Organisational Structure and Project Success: The Mediating Role of Knowledge Sharing

This paper looks at the relationship among elements of an organisational structure (i.e. formalisation, centralisation and integration) with project success, and examines whether the relationships are mediated by knowledge sharing. There is limited understanding with regard to how various elements of organisational structure relate to knowledge sharing and project success. Taking a contingency approach and grounding our argument in the resource-based view of the firm, we show that certain elements of organisational structures have positive implications for the project organisation. We draw on survey data from 220 respondents serving in (public and private) project-based telecom service provider firms in Pakistan. Our results show that formalisation and integration are conducive to project success, but centralisation is negatively related to project success. Knowledge sharing mediates the relationship between integration and project success for both the public and private telecom firms, but in case of formalisation, knowledge sharing mediation exists only for the public firms. Based on these results, we draw some implications for theory and practice.