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The purpose of this paper is to report on a PhD thesis that examined the empirical relationship between a specific set of critical success factors (CSFs), project success, and success dimensions (criteria) from the perspectives of World Bank project supervisors (task managers or task team leaders) and project managers (the national project coordinators). Also, the PhD thesis author's journey and motivation are explained.

Data were collected by web questionnaires addressed to 1,421 World Bank task team leaders and paper‐based questionnaires delivered to 600 national project coordinators in 26 different countries in Africa. Principal component and confirmatory factor analyses, multiple correlation and regression analyses, as well as structural equation models were used for data analysis in this study.

First, research findings highlight a specific set of World Bank project CSFs (monitoring, coordination, design, training) and the existence of a second‐order latent CSF, that is World Bank project supervision. Second, they suggest that World Bank project supervision has differing significant influences on the two project success dimensions and that the first (project management (PM) success) does not significantly affect the second (deliverable success). Third, consistent with theory and practice, they suggest that the most prominent CSFs for both World Bank project supervisors and managers are design and monitoring. Fourth, they suggest that for the national project coordinators, project success is insensitive to the level of design efforts but a significant correlation does exist between monitoring efforts and project “profile”, a success dimension which is an early pointer of long‐term deliverable success (impact).

This study offers insights into the relationship between success factors and dimensions for ID projects with the perspectives of both the World Bank project supervisors and managers. The thesis calls for further research on PM in the ID industry sector.

Evaluating project success within the construction industry presents challenges due to the unique characteristics of the sector, the complexity of projects, and the involvement of diverse stakeholders. Conducting a bibliometric analysis, this paper aims to unravel the major research themes and methodologies utilised by researchers in studying the critical success criteria for construction projects, as well as extracting these success criteria.

The researchers systematically searched and screened 95 papers from Scopus and Web of Science (WoS) databases. This study conducted research focus parallelship network (RFPN) analysis and keywords co-occurrence network (KCON) analysis using BibExcel and Gephi to cluster the papers, illuminate the relationships among keywords within each cluster, and identify the primary research directions.

Using the RFPN analysis, this study classified the papers into three distinct clusters: infrastructure and public projects success, risk and knowledge management, and contractors and procurement management. Statistical techniques such as structural equation modelling (SEM) and multi-criteria decision-making methods such as analytic hierarchy process (AHP) have been used to analyse project success in the construction industry.

Considering the intensified demand for streamlined digital interactions and the increasing emphasis on sustainability and safety performance, construction companies are recommended to allocate greater investments toward the automation and digitisation of their products and processes. Prioritising modular construction and embracing transformative technologies alongside data science is crucial for enabling well-informed decision-making, and enhancing project success.

This study contributes to the existing body of knowledge by conducting a quantitative and systematic evaluation of the literature on project success criteria in the construction industry and uncovering key research areas. It addresses the pressing need to understand the complexities of construction projects amidst evolving industry dynamics and emerging disruptions. Moreover, by highlighting the implications of digital innovations and modular construction, this study urges deeper exploration into their impact on project performance and stakeholder satisfaction. This research sets a comprehensive framework for investigating the interplay between project complexity, technological advancements, and sustainable practices in the construction sector, paving the way for strategic advancements in the field.

The study examines the project success factors for leadership behavioural practices and communication impacting project success, providing empirical evidence to address the challenges in the digitalized environment in the Australian construction sector.

A quantitative approach was employed to collect survey data from 109 project managers and followers (project engineers, supervisors, team members, and senior managers) with diverse project management experience in the construction sector. An exploratory factors analysis/multivariate regression/relative importance index/t-test was used to identify the key project success factors and validate the study's results.

Data analysis identified four key project success factors: (1) Relationship Management, (2) Leading by Example, (3) Self-Management, and (4) Effective Communication, along with seventeen “behavioural practices attributes” impacting project success positively and significantly and emphasizing inclusiveness, relationship building, self-feedback objectivity, sharing information, collaboratively resolving disputes, and controlling emotions that significantly impact project success.

The study's results will address the industry's challenges in the complex digitalized environment and specific issues experienced in the construction industry: delays and inefficiencies, supply chain management, communication barriers with multicultural workforce and safety protocols implementation, regulatory and safety compliance, infrastructure demands, skills shortages, sustainability, and new technology adoption to achieve project success.

The quantification of research findings, employing an innovative approach, underscores the distinctive nature of this study. The key success factors will help formulate innovative practices using stakeholder analysis, communication plans, conflict resolution strategies, promoting collaboration, safety leadership, providing cultural awareness, and enhancing the decision-making process to face challenges in the construction sector.

There is a limited number of research work on critical success factors (CSFs) in public construction projects in Saudi Arabia. In response to this knowledge gap, the objective of this paper is to assess the impact of CSFs on the government construction projects in Saudi Arabia. The success factors are investigated from a broader consideration of failure criteria, from consideration of most effectiveness in successful project completion and also from consideration of the impact of implementing control processes for successful project completion.

This study has analysed the impact of success factors on construction projects in Saudi Arabia using a descriptive methodology. An exhaustive literature survey is undertaken to identify the success and failure factors related to government construction projects in Saudi Arabia. The survey data are sorted out and analysed by cost, schedule, technical, context and finance dimensions of the projects based on project types, engineering complexity, size, modality, jurisdictional control and funding approach. To evaluate the influence of success factors implementation, qualitative data were collected in a survey via a web-based questionnaire that was sent to officials working and occupying a responsible position in national project guidelines organizations and in government construction organizations in Saudi Arabia. In all, 28 CSFs were identified, ranked and evaluated for their impact on project success. The four identified factors belong to process categories of construction projects, nine factors belong to management of construction projects and 15 success factors are identified for impact assessment of implementation in construction projects.

The study's findings have identified and ranked the top five CSFs that significantly influence project outcomes, including meeting time targets, adhering to financial budgets, delivering desired outcomes for all stakeholders, effectively managing risks and assembling the appropriate team while optimizing resource allocation. Additionally, the research indicates that hindrances to projects primarily stem from execution, economic, human and political factors. The study advocates for strict controls over incomplete engineering designs and advises against contractors independently handling design work to ensure project success. Additionally, addressing contractors' qualifications and financial matters is crucial for project success. By highlighting these CSFs and challenges, the research provides actionable insights to enhance project management practices in the construction industry.

This study is limited to the infrastructure projects constructed by governmental bodies with the participation of officials from government organizations. Further study, including private projects and officials working on private projects, may be needed to generalized the research outcome.

Numerous studies have investigated CSFs in construction projects, but few have examined their relevance to Saudi Arabian government projects. This study aims to fill this gap by identifying key CSFs specific to Saudi Arabian public sector construction projects and assessing their impact on project success. It advocates for stringent controls in the Saudi Arabian construction sector, emphasizing the importance of preventing incomplete or altered engineering designs by contractors to increase the success rate of public sector projects. This research offers practical insights to stakeholders, advancing project management practices in Saudi Arabia's construction sector for improved outcomes and resource utilization.

The procurement reforms carried out by the Government of Ghana have led to the creation of the Public Procurement Authority and the passage of the Public Procurement (Amended) Act 2016. Nevertheless, many obstacles could prevent an open and fair competition during the procurement of works. This significantly affects the success of Ghanaian construction projects. Therefore, this paper aims to explore the factors to enhance the success of the contractor selection phase of the Ghanaian public labor-based construction project.

A quantitative research approach was adopted by this study. Data was collected through a self-administered questionnaire to 377 respondents across Ghana. The data was then analyzed using structural equation modeling.

This study revealed that external, project procedures and project management factors impact the Ghanaian labor-based contractor selection phase success.

This study is limited to the contractor selection phase of Ghanaian public labor-based projects and developing nations with similar socioeconomic characteristics.

Strict adherence to this study’s findings will enable the government to undertake more infrastructure projects to raise the standard of living for its populace.

Although several studies have been conducted to improve the success of construction projects in developing nations, very little focus has been placed on the success factors of the contractor selection phase of public construction projects. These findings are vital in discovering for the first-time factors influencing the success of the tender stage of public labor-based projects in Ghana and developing nations with similar socioeconomic characteristics.

The essential investments in new product development (NPD) made by industrial companies entail effective management of NPD activities. In this context, performance measurement is one of the means that can be employed in the pursuit of effectiveness.

It is commonly believed that the complexities of different languages, cultures, histories, time zones, locations, governments, financial and legal systems contribute to the difficulty of leading global change. And yet, there is surprisingly little research at the intersection of global change and global leadership to guide practitioners. To fill this crucial gap, we provide a helpful framework for global leadership practitioners and scholars that emerged from a qualitative study of success factors in leading effective global change initiatives. We employed a comparative case study methodology to examine strategies and processes used by leaders of successful corporate and NGO global change projects. After comparing multiple cases of successful and unsuccessful global change initiatives in four organizations, we concluded that effective global change requires leaders to pay attention to 14 success factors categorized into three key design imperatives: (1) participatory process, (2) representative leadership, and (3) nested implementation. Participatory process consists of these success factors: (1) establish a clear vision, (2) ensure a collaborative start, (3) invite to the table as equals, (4) seek ideas from outside headquarters, (5) recognize and celebrate others, and (6) build systems for interdependence and accountability. Representative leadership includes: (7) create local leadership, (8) enable knowledgeable leadership, (9) empower willing leadership, and (10) develop bridge people. Nested implementation is composed of: (11) leverage formal communication channels, (12) attend to individual needs via interpersonal communication, (13) set global standards with local flexibility, and (14) test for regional credibility. We discuss these factors in light of existing literature and identify the implications and new horizons for global leadership theory and practice with respect to leading global change.

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.

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.

As in the private sector, public organizational information systems (IS) development is commonly carried out through projects. One of the alternatives followed by governmental organizations to perform their projects is outsourcing (by hiring other public institutions that have expertise in the IS area of the projects to be developed). However, limited research has been conducted on project success regarding these government-to-government (G2G) contexts. Since achieving success is crucial for public management, this paper proposes a model for Success Management of IS projects in G2G context.

The research method was design science research (DSR). In the evaluation step of the DSR, IS projects in a G2G environment were the object of case studies.

This work presents in detail how Success Management activities can be integrated into the processes and process groups of the Project Management Institute's project management guide. The authors also suggest tools and techniques to be used in each Success Management activity.

Managing success, particularly addressing success criteria and success factors, can help managers focus their efforts on what will really impact the success of a project. In the context of IS projects in G2G contexts, this contributes to decreasing waste and increasing the chances of providing better services to citizens.

This work contributes to theory by providing a new model for IS G2G projects that integrates Success Management and project management processes.