Applying Social Network Analysis to Identify Project Critical Success Factors

Marco Nunes and António Abreu
Additional contact information
Marco Nunes: Industrial Engineering Department, University of Beira Interior, 6201-001 Covilhã, Portugal
António Abreu: Mechanical Engineering Department, Polytechnic Institute of Lisbon and CTS Uninova, 1959-007 Lisbon, Portugal

Sustainability, 2020, vol. 12, issue 4, 1-32

Abstract: A key challenge in project management is to understand to which extent the dynamic interactions between the different project people—through formal and informal networks of collaboration that temporarily emerge across a project´s lifecycle—throughout all the phases of a project lifecycle, influence a project’s outcome. This challenge has been a growing concern to organizations that deliver projects, due their huge impact in economic, environmental, and social sustainability. In this work, a heuristic two-part model, supported with three scientific fields—project management, risk management, and social network analysis—is proposed, to uncover and measure the extent to which the dynamic interactions of project people—as they work through networks of collaboration—across all the phases of a project lifecycle, influence a project‘s outcome, by first identifying critical success factors regarding five general project collaboration types ((1) communication and insight, (2) internal and cross collaboration, (3) know-how and power sharing, (4) clustering, and (5) teamwork efficiency) by analyzing delivered projects, and second, using those identified critical success factors to provide guidance in upcoming projects regarding the five project collaboration types.

Keywords: project management; risk management; social network analysis; project outcome likelihood; project lifecycle; project critical success factors; social capital; people data management; competitive advantage; sustainability (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (11)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/12/4/1503/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/12/4/1503/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jsusta:v:12:y:2020:i:4:p:1503-:d:321880

Access Statistics for this article

Sustainability is currently edited by Ms. Alexandra Wu

More articles in Sustainability from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().