The Impact of Entrepreneurial Orientation on Project Success: Mediating Effect of Strategic Renewal and Moderating Role of Project Manager’s Competency

Abstract

Projects have been playing an imperative part in the success and development of organizations and societies. However, existing research reveals that mostly projects face various challenges, especially low success rate due to the lack of entrepreneurial orientation practices. Scholars within the existing academic literature have also suggested the exploration of the importance of project managers' contributions in relation to the achievement of project success. Now organizations aim at minimizing these challenges through entrepreneurial orientation, strategic renewal and focusing on project manager’s competencies to complete projects successfully. Therefore, this study intends to explore the effect of entrepreneurial orientation along with its five dimensions (Innovativeness, pro-activeness, risk taking, competitive aggressiveness and autonomy), through mediating effect of strategic renewal and through moderating role of project manager’s competency in the successful completion of information technology projects. This explanatory sequential design, study employed a simple random sampling technique in the first phase for the data collection through a survey from 400 project managers of information technology sector projects of Pakistan. In total 357 responses were received showing 89% response rate. Structural equation modelling (SEM) was used to analyse the data. This study used SPSS (Social Statistical Package for Social Science), Hayes PROCESS (Model 1 and 4), and AMOS (Analysis of Moment Structures) statistical software for all of its statistical analysis of the quantitative part of the study. In second phase of this study personal experiences and knowledge of the project managers gathered through interviews in order to identify themes by using NVivo in qualitative part of the study that supported in the rapid processing of large amounts of data. However, the findings of the study discovered that there is a significant positive effect of entrepreneurial orientation and its dimensions on project success. In the sector of information technology, notably the entrepreneurial orientation overall and dimensions-wise positively and significantly affects project success. The study reveals that strategic renewal mediates between entrepreneurial orientation and project success. This study identified the project manager’s competency significantly moderate the relationship of dimensions of entrepreneurial orientation with project success in information technology sector. In nutshell, an increase in adoption of entrepreneurial orientation overall and dimensions-wise increases the effectiveness level of information technology projects. Finally, the study gives practical implications for practitioners of project management towards comprehensive policy development regarding entrepreneurial orientation, strategic renewal and project manager’s competency for the successful completion of information technology sector projects.