Critical thinking, dynamic capabilities, and project performance: empirical evidence in the continuous improvement project domain

Most continuous improvement (CI) initiatives fail, and most proposals discovering critical success factors of CI focus on the organisational level. There is little empirical evidence supporting these factors at the CI project level. Moreover, current suggestions do not show a dominant set of factors influencing the performance of the CI project. This study empirically investigates the relationships between critical thinking (CT), dynamic capabilities (DC), and project performance (PP) in the CI project domain. The sample consists of 64 projects (unit of analysis), one per organisation. We use PLS-SEM in R and control organisational factors (a binary variable representing top management commitment to the CI project). CT is positively related to DC, and DC is positively related to PP. Unlike previous works, our model focuses not on traditional ‘soft’ organisational factors or ‘hard’ project factors but cognitive factors (CT) and higher-order routines (DC) at the project level. This study extends the current explanation of why CI projects fail or succeed by incorporating CT (of the project team member) as an indirect antecedent of PP through the development of DC of the CI project. Managers and researchers on quality/project/operations management can find valuable insights in this paper to favour future CI initiatives.