as well. In the African context, each country has its own culture, which may affect the behaviour of the project manager. Also, the authors admit that the sample size is relatively small, which greatly reduces the generalizability of the results.

These findings have important implications. First, because a project leader’s humility enhances project success, it is critical for development projects to select leaders who demonstrate modest conduct in the workplace. The perfect selection of a humble leader depends heavily on judgements about the characteristics of a humble leader from new project manager candidates.

Drawing on conservation of resources theory, this study found that humble leadership is important for project success, thus extending the utility of the concept of humble leadership to the project literature.

This article aims to investigate the various applications of gamification practices in the construction industry, with a focus on improving safety and quality, project management, innovation and productivity and workforce development.

A comprehensive literature review was conducted to identify several construction areas where gamification can be employed, which helped in formulating a questionnaire survey. The survey was disseminated to construction professionals in the Nigerian construction industry using a convenience sampling technique. The collected data were analyzed using a variety of statistical tools such as percentages, frequencies, mean item scores and exploratory factor analyses. Additionally, cluster analysis was performed to obtain a more comprehensive analysis of these application areas.

Four key clusters of gamification areas of application in the Nigerian construction industry were identified – safety and quality, project management, innovation and efficiency and workforce development. By integrating game elements into these critical areas, construction organizations in Nigeria can enhance worker engagement, increase productivity and improve safety, ultimately leading to better project outcomes.

The identification and evaluation of the gamification areas of application in the construction industry would help construction organizations and stakeholders make informed decisions regarding the integration of game elements into critical areas such as safety and quality, project management, innovation and efficiency and workforce development.

The study provides valuable information for construction organizations and stakeholders looking to enhance worker engagement, increase productivity and improve safety in their projects through gamification. It also adds to the growing body of research on the use of gamification in various industries and provides a foundation for further studies in this area.

Infrastructure projects are pivotal for regional economic development, but also face low project effectiveness. Leadership is always regarded as a key enabler for project team effectiveness, including vertical leadership and team-level leadership. The purpose of this paper is to examine how vertical leadership facilitates shared leadership in infrastructure project teams.

This paper develops the conceptual model based on the literature review. Then the questionnaire survey was conducted. The empirical data obtained from 117 infrastructure project teams in China were analyzed by partial least squares structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM) for validating the proposed model. Finally, the results were comparatively discussed to explain the dual-pathway between vertical leadership and shared leadership. And the practical implications were presented for the project managers in infrastructure project teams.

Drawing on social learning theory and social cognitive theory, the results show that both participative leadership and task-oriented leadership can facilitate shared leadership. Further, team atmosphere fully mediates the link between participative leadership and shared leadership. Team efficacy fully mediates the relation between task-oriented leadership and shared leadership. Also, role clarity has a negative moderating effect on the former path.

The study extends the knowledge of leadership theory in the construction field. Based on the proposed conceptual model and PLS-SEM results, this study unveils the black box between vertical leadership and shared leadership and contributes to the theory of leadership on how the impact of different vertical leadership on team process promotes shared leadership.

From the organisational perspective, the authors know that management, including innovation management, becomes less “organised” by bureaucracy and administrative tools, and much more impacted by organisational capabilities, competences and hidden, “soft” routines, bringing innovation and creativity to the core of organisation. The purpose of this paper is to focus on competency sets for open innovation (OI) and is to provide recommendations for OI competency development in companies, linked to the core OI processes.

The research is exploratory and aims at theory-based practical indication combining deductive identification of competency clusters and inductive model development. Thus, the authors apply quantitative methods to data collection and analysis. The authors conducted an extensive literature review on competence challenges with regard to execution of OI, and empirical data analysis based on a large-scale structured industrial survey in Europe (N=264), leading to the development of competency sets for companies. SPSS tools are applied for empirical tests.

The authors develop a generic OI competency model applicable across industries, combined with organisational implications for sustaining OI management capabilities. The research clusters competencies based on the empirical analysis, which addresses the various challenges of OI, leading to recommendations for competency management in an OI context.

The data were collected from one key informant per company. Although the authors made efforts to ensure that this was a senior manager responsible for innovation, the authors cannot exclude some bias in the way that OI activities and related competencies are perceived. Exploratory nature of the research, which calls for a more systematic investigation of the OI activity modes and the OI competencies resulting competency model. In particular, the competencies could be tested on an inter-professional sample of employees with involvement in and/or responsibility for innovation, development, and HR management, as well as on leaders of innovating companies. Third, although significant in size for the analyses undertaken, the sample is not large enough to enable a more fine-tuned analysis of regional differences across Europe in the way that OI is managed through the development and implementation of competencies.

The research contributes to the OI management field with an outlined OI competency profile that can be implemented flexibly and tailored to individual firm’s needs. It brings indications for both further theory building and practice of innovation organisation, especially with regard to human resource development and organisational capability building for OI.

The social implications of the paper result from the contribution to innovation management competency development in OI regimes, which is an important tool for designing contemporary educational programmes, contributes to OI management sophistication in business which is especially important during the economy slowdown and search for new sources of growth and productivity, and supports firms productive engagement in OI ecosystems and collective technology upgrading towards higher societal benefits and stakeholder involvement.

An empirically grounded OI competency model is proposed with an implication to support human resource development for OI. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, there has been no prior attempt to build such a model. The distinguished feature of the research is its extensive European coverage of 35 countries and multinational scope. The empirical validation strategy makes the research extremely relevant for management decisions related to human factors related OI capability development in organisations.

One of the major objectives of facility owners is to get the ‘best value’ in construction, renovation or maintenance of facilities. Owners are reluctant to pay more for best value if they do not understand what the value is. Research now proposes that the use of best value procurement can actually reduce the first costs of delivering the construction. The research looks at the transaction costs or the first costs of construction. The research uses the procurement of roofing in the State of Hawaii because of the availability of data on both the low‐bid and best value procurements. The State of Hawaii used transaction cost analysis to identify the cost of best value construction. The costs considered were planning and programming, design, procurement, construction management and inspection costs. Owing to the number of projects and the access to budget figures, construction cost figures, design costs and construction times, the State was able to identify the relative transaction costs and performance for both processes. The first costs or transaction costs of the best value procurements were lower than the transaction costs of the traditional design‐bid‐build costs. The actual performances of the roofing systems procured, which included warranty period, performance of the contractor and performance of the roofing systems, were far superior. The result was an increase in value for a lower cost.

The success of projects clearly relies on project management personnel and particularly on project managers. Their performance and capacities are based on the achieved competencies. The purpose of this paper is to address possible discrepancies between the views arising from the research results and standards of practice related to project managers’ competencies.

For reaching the aim of the study, a comprehensive literature review, covering previous studies and related standards of practice was conducted, and analyses of competencies in the studies and standards of practice containing the rank of competencies based on frequency of appearance were developed.

The findings are proposing four discrepancies between the results of previous studies and standards of practice: commonly existing/missing competencies; uneven priority of some competencies in the view of researchers vs standards of practice; uneven degree of consensus on the importance of competencies; and research results are more context-oriented than the standards of practice. In addition, 98 project managers’ competencies were identified, from which 68 were qualified as weighty ones. Moreover, a categorization of project managers’ weighty competencies was developed. Finally, a list of competencies of relevance for different project types and their targets is presented.

The findings of this study provide a contribution with respect of present knowledge over project managers’ competencies by recognizing certain discrepancies between research results and standards of practice. Another contribution of the study is the comprehensive list of competencies together with considerations of their relevance in different project contexts and in different project types.

The purpose of this paper is to develop and validate a model of adoption of social media to assist project managers in the treatment of lessons learned (LL). Target, a collaborative model to foster learning in projects, approaches the problem of LL management from nearly a new light and perspective.

This research was conducted using a mixed methods approach with a research design denominated partially mixed concurrent equal status. In this design, both quantitative and qualitative elements were conducted concurrently in their entirety before being mixed at the data interpretation stage. These elements have approximately equal emphasis with respect to reaching the objectives of the research.

The results indicate the most suitable social media that match each LL process. They show how to manage LL through processes made in any phase of the project life cycle. The LL processes most commonly used in the projects are raising awareness, collect and store. According to the questionnaire respondents, 54.5 percent of organizations make use of social media in project management, and among the interviewees, half of them use such tools in projects. In addition, 84.1 percent of the questionnaire respondents believe that social media can assist in the LL management.

This study did not get proven successful experience reports in the management of LL. Respondents and interviewees mentioned and recognized such importance, but in projects that use LL management there are no control reports of this learning in organizations in order to measure the gains from the practice of LL management, which indicates an area for future work. An empirical validation of the model proposed in this paper is one immediate research to be done. Another future work is to validate the model in projects from disparate sectors.

The Target model could minimize the problem of knowledge drain, which is ineffective learning practices, resulting in knowledge hoarding, limited sharing and superficial LL practices. Thus, the use of processes supported by collaborative tools that promote discussion, with a familiar format for the user and with an efficient search engine, can generate greater involvement in projects. The usefulness is determined as practical and scientific. It is determined as practical use, because the model allows the selection of tools for each LL process and it can be applied to projects in organizations.

This research proposes a new approach to the management of LL supported by social media. The Target model adds a theoretical contribution to LL processes associating them to social media. This research revisited the extant LL processes and methods in the literature, proposing a new process – raising awareness – that covers personal and interpersonal aspects for the management of LL. The theoretical contribution lies on incremental originality, since it is based on existing theories, processes, methods and tools in order to provide a solution to a known problem.

The purpose of this paper is to develop and test an extension of a previously conceived framework for improving and embedding project management (PM) practice in organisations. The framework identifies the most useful project management improvement initiatives (PMIIs) and the key factors for embedding PM practice. However, professionals need guidance on how to operationalise such framework in their organisations, therefore a method for applying the framework is developed.

The method being proposed for applying the framework is demonstrated and tested with a large University–Industry consortium case study. During the case study analysis three research methods were applied: participant observation, document analysis and focus groups.

In what concerns both the PMIIs and key embedding factors in the framework, the proposed method comprises their acknowledgement, scoring, relevance analysis, selection and planning. The detailed report on how the framework was applied in the particular case study also sheds light on how University–Industry consortiums can make use of PM to become more successful.

The research was performed using only one case study which limits the generalisability of its findings.

Detailed guidance is provided for applying the framework’s both constructs, “improving” and “embedding”, through a set of clear steps.

The paper shows the explanatory power of the framework for improving and embedding PM practice in a case study, demonstrating that the method for its application is practical and suitable.