The Contingent Effects on Project Performance of Conducting Project Reviews and Deploying Project Management Offices

There is little empirical evidence on the benefits of deploying a project management office (PMO) and/or conducting project reviews. Drawing on the information processing view of organizations, goal setting and social cognitive theory, this study investigates the effects of those two organizational mechanisms on the project performance of organizations in the construction and information systems (IS) industries. The results show that the effects on project performance of deploying PMOs and conducting project reviews are contingent on task uncertainty. Construction organizations improve their project performance by conducting project reviews to provide performance feedback to the project teams, enabling them to make timely adjustments to their project management strategies. In contrast, IS services organizations improve their project performance by deploying PMOs to facilitate cross-project learning.