The Missing Link: Exploring the Impact of Social Capital on Behavioral Integration of Top Management Team in Megaprojects

The behavioral integration (BI) of top management team (TMT) is widely recognized as critical for achieving business success in the corporate management literature. However, BI has rarely been examined in the project management literature in general and the realm of megaprojects in particular. It is still not clear how to strength TMT's BI in megaprojects. To fill this gap, this paper presents a team- level analysis exploring the antecedents of BI in megaprojects from triple perspectives of social capital. A sample of 128 TMT managers from different types of megaprojects was surveyed; and the results were analyzed using partial least square structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM), revealing that: (1) both structural and cognitive dimensions of social capital have a significantly positive impact on BI, and the structural dimension is more influential; (2) the relational dimension of social capital has no significant impact on BI; (3) affective commitment plays a mediating role bridging between social capital and TMT's BI. This paper explains how social capital theory provides a useful lens for understanding the mechanisms of TMT's BI; and the findings provide new insights for structuring TMT in a targeted approach to stimulate the emergence of BI and, ultimately, improve megaproject performance.