The secret of success: A study of six technologically innovative projects at a research and development laboratory

This dissertation is a comparative analysis of six technologically innovative projects in a Research and Development laboratory at a Fortune 500 company. It investigates the combined effect of the projects' formal and social network structures on project “high” and “low success.” The research combines individual and project levels of analysis. Contingency theory and social network perspectives are drawn upon to identify the factors associated with the outcomes. Qualitative and quantitative data were gathered through semi-structured and structured interview protocols and questionnaires from 43 respondents, grouped in three sets: the laboratory director, the project managers, and the project members. Social network analysis and qualitative comparative methodology were employed as tools to analyze the data. The effect of ten factors, which represent formal and social network structural dimensions on project outcomes, was investigated. The research findings show that the conjunction of the following four factors leads to “high success”: (1) a high degree of corporate support for the project; (2) a low degree of formal reporting communication; (3) participation of an individual central in the technical advice network; and (4) participation of an individual central in the organizational advice network. “Low success” projects tended to lack the first and the last conditions.; To organization theory, the study contributes a new way of seeing the relationship between the formal and the informal structures. The research findings challenge the prevailing views, which regard them as either merely supplementing or opposing one another. In addition to demonstrating the advantageous effect of the interplay between the two structures on project success, the study identifies the mechanism that affords it, namely the embeddedness of human and social capital into the formal structure. Further, this research is the first to differentiate between technical and organizational advice social networks and to investigate the effect of centrality in both on project outcomes. To deliver on this goal, two new network measures of centrality—technical and organizational—were developed. The former identifies the individuals instrumental to a project's success due to technical knowledge and skills, and the latter, those individuals instrumental to a project's success due to organizational and managerial “know-how.”...