Relationship between Owners’ Capabilities and Project Performance on Development of Hydropower Projects in China

Abstract

Existing studies tend to agree that there are links between owners’ capabilities and project performance. However, limited research has systematically addressed the relationships among the multiple facets of organizational capabilities and project performance. This paper quantitatively investigated the relationships among them by developing and testing a capability model. With support of data collected from the hydropower project industry in China, this study has revealed strong correlations between owners’ capabilities and project performances, confirming owners’ capabilities on obtaining scarce and valued resources, interorganizational linking, information management, and integrating and managing resources can have significant impacts on hydropower project performances. It is concluded that these owners’ capabilities are not only important to improve project performances on quality, time, cost, and safety by maximizing the effectiveness of each participant’s resources, but also critical to appropriately deal with hydropower projects’ externalities for achieving the objectives on project migration, and ecological and environmental impacts. Future studies should be conducted to understand how owners can correctly perceive the properties of external environments for obtaining resources, and to successfully integrate and manage reciprocally interdependent project delivery processes at both intra- and interorganizational levels to achieve superior project performance.