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Taking Stock: Capability Development in Inter-Organizational Projects

  • Taking Stock
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Schmalenbach Business Review Aims and scope

Abstract

We examine how capabilities emerge in repeated interorganizational projects and how they affect project development. A multifaceted understanding of project capabilities in interorganizational projects is important, because project management research emphasizes capabilities’ contribution to project performance, but has also stressed their tendency to grow rigid. We review the literature on interorganizational project collaboration to identify the foundations and drivers of project capabilities in project networks and to outline their potentially ambiguous consequences. our systematic overview of these studies provides a basis for further empirical research and project management practice.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Management, Freie Universität Berlin, Boltzmannstraße 20, 14195, Berlin, Germany

    Elke Schüßler

  2. Department of Business Information Systems, Freie Universität Berlin, Garystraße 21, 14195, Berlin, Germany

    Lauri Wessel & Martin Gersch

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  1. Elke Schüßler
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  2. Lauri Wessel
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  3. Martin Gersch
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Correspondence to Elke Schüßler.

Additional information

We thank two anonymous reviewers, Rene Bakker, Cristina Boari, Christian Goeke, Candace Jones, Federico Riboldazzi, Stoyan Sgourev, Rick Vogel, and Kim Wikström, as well as additional participants of the 2011 WKORG workshop in Berlin, of the “Creative Industries” subtheme at the 25th EGOS Colloquium in Barcelona, and the IRNOP IX Research Conference in Berlin, for their helpful comments on earlier drafts of this paper.

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Schüßler, E., Wessel, L. & Gersch, M. Taking Stock: Capability Development in Inter-Organizational Projects. Schmalenbach Bus Rev 64, 171–186 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF03396839

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