Project organizational resilience to unforeseen challenges: scale development and empirical validation

Purpose Organizational resilience offers a promising approach for projects facing unexpected challenges. The discourse on resilience in project studies involves various levels, yet limited research has conceptualized a valid scale to measure resilience at the inter-organizational project level. Moreover, the influence of resilience on project performance has not been fully explored. The objectives of this study are twofold: develop a model measuring project organizational resilience (POR) from an interorganizational relations perspective and examine the effects of POR on risk management performance and project performance. Design/methodology/approach Following the literature on rigorous scale development procedures, Study 1 was conducted to develop a 12-item scale specifically designed to measure POR in an interorganizational project context. Subsequently, Study 2 was undertaken to investigate the impact of POR on performance improvement. Findings The results show that POR is a hierarchical and multidimensional concept, comprising two primary dimensions: (1) proactive project organizational resilience (PPOR) and (2) reactive project organizational resilience (RPOR). The proactive dimension further includes two sub-dimensions: readiness and collaboration. Furthermore, the results indicate that POR can improve project performance through the mediating effect of risk management performance and that network density positively moderates the linkage between RPOR and risk management performance. Practical implications Practitioners can benefit from this research by understanding the effective strategies for assessing and enhancing resilience capability when operating construction projects. Originality/value The findings contribute to the body of knowledge by (1) developing a validated scale to measure resilience in the project environment and (2) unveiling the black box between different dimensions of POR and performance.