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Social risk management has recently come to the fore as a significant feature of project management. This prominence is particularly evident in urban construction projects that take place in cultural heritage and tourism historic sites. Accordingly, this study aims to adopt social network analysis (SNA) to investigate social risks in construction projects occurring in urban districts rife with historically and culturally significant tourism sites.

The present study analyzed a real case study in Iran as an emergent economy and a developing country. Primarily, the study reviewed previous literature on social risks and relevant stakeholders. Next, the judgments of experts through the content validity ratio analysis confirmed 12 social risks and 9 key stakeholders. Finally, SNA is used to determine the relations between the social risks and stakeholders as well as the significance of each risk.

The investigation demonstrated that the most important social risks in the construction projects of the case study are “Psychological disorders”, “Environmental pollution” and “Cultural conflicts”.

The findings could help policymakers, urban planners and project managers in developing countries with a rich cultural heritage to reduce social risks and improve the efficiency of their projects.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, the present study is one of the first instances to investigate construction projects implemented in densely populated urban areas hosting cultural heritage and historic tourism sites.

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 the potential dynamics between performance measurement at the organisational level and emerging urban development projects at the macro-institutional field level of sustainability governance and accountability.

Using a theoretical triangulation between three theories, namely contingency theory, institutional theory and social cognitive theory, this study investigates not only the macro-micro dynamics, but also the (recursive) micro-macro dynamics between performance measurement and urban development. Using an Egyptian public sector urban development organisation and its sustainable energy project as an empirical example, interviews, documents and observations were collected.

The dynamics emerged between field urban development projects and the (unintended) organisational implementation of the performance measurement system, the sustainability key performance indicators (KPIs) reporting system. Contributing to previous literature, these dynamics have been institutionalised through (three) interrelated levels: the (macro-field) urban development contingencies and pressures for sustainability KPIs reporting, the (organisational) institutionalisation of the urban development performance measurement system and then the (micro-organisational) cognitive role of sustainability KPIs reports in (re)making political urban development decisions.

This study faced some limitations that paved the way for future research axes. For political and security reasons, difficulties were encountered in conducting interviews with government actors in the sustainable energy project under study. Also, due to the practical separation of the environmental sustainability system from the sustainability KPIs reporting system in this case study, environmental sustainability is outside the scope.

Sustainability reports may influence public sector decision-making processes in a specific urban development context. These KPIs reports may also increase public sector management opportunities for urban auditing, transparency, accountability and sustainability governance. These KPIs may also guide public sector management to lower prices in poor villages to increase smart energy consumption and improve community health.

Sustainability reports may increase decision-makers' understanding of consumer behaviours and societal changes. This may help in making appropriate political decisions to improve their welfare and regular smart energy consumption. Not only urban citizens, but this social advantage may also extend to urban development employees through employees' promotion, training and access to government-funded academic and professional scholarships.

This study is an attempt to develop current public sector performance measurement analyses in the emerging urban development field using a triadic analytical approach. This study also fed the literature with an extended case study that clarified the (multi-level) and (two-way) dynamics between performance measurement and urban development.

Buying firms involve suppliers early in New Product Development (NPD) projects to benefit from their capabilities. The authors investigate the joint impact on project performance improvement, of the social capital established throughout the project, and the strategic preferred buyer/supplier statuses awarded prior to the project, from the buyer's perspective.

The authors propose a conceptual model underlining the complementary contribution to project performance of social capital dimensions and of preferred partners' statuses resulting from social exchange expectations. The model is analyzed with Partial Least Squares using 80 responses of purchasers and R&D managers involved in collaborative NPD projects with suppliers.

The relational capital built during the project has a positive central role, with a direct impact on NPD project performance and mediating effects through cognitive and structural capitals. The preferred partners' statuses have strong direct impacts on performance, and mediating effects that do not completely supplant the social capital's contribution.

The implications for the efficient management of supplier involvement are twofold. First, the authors encourage strategic investments of buying firms to acquire preferred buyer's status and to support preferred supplier programs. Second, the authors alert them on the importance of establishing trust and shared cognition during the project.

This study captures NPD project performance from the social angle of buyer–supplier relationship management. It demonstrates the complementarity of relationship management at the strategic and operational levels, before and during the project unfolding.

This paper explores total quality management (TQM) soft domain efficacy in social care organizations to determine the extent to which an organization's project success may stem from soft TQM critical success factors (CSFs).

Non-structured interviews were conducted with 16 managers overseeing the prosthetic device regeneration project of the Italian local health unit (located in Salerno) to explore which soft factors could contribute to the success of a social care multifunctional organization.

Organizations' handling of certain projects, such as pivoting on soft TQM issues, may allow them to be configured as multiservice organizations. Therefore, a conceptual model of a multiservice social care organization is proposed.

From a managerial perspective, this study presents an interesting success case of a multiservice social care organization with a total annual expenditure of €20 million on prosthetic assistance. Preliminary data show a 13% reduction in public expenditure for Salerno's local health unit via a refurbishment project.

The paper contributes to the soft TQM literature debate: although Italian local health professionals appear aware of soft TQM issues' implementation and consciously apply them in their organization and projects, this occurs more with specific CSFs emerging from the literature. Therefore, this article paves the way for further quantitative and theoretical investigations on the adoption of TQM soft issues in social care organizations' performance measurement.

This study aims to evaluates a public policy program that finances projects for the development of innovative technological solutions. This paper analyzed the influence of human and social capital on the development of the projects, under the perspective of the policy’s effectiveness and efficiency. This specific policy adopted the funding model of economic subsidy by means of grants, which shows the significant engagement of the public sector in applying nonrefundable resources more directly through loans, assuming the role of an entrepreneurial state, according to Mazzucato (2011, 2018) and Tavani and Zamparelli (2020).

This is a quantitative-descriptive study, according to Marconi and Lakatos (2017). This study is descriptive, for presenting information on innovation projects funded by FUNCAP (Ceará Foundation for Support to Scientific and Technological Development). In addition, this study is quantitative, by establishing multivariate relationships among the variables that relate to human capital and social capital, which are relevant to technological and innovative development, and by introducing variables on technological evolution, proposed as measures of the program’s effectiveness (DTRL, MkTRL) and efficiency (ETRL).

This paper sought to contribute on public policies for innovation, more specifically on analyzing variables that may affect the development of technological and innovative projects in knowledge-intensive companies. The authors studied capitals potentially important for these companies in the development of innovative projects. Specifically, the authors sought to understand the importance of human capital and how it reflects in technical and scientific knowledge of the project team and of social capital and how it reflects the connection and social relationship among different team members. The results presented that the degree of efficiency of the public funding program depends on how much the teams of the benefited projects have accumulated knowledge, skills and technical capacities – the so-called teams’ human capital.

It is important to address the research sample as a research limitation, which had 72 responses obtained, from a submission rate of 284. Another study limitation is on the qualitative analysis of the topics addressed from the companies and policymakers perspectives, considering that the quantitative nature of the study does not allow for a deeper understanding of the qualitative perspective of the actors involved in the phenomenon studied. As recommendations for future studies, it is suggested to conduct qualitative studies on the aspects studied here. In this sense, it is possible to conduct case studies for specific companies, or policymakers, to clarify and deepen the relationships between the themes addressed here.

As for the practical implications of the research, both for managers of public funding programs and for company managers, the benefits of human capital, related to innovative project development teams, are important in programs that deal with technological development projects. In practice, this means that the greater the human capital of academic background of the members of the supported project teams, the more efficient the projects are in the process of developing their technologies by using the resources provided (Ashford, 2000; Chen et al., 2008; Lerro et al., 2014).

Hence, the authors conclude that the evaluated innovation-funding program through grants achieved acceptable results in terms of promoting the technological evolution of the benefited projects and bringing the technologies closer to the market. Its efficiency was the least favorable result, showing that the program needs to focus on improving this specific aspect. Within the investigated program, the issue that needs enhancement (efficiency – ETRL) was the one that presented significant relationships with the human and social capital of the benefited projects’ teams. Thus, it is possible that, by selecting more projects that have teams with high capital, the efficiency of the public policy, in this case the development of projects with high technological and innovative potential, will be possibly reached.

The findings strengthen the need for innovation public policies designed and implemented in a systemic way in the science, technology and innovation ecosystem, to provide a technological infrastructure and human capital necessary for developing projects with high technological and innovative potential (Ergas, 1987; Audretsch and Link, 2012; Caloghirou et al., 2015; Edler and Fagerberg, 2017; Silvio et al., 2019).

The objectives of this study are twofold: first, to identify the effect of sustainability management on the success of international development projects, and second, to investigate the moderating role of political and social skills on this relationship.

This study adopted a quantitative research methodology based on questionnaire data collected from 43 international development project managers from various fields in Burkina Faso (West Africa). Descriptive statistics and exploratory and confirmatory analyses using principal component analysis were used to assess the quality of the measurement model. A multiple regression analysis based on the partial least squares approach was used to test the hypotheses.

The results show that sustainability management positively contributes to the success of international development projects. However, given the specificities of these projects and their perception of success, the project coordinator's political and social skills do not predict a greater impact of sustainability management on the success of international development projects. The study also found that project coordinators prioritize their technical skills over behavioral ones.

This study fills a gap in the literature, given that little is known about the moderating role of political and social skills in the effect of sustainability management on the success of specific projects such as international development projects.

Earned value management systems (EVMS), also called integrated project and program management systems, have been greatly examined in the literature, which has typically focused on their technical aspects rather than social. This study aims to hypothesize that improving both the technical maturity of EVMS and the social environment elements of EVMS applications together will significantly impact project performance outcomes. For the first time, empirical evidence supports a strong relationship between EVMS maturity and environment.

Data was collected from 35 projects through four workshops, attended by 31 industry practitioners with an average of 19 years of EVMS experience. These experts, representing 23 organizations, provided over 2,800 data points on sociotechnical integration and performance outcomes, covering projects totaling $21.8 billion. Statistical analyses were performed to derive findings on the impact of technical maturity and social environment on project success.

The results show statistically significant differences in cost growth, compliance, meeting project objectives and business drivers and customer satisfaction, between projects with high EVMS maturity and environment and projects with poor EVMS maturity and environment. Moreover, the technical and social dimensions were found to be significantly correlated.

Key contributions include a novel and tested performance-driven framework to support integrated project management using EVMS. The adoption of this detailed assessment framework by government and industry is driving a paradigm shift in project management of some of the largest and most complex projects in the U.S.; specifically transitioning from a project assessment based upon a binary approach for EVMS technical maturity (i.e. compliant/noncompliant to standards) to a wide-ranging scale (i.e. 0–1,000) across two dimensions.

This research explores project manager (PM) behavior in their professional virtual communities (PVCs), using social identity theory as a theoretical foundation. The purpose is to examine the extent to which PMs seek information on key topics in the Project Management Body of Knowledge Guide (PMBoK).

A text data analytics methodology that uses quantitative and qualitative analysis techniques is followed. The research method reveals relationships in language-based data gathered from six project management forums and blogs.

Information related to all the PMBoK topics is sought in the project management virtual communities. People management topics account for a dominant portion of interactions. The findings enhance social identification theorizing for the PM role. From a practical standpoint, the findings shed light on focal areas for greater emphasis in PM PVCs.

Our people management finding constructively replicates existing findings via a large, global sample and strengthens calls for increased focus on people management matters in project management. As a result, we call for increased scholarly attention to people management in project management. Finally, we encourage pursuit of several research questions to enhance knowledge of PM information-seeking behavior.

This paper aims to explore whether crowdfunding creators can learn from previous experiences to have a better financing performance of future crowdfunding projects.

This paper uses Python to capture the data of 6,267 crowdfunding projects from one of the largest crowdfunding platforms in China (JingDong Crowdfunding) and the author use the negative binomial regression model and the OLS model in this empirical study.

The empirical results show that both the early-stage experience of creating a crowdfunding project and the early-stage experience of supporting projects of other crowdfunding creators can improve the financing performance of their newly launched projects. The social network of the previous projects and the “Blockbuster” projects initiated before can also make the newly initiated projects obtain better financing performance.

Current research on entrepreneurial experience shows that serial entrepreneurs have significantly different success rates than novice or inexperienced entrepreneurs but there is limited literature on the learning effect of crowdfunding creators. This study adds to the literature on entrepreneurial learning and provides suggestions to crowdfunding creators.