Realising Value From Knowledge Assets: Empirical Study in Project Environment

This paper reports the results of an empirical test of a research model linking intellectual capital (IC) with project management (PM) in order to determine whether and how value from knowledge assets is being realised in a project environment. The proposed model included six interrelated components: project success as the ultimate targeted value and the project team as a human knowledge asset, the project customer as a relational knowledge asset and three project process steps (planning, execution, verification) as structural knowledge assets associated with project success. The model was tested empirically in the context of information systems (IS) projects. Data were collected by a survey of 603 IS professionals across a variety of projects and were analysed through structural equation modelling. The results revealed an important mediating role of structural knowledge assets (three-step project process) in exploiting human (project team) and relational (project customer) knowledge assets for realising project value (project success). These findings provided several important implications for practice and opened up new opportunities for future research.