Prévue : Muhammad Mohsin MALIK

Jury

Abstract

Information Systems (IS) projects have become central to organizational digital transformation, yet they increasingly operate in environments characterized by technological turbulence, evolving stakeholder requirements, complex interdependencies, and continuous uncertainty. These conditions expose IS projects to disruptions that traditional project management approaches centered on planning, prediction, and control cannot always address adequately. Consequently, the capacity of IS projects to anticipate and adapt to disruptions has become increasingly important for maintaining project progress and achieving successful outcomes. Despite growing scholarly interest in project resilience, research remains fragmented regarding how resilience should be conceptualized and measured specifically within IS projects, what factors contribute to its development, and how it influences project success. This thesis addresses these gaps by developing and empirically examining the concept of Information Systems Project Resilience (ISPR) through three complementary studies. The first study develops the conceptual foundation of ISPR through an integrative literature review, drawing on research on resilience in organizational, project, and information systems contexts, as well as leadership in times of technological turbulence. Informed by the dynamic capabilities perspective, the study conceptualizes ISPR as a project-level resilience capacity comprising two complementary dimensions: anticipation and adaptation. It identifies leadership-related factors, organizational practices, and mindfulness-related capabilities as broad antecedent categories and positions ISPR as an intervening mechanism connecting these antecedents with multidimensional project success. Building on this conceptual foundation, the second study develops and validates a measurement instrument for ISPR. Following a multi-stage scale-development process combining literature review, 14 semi-structured interviews, focus-group refinement, a pilot study (n = 102), and validation with IS professionals (n = 317), the study produces a reliable and valid 20-items ISPR scale. The findings show that anticipation and adaptation are two complementary dimensions of ISPR and identify five IS project-specific factors through which resilience is enacted: external support, cross-functional coordination and communication, internal support, project management methodology, and project team expertise. The study further establishes the nomological validity of ISPR by demonstrating its positive relationship with project success. The third study extends this foundation by examining how ISPR develops and contributes to project success. Using a sample of IS and IT professionals (n=317) across Europe and partial least squares structural equation modeling, the study shows that transformational leadership positively influences both ISPR and project success, and that ISPR partially mediates the relationship between transformational leadership and project success. Furthermore, the results indicate that technological turbulence moderates the relationship between transformational leadership and ISPR, suggesting that the strength of this relationship varies with the level of technological change in the environment. The three studies advance IS and project management research by providing an integrated conceptualization, measurement, and empirical explanation of ISPR. The thesis shows that successful IS projects depend not only on planning and control but also on building the capacity to anticipate emerging disruptions and adapt effectively as conditions change. In doing so, it establishes ISPR as a theoretically meaningful and empirically measurable project-level construct and provides a foundation for future research on resilience in increasingly dynamic digital project environments.