Knowledge Integration and Information Technology Project Performance1

Successful product and process design depends on management’s ability to integrate fragmented pockets of specialized knowledge. This integrative capability has important implications for large-scale information technology projects. This article examines the relationship between timely project completion and two dimensions of management’s integrative capability: access to external knowledge and internal knowledge integration. Measures of these two dimensions are used to predict on-time project completion, where completion is a function of the duration of IT-related project delays. In a longitudinal study of 74 enterprise application integration projects in the medical sector, integrative capability was measured from the point of view of the CIO and a facility IT manager. Accounting for several project controls, our Cox regression results indicate both integrative dimensions significantly mitigate the duration of IT-related project delays, thus promoting timely project completion. The analysis also reveals the importance of taking management structure into consideration when studying IT phenomena in networked organizations.