Organisational capabilities and project organising research

Abstract

The past two decades have seen a growing scholarly focus on applying concepts and theories from the strategic management field to explain how project-based organisations initiate and deliver projects. In this study, we focus on the increasing application of the concept of organisational capabilities. We employ a semi-systematic literature review to investigate how the capability-based view has been adopted and adapted in the context of project organising research. The findings are first presented through traditional quantitative measures. Selected articles are then categorised in accordance to how theoretically grounded they are, and are further divided into three main research themes: capability identification, capability development, and capability and performance. On the basis of these themes, we synthesise what we see as key issues in progressing capability research in the project organising domain; and provide suggestions for how future research can be developed in order to make broader theoretical contributions, whilst also remaining practically relevant.