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Capital budgeting projects fail about as often as they succeed. Recent research shows that accountants may frame information related to capital budgeting projects to be consistent with their preference for the project (e.g., accept or reject), perhaps in order to persuade management to agree with them. Psychology research consistently shows that framed information results in systematic differences in judgments. The purpose of this study is to examine whether framed information affects capital budgeting decisions, and to examine whether this effect is moderated by the importance of the potential project. Results from an experimental case completed by 173 participants indicate attribute frames affect capital budgeting decisions, however, the effect is moderated by the importance of the decision.

Relying on the importance-performance theory first established by Martilla and James (1977), this research paper utilizes a unique statistical analysis instrument embedded into the SmartPLS software. It explores the importance and performance of key project management constructs and indicators with a purpose to make practical and actionable recommendations for project managers to identify and improve project management practices.

The data used were derived from 3,130 system delivery projects in the facilities management industry. The data was analyzed with Partial Least Squares Modelling (PLS) software SmartPLS, using its embedded importance-performance functionality.

The findings indicate the importance and performance of the project management constructs and their respective indicator variables in an importance-performance (IPMA) map. All three project management phases (constructs); proposal, installation and commissioning, were significantly related to satisfaction. The installation phase (construct) showed the highest potential for performance improvement in project management. With regard to the specific indicator variables, the variable “Coordinating their work with other contractors (or the owner's staff)” received a strong “Do better” recommendation.

The approach and results provide an easy to use and visual tool for project managers to assess the importance and performance of the various elements of project management. The instrument provides a project management direction for the identification of strategic enhancement areas as it is essential to recognize what facets of project management contribute most to the improvement of project management performance over a longer period of time (Cronin and Taylor, 1992; Palmer, 1998).

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the relative importance of project management (PM) competences across the different stages of a software project life cycle to identify competence development gaps and opportunities.

A deductive and quantitative approach was adopted to address the research questions with a web-based survey for data collection.

After reviewing the context of competences and PM competences, the importance of the PM competences overall and for specific stages in the project life cycle was analysed. The result highlights that functional and meta-competences are perceived to be the most important competence dimensions for software project practitioners.

This study makes three contributions. First, it consolidates PM competences into a set of 20 within four competence dimensions. Second, it prioritises these competences across the software project life cycle. Third, it identifies the significance of the inter-relationship between PM competences and project life cycle to reveal PM competence development gaps and opportunities.

This study aims at investigating the impact of the perceived importance of critical cultural readiness factors (CRFs) is on perceived importance of Lean Six Sigma (LSS) technical critical success factors (CSFs) in UK manufacturing sector.

A survey questionnaire through a multiple embedded case study was conducted. The study involves surveying people in the manufacturing firms followed by non-parametric Kruskal–Wallis test to study the relationships.

It was found that the people's perception towards impact of CRFs on technical CSFs of LSS projects is different depending upon each CRF, demographic factors and technical CSFs. This means that particular CRFs need to be prioritised to address LSS technical CSFs.

The study fills the research gap in investigating the perception of people towards inter-relationship of cultural or soft CSFs of LSS and technical or hard CSFs of LSS in manufacturing firms. Nevertheless, the authors suggest further multi-case study analysis covering different manufacturing fields as future studies.

The study is crucial for managers financially to be ready to invest on a successful LSS project and it helps them to diagnose the cultural causes of failure in a more timely way and effectively.

This is a preliminary study focussing on analysing inter-relationship between perceived importance of soft readiness factors and perceived importance of implementing success factors as a missing jigsaw in the current literature.

Construction labour productivity is of great interest to practitioners and researchers because it affects project cost and time overrun. This paper evaluates and ranks the importance, frequency and severity of project delay factors that affect the construction labour productivity for Malaysian residential projects.

A total of 100 respondents consisting of 70 contractors, 11 developers and 19 consultants participated in this study. The respondents were asked to indicate how important each item of a list of 50 project related factors was to construction labour productivity. The data were then subjected to the calculation of importat indices which enabled the factors to be ranked.

The five most important factors identified by them were: material shortage at site; non‐payment to suppliers causing the stoppage of material delivery to site; change order by consultants; late issuance of construction drawing by consultants; and incapability of contractors' site management to organise site activities. On the other hand, the five most frequent factors were: material shortage at project site; non‐payment to suppliers causing the stoppage of material delivery to site; late issuance of progress payment by the client to main contractor; lack of foreign and local workers in the market; and coordination problem between the main contractor and subcontractor.

The inferences drawn from this study could be used by the project managers to take account of these factors at an early stage, hence minimising the time and cost overrun.

The main purpose of this paper is to propose a new approach to determine the project activities weight factors using data envelopment analysis. Afterward, the model is applied in Mobarkeh Steel Company as a case study. Accordingly, the project schedule and plans can be written on the basis of the gained weight factors.

This study proposed an approach to determine the weights of activities using Data Envelopment Analysis. This approach consists of four phases. In the first phase, project activities are extracted based on the work breakdown structure. In the second phase, the parameters affecting the importance of activities are determined through a review of the related literature and based on the experts' opinions. In the third phase, the proper data envelopment analysis model is chosen and the inputs and outputs are signified. Then, the activities' weights are determined based on the efficiency numbers. Finally, the model is solved for the case of Isfahan Mobarakeh Steel Company.

The proposed method aimed to calculate the project activities weight factor. Thus, influential parameters on project activities importance include activity duration, activity cost, activity importance which includes successors and predecessors, activity difficulty which includes skill related (education and experience), safety, communication rate, intellectual effort, physical effort, unfavorable work conditions and work related hazards, have been recognized. Then, Projects' data were extracted from the organizational expert's opinions and recorded data in documents. Thereupon, applying DEA, the activities weight factor were calculated based on the efficiency numbers. The results show that the model is applicable and has promising benefits in real-world problems.

Planning is one the most fundamental steps of project management. The ever-growing business environment demands for more complex projects with larger number of activities wants more efficient project managers. Organizational resources are limited; therefore, activities planning is a critical from the perspectives of both managers and researchers. Knowing the importance of the activities can help to manage activities more efficient and to allocate time, budget, cost and other resources more accurate. Different elements such as cost, time, complexity, and difficulty can affect the activity weight factor. In this study, the proposed approach aims to determine the weights of activities using Data Envelopment Analysis.

Project bundling is an innovative practice that groups or bundles several infrastructure projects into a single contract. While project bundling has various benefits, agencies are facing some challenges when bundling their projects, including properly assessing the feasibility (or infeasibility) of project delivery methods (PDMs) of interest. More specifically, project owners face the challenge of properly selecting between traditional and alternative PDMs for their bundled projects. Although some research efforts were devoted to providing guidelines in relation to different aspects related to project bundling, no previous study was conducted to help project owners performing PDMs-related feasibility analysis for bundled projects, which differ from normal, singly delivered projects. To fill this knowledge gap, this paper develops a decision-support tool that assists agencies in deciding whether they should select a traditional or alternative PDM (i.e. whether to go with the Design-Bid-Build (DBB) PDM or not) for their bundled projects.

An analytical methodology comprised of four main steps was followed in this paper. First, an expert survey was developed and distributed to industry experts to quantify the importance of 25 project bundling objectives. Second, principal component analysis was used to determine the weights for the different project bundling objectives. Third, a series of statistical tests was implemented to identify different feasibility tiers. Fourth, a user-friendly decision-support tool was developed, and its capabilities were demonstrated.

The results showed that six tiers exist to classify the feasibility (or infeasibility) of traditional PDMs (i.e. the DBB method) for bundled projects. The research outcomes have also reflected that the following five project bundling objectives contribute the most to making traditional PDMs (i.e. the DBB method) more feasible for bundled projects: (1) Having well-defined design features; (2) Requiring prior knowledge or experience with similar project size and scope; (3) Completing the overall project on schedule; (4) Keeping rate of expenditures within cash flow plan; and (5) Acquiring specific legislative, regulatory and jurisdictional requirements early on.

This research adds to the body of knowledge by equipping agencies and project owners with a decision-support system that helps them identify whether traditional or alternative PDMs are more appropriate for the specific objectives of their bundling program(s). By making the right PDM decision, project owners can enhance their bundling practices (especially in relation to the PDM proper selection) and ultimately the performance of their bundled projects.

This paper reports the developments of a project cost control system (PCCS) for construction projects to (1) measure its current level of cost control maturity, (2) examine the relationships between elements within PCCS processes and (3) identify improvement areas.

This study adopts a mixed approach of descriptive analysis and partial least squares structural equation modelling (PLS-SEM) to measure the current maturity level of PCCS and evaluate the relationships between elements within PCSS to identify improvement areas. Further importance-performance matrix analysis (IPMA) of priority constructs was conducted to improve a target construct and identify the most important areas of specific actions at indicator levels. The results of IPMA revealed the contrast that has the greatest importance on the performance of others so that the recommendations can be made accordingly. Data collected in New Zealand were used to develop the research model.

This study develops structural and measurement models with the constructs including pre-control, in-control and post-control processes, enablers and their proposed interrelationships. Then, data from survey of 184 experienced project cost control team members reveal that post-control has the lowest maturity or weakest areas in the PCCS. Data analysis facilitated by PLS-SEM confirmed that all the constructs in the structural model have positive and significant relationships with each other and suggested that systematic cost analysis reports, communication, skills and experience, defining roles and responsibilities, and top management's support should be the highest priority for improving the PCCS in a more effective manner.

This study presents one of the earliest attempts to develop and test an integrated model that links sub-processes in PCCS and their enablers. Secondly, this research adds to the construction project management literature by empirically verifying the roles of enablers in enhancing maturity level of PCCS.

Business process modelling (BPMo) projects are core to digital transformation projects as they provide the conceptual foundation to the orchestration of technologies along a process. Yet, success factors of BPMo projects have received little research attention to date. This study empirically validates a BPMo project success model, pointing to normative practice guidelines and important future research.

This research reports on the quantitative re-specification and validation of a business process modelling success model, employing survey responses from 261 process modellers worldwide.

The study distilled and validated a final set of success antecedents: Top Management Support, Project Management Capabilities, Stakeholder Input, Modeller Expertise and Modelling Tool Usage; and clearly evidences their relationships with each other and with two moderating variables – Importance and Complexity. The paper offers a nuanced explanation of the indirect role of top management support in building stakeholder involvement and explains how complex projects that are perceived as important being more likely to attract high levels of necessary stakeholder involvement. The authors conclude that top management needs to create an environment of co-ordinated excellence which spans both technical skills and resources, and a high level of committed engagement between stakeholders and technicians in order for BPMo projects to succeed.

This study is the first to operationalize and quantitatively test antecedents of BPMo project success and their interactions, presenting novel insights into how the success factors interact. Awareness of the more influential antecedents of successful process modelling projects offers valuable guidance for the planning, management and conduct of BPMo projects.

To identify differences in perceptions between executive sponsors (ESs) and project managers (PM) regarding sponsor involvement on projects, for the purposes of contributing to project management practice and encouraging further sponsor‐related research.

A survey of 365 executives and managers interested in project management investigated differences between ESs and PMs in perceived importance on eight dimensions of ES behavior and three dimensions of project success during the initiation stage of a project. This study followed a previous exploratory analysis study that identified sponsor behaviors. Factor analysis and t‐tests were used to develop variables and test for differences, respectively.

Results indicated significant differences between ESs and PMs on the perceived importance of ES involvement on the critical dimension of mentoring and assisting PMs with executives indicating higher importance.

Three specific suggestions are made which are directed toward improving project management practice. Further, additional research is encouraged on the role and influence of the ES in the initiating stage of the project management process.

The value of this research is two‐fold. One, the investigation identified a critical project management dimension on which sponsors and PMs differ, which may account for disruptive conflict during a project. Two, the present study adds to the limited body of research on the role of project sponsors.