The Impact of Organization’s Dynamic Capabilities on Information Systems Project’s Success in the Jordanian Telecommunication Sector

Information Systems (IS) ecosystems change rapidly which makes IS projects’ success challenging. Project success eventually impacts organizational competitive advantage which is a major concern for telecommunication organizations. dynamic capabilities (DC) are needed for organizations to continually transfer, shift and reallocate their organizational capabilities according to the dynamic changes occur in the surrounding ecosystem. This paper aims at investigating the impact of organizational dynamic capabilities (DC) on IS project success in telecommunication organizations in Jordan. A survey is used as an instrument of research in order to achieve the research's main objectives. The study is carried out by surveying (233) employees who participated in IS projects. The survey paragraphs are validated and approved by a panel of experts. Consequently, data extracted from the questionnaire is statistically analyzed using the Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS) and AMOS applications. The findings reveal that employees in telecommunication organizations recognize and apply the concept of DC (Dynamic Capabilities) at a (High) level. Results also show that rate of IS projects success in telecommunication organizations in Jordan is (High). It also shows that DC along with its four main dimensions, contribute in all three dimensions of IS project, and that project capabilities play a major role mediating the impact of DC on IS project success. The study has several contributions on both academic and practical levels. For example, it links DC for becoming basis for software projects success.


Introduction
Information Systems (IS) business has lots of challenges. That's, IS environment is known to be complex, turbulent and it's changing rapidly (Kelley & Nakosteen, 2005;Zahay, Griffin, & Fredericks, 2004). Also IS work is structured in projects (Marinho, Sampaio, Lima, & Moura, 2014). Projects are known to have limited and tightly scheduled resources with predefined cost (Lee, Keil, & Kasi, 2012). Projects also tend to focus on particular customer needs, neglecting the interaction with other business dimensions and the external environment (Vainio, Tuunanen, & Abrahamsson, 2005) that affects one of the main sources of innovation (Mathiassen & Vainio, 2007). Keeping in mind that, innovation is a major dimension of the DC components. Whereas, DC has a promising future for providing sustainable competitive advantage by integrating and reconfiguring multiple changing and comprehensive knowledge resources which are critical for projects to succeed and excel (Vainio et al., 2005). DC promises has not been empirically verified, especially for IS projects and in telecommunication contexts. Therefore, because the telecommunication industry is very dynamic and highly competitive in Jordan, the research adds value by testing DC application in telecommunication industry, and testing how much DC can really impact a sustainable competitive advantage.
Thus, within this step, innovation happens (Cohen & Levinthal, 1990;van den Bosch et al., 2003;Zahra, S. A., Larraneta, 2015) Transformation and reconfiguration, which were earlier mentioned by Teece (2014), Alinaghian (2012) as the ability to perform continuous alignment and realignment of tangible and intangible assets to constantly implement the seized opportunities and implementing opportunities, also happens within the absorbing process. Transforming exactly occurs during in internalization process (Within absorbing knowledge stage) with the use of the absorbed knowledge from sensing, seizing and shaping.
 Sensing Teece (2014), identifies sensing as gaining knowledge about the external and internal environment and making decisions about the strategic direction, the researcher believes that it is not sensing, but rather gaining knowledge which refers to the first dimension. Yassien (2015) defines sensing as the faculty/capability by which the organization perceives an external or internal stimulus and translates it to opportunities or to face a threat.
Higher abilities to sensing means higher abilities to perceive and recognize stimulus as opportunities or threats.

 Shaping
This paper agrees with Alinaghian (2012) that shaping follows sensing whereas shaping is the ability to constantly formulate reasonable responses to the sensed opportunities through modifying existing contexts, developing and exploring new contexts for existing businesses.
Shaping to respond to the sensed opportunities and threat is a relative action which depends on organizational strength and weaknesses.
Thus, identifying how to respond to the sensed opportunities can be done using SWOT analysis, which is used to generate business strategies and responses that use strengths and overcome weaknesses to take advantage of opportunities, and avoid threats.
 Seizing Teece (2014) sees seizing as mobilization of resources to address the needs and the opportunities, and to capture value. Alinaghian (2012) defines seizing as the ability to constantly priorities and select shaped opportunities or threats to manage, and allocate resources to capture opportunities developed or to avoid/mitigate threats. (Jugdev & Moller, 2006) On the other hand, it had been criticized by several writers that it is too narrow and limited in scope (Baccarini, 1999;Ika, 2009;Yassien, 2017) to capture the complex, multi-stakeholders and multifaceted nature of IS projects (Nelson, 2005) as it had been described in the previous section.
Moreover, operational success does not always mean strategic success, especially when operational success is not aligned with organizational strategy, it is considered a failure instead. Accordingly, the importance of different measures were realized (Ika, 2009) and caused a great shift in literature to consider different criteria such as client satisfaction, strategic objective and business success. (Ika, 2009;McLeod et al., 2012;Yassien, 2017)However, most of the authors agree upon considering project management process as one important dimension of the measure, but not sufficient when handled alone. Thus several authors provided more comprehensive definitions for project success. (Baccarini, 1999;Nethathe, Van Waveren, & Chan, 2011). Westhuizen & Fitzgerald (2005) proposed to append two elements to traditional standpoint of project success: quality of project management process and satisfaction of stakeholders' needs. (Pankratz & Basten, 2018) enhance the understanding of project success mechanisms and shed light on an area that is often treated as a black box. They identified several ladders for IS project success including Budget, schedule, functional requirements, non-functional requirements, efficiency, customer satisfaction, and system usage. Pinto & Slevin (1988) ensure the importance of project success over time and introduce an instrument to measure project success. It consists of two main dimensions, project and client, each with several factors. (Nelson, 2005) argues that project success must be seen through the eyes of different stakeholders and that project success must be seen as process and outcome success. He considers product as part of the process, same as Pinto & Slevin (1988), but add learning to the outcome . Shenhar, Levy, & Dvir (1997) suggest four success dimensions, namely: project efficiency (same as golden triangle), impact on the customer (same as product), business and direct success, and preparing for the future.
Other authors provided full comprehensive models that include many of the discussed dimensions in literature. For example, El-Masri (2009) introduces IS success model that constitutes of five perspectives: process success, product success, operational dimension , strategic and financial impact, stakeholder satisfaction process-wise and the outcome-wise. Barclay (2008) also developed Project Performance Scorecard (PPS) frameworks that can help in assessing Information System project outcomes while learning from Information System project management practices.
Howsawi, Eager, Bagia, & Niebecker (2014) proposed a systematic framework with four levels. The four levels are: Project process, Products and deliverables, Business of the project to the stakeholders, Context and externalities.
Although, the El-Masri (2009), Barclay (2008) and Howsawi et al. (2014) models are comprehensive enough to include nearly all of the thought aspects, but unfortunately, they are hard to be measured and unrealistic to use, especially with small projects that take short time to be accomplished. The mentioned assessments may need more time than the project development itself.
Besides, it had been recorded that IS projects assessment mainly varies with different and sometime contradictory stakeholders' perspectives (Barclay, 2008), which may be impossible to reconcile between them. McLeod et al. (2012) work expanded the concept of project success to include more than the iron-triangle parameters as shown in table 1. Taking in to consideration that in practice not all criteria elements may be applicable for all projects and all the time (Bannerman, 2008;Shenhar et al., 1997).  Basten, Joosten, and Mellis (2011) identified three models to evaluate the most influential factors on IS project success: Customer satisfaction, process efficiency and adherent to planning. Their empirical study shows that customer satisfaction is the most influential on the perceived overall success. Efficiency has only a slightly lower importance towards IS project success. Camilleri (2012) also emphasizes that there are four levels for project success start at corporate success, and ends at operational success.
The research in hand is built mainly upon the model of McLeod et al. (2012) in operationalizing project success, and used client satisfaction elements from Basten et al. (2011) work, for the following reasons. First, the models gather both objective and subjective views in a simplified way. Second, the chosen factors can be unambiguously defined in this study. Third, the nature of the independent variables of the current research is strategic Zahra et al., 2006). Furthermore the mentioned criteria consider evaluation form several stakeholders' perspectives including top management, which is specifically a very important view to consider when looking at DC. (Ika, 2009;Jugdev & Moller, 2006).
Moreover, it is important to consider time-related elements of criteria when talking about DC. DC is a strategic issue that prepares the organization to build a long lasting competitive advantage, and evaluating such issue cannot be only applied on short term and operational results.
Finally, it is important to add the fact that IS domain (setting of this research) places a great emphasize on subjective issues such as user satisfaction (Jugdev & Moller, 2006).

Project Capabilities (PC)
Project Capabilities (PC) concept was first introduced by Davies & Brady (2000), where they suggested that organizational capabilities can be modified to explain how complex product organizations build their project capabilities to expand successfully into business. They introduced the term project capabilities (PC), in which they consider PC a subset of the previously defined organizational (operational) capabilities (Davies & Brady, 2016a). PC is the particular knowledge and experience required dealing with specific customers' needs and requirements, also developing bids or offers, and initiating and implementing projects (Davies & Brady, 2000).
Brady & Davies continued their work (2004) to propose a complete model of how PC can be built. The model consists of two levels of building PC: the project level and the business level. Project level, where exploratory learning initiated, transferred to other projects, and eventually saved into organizational knowledge base for managing projects. Second Level, the business level, when organization uses (exploit) the knowledge gained from the first level to ijbm.ccsenet.org International Journal of Business and Management Vol. 15, No. 4; create capabilities that influence organizational resources and perform routinized project activities. Davies and Brady, in their final work (2015), clarified theoretically that DC and strategic management control and mobilize PC. Davis andBrady (2000, 2015) confirmed the importance of research stream in this area to study how DC and PC may work together to benefit high-tech and complex projects, they also found that it may be helpful to provide a lens to improve "our understanding of how firms implement strategies and learn through projects". Davies & Brady (2015) also suggests that PC is developed to face the changing conditions in dynamic environment as the case in this study. They also contribute by differentiating PC from DC by considering PC as operational and a type of organizational capabilities while DC is strategic, arguing that organizations depend on certain DC to manage PC to achieve better results, which coincide with the definition of both the DC and the organizational capabilities and also with the presented model for this study. It coincides with Söderlund & Tell (2009) that project-based organizations rely on DC to find new opportunities and exploit their potentials.
The researcher agrees with Davies & Brady (2000;2015) that DC impacts organizational (operational) capabilities to manage projects and also agrees that PC is operational and thus DC impacts the operational PC.
Ghapanchi & Aurum (2012) also support the same concept and performed first of kind study regarding the impact of DC on Open source software projects performance which is similar to the subject of this study.
Ghapanchi & Aurum (2012)  It is true that Davis & Brady (2015) contributes by setting the foundation of the topic, but the topic still blur and unclear and it also needs a lot of research, especially that this topic has a poor number of research that study it, and the theoretical foundation was rarely tested empirically. However, the subject is very important to be tackled as it is shown in section 3.4.

Research Model and Hypotheses Formulation
The main purpose of this paper is to investigate the possible impact of DC on IS project success while considering the mediating role of Projects Capabilities (PC) in telecommunication industry. Figure 1 presents the research's model. The model shows DC as independent variable, while IS project success as dependent variable, whereas PC is considered as the mediator. The proposed model suggests studying the impact of DC on IS project success, considering the mediating role of PC. DC acts on PC to keep sustainable competitive advantage through improving IS project success, which constitutes the fourth hupothesis of the current paper.

Research Methodology
This research is applied and carried out for descriptive and explanatory purposes. The quantitative approach is used; thus, a survey is a typical strategy for collecting information from the respondents.
The paper is applied on IS projects in Jordanian telecommunication organizations which consists of three main organizations: Zain, Orange and Umnia.
A questionnaire was designed and developed based on an extensive literature review. The definitions of constructs, variables and references are discussed in Table 3, and all the measures items used for individual constructs are shown in Appendix. The draft questionnaire was tested by scholars and experts, which led to minor modifications in the wording of some survey items. All multiple-item variables were measured on a 5-point Likert-type scale from "strongly disagree" to "strongly agree".

Sample and Data Collection
The research is applied on IS projects in Jordanian telecommunication organizations which consists of 3 main organizations: Zain, Orange and Umnia. This research uses probability sample (proportional stratified random sample) to collect data, 260 questionnaires were distributed and Only 233 of them were fully completed by 310 Employees who are working in IS projects in the three Jordanian telecommunication organizations as shown in table (4), thus the recommended number of the distributed questionnaire is 175 (AL-Najjar, F., AL-Najjar, N., & AL Zuabi, 2013) This research uses probability sample (proportional stratified random sample) to collect data. The researcher distributed 260 questionnaires. Only 233 of them were completed fully.   Table 6 shows the demographics of respondents that included genders, age, education level, type of occupation, job position, years of experience and average monthly income.

Research Quality and Standards:
1. Validity Validity refers to the certainty level in which a result really measures the assumed concept (Sekaran & Bougie, 2013). It can be obtained through arbitration, whereas a number of professionals screen the questionnaire to provide their opinions (AL-Najjar, F., AL-Najjar, N., & AL Zuabi, 2013, 147). The researchers referred to a number arbitrators who arbitrated the questionnaire in earlier stages.
Also, the researcher accomplished a pilot test of (10) respondents to refine the questionnaire, to uncover problems in answering the questions, and to identify clarity and validity of the questionnaire. Consequently, The researcher updated the questionnaire according to their notes, and finally it was translated into Arabic in order to make it clearer to respondents.

Reliability
"Reliability is an indicator of a measure's internal consistency." (Zikmond, W., & Babin, 2012, 257). A measure is reliable when the measurement has the same result even when it's repeated.
Cronbacht Coefficient alpha is the most popular test for reliability (Sekaran & Bougie, 2013, 229). The measurement varies between 0 (No consistency) to 1 (Complete consistency). Usually coefficient between 0.80 and 0.95 reflects a very good reliability (Sekaran & Bougie, 2013, 229), which is the case for this study as shown in table 7. ijbm.ccsenet.org International Journal of Business and Management Vol. 15, No. 4; Table 7 suggests the values of reliability concerning each construct in the questionnaire. The values range is between (0.850) for DC and (0.895) for client satisfaction. The overall (questionnaire) reliability value is (0.879). It is noted that the reliability value for the dependent variable is (0.850). All these values are considered to be high and appropriate for the study purposes (AL-Najjar, F., AL-Najjar, N., & AL Zuabi, 2013).

H 0 1: There is no significant impact at level ( ≤ . ) for Dynamic Capabilities on IS Project Success.
A stepwise multiple regression test is conducted to investigate the impact of DC dimensions on IS project success. Therefore, DC dimensions are analyzed according to their statistical contribution in explaining the variances of IS project success.
Table (8) presents the stepwise results. Results show the availability of two models. The first model contains the shaping dimension with fair statistical contribution of IS project success explanation with R 2 (0.114). Also the shaping dimension has a fair correlation factor R (0.338). Value of t is (5.461) with a significant value less than .05 (Sig=.000) and Beta value is (0.338).
The second model contains shaping and knowledge absorbing dimensions with fair statistical contribution of IS project success explanation with R 2 (0.131). Also the model has a fair correlation factor R (0.362

3 Third Main Hypothesis
H 0 3: There is no significant impact at level ( ≤. ) for Project Capabilities on IS Project Success.
A Simple linear regression test is conducted to investigate H 0 3 hypothesis. Results of the test are shown in table (10). F value is (77.440) with significant (.000) which means that the null hypothesis is not accepted, and the alternative hypothesis is accepted. This implies that there is a significant impact at level (P≤ 0.05) for Project Capabilities on IS Project Success. Change of one standardized unit of project capabilities changes IS project success by 42.8 % standardized units, as Beta value is (.428) (t =8.800), also R 2 value (.183) implies that project capabilities explains 18.3 % of IS project success.

H 0 4: There is no significant impact for Project Capabilities to explain the impact of Dynamic Capabilities on IS Project Success.
Direct and Indirect impact was tested using AMOS 22.0. Results are shown in table (11) where Chi 2 value is (7.885) with significant impact at level (P≤ 0.05) (α = ***) for Project Capabilities to explain the impact for dynamic capabilities on IS Project Success, which means that the null hypothesis is not accepted, and the alternative hypothesis is accepted. Results show that the direct impact for project capabilities on IS project success is (.428) with (CR=6.949) and (α =***). The direct impact for DC on IS project success is (0.174) with (CR= 2.832) and (α =0.005). The indirect impact for DC on IS project success is (0.18) with α =***. Concluding that PC explains 18% of the impact of DC on IS project success in telecommunication industry.

Discussion
A comparison between the current research findings with previous studies is presented below: H 0 1: There is no significant impact at level ( ≤ . ) for Dynamic Capabilities on IS Project Success.
First hypothesis according to this research is not accepted and the alternative hypothesis has been accepted with a fair significant impact for DC on IS project success in telecommunication industry in Jordan. This finding goes in line with the proposed foundations of DC in theoretical studies, whereas the direct impact of DC on organizational performance and sustainable competitive advantage had been discussed earlier theoretically by many authors (Augier & Teece, 2009;Eisenhardt & Martin, 2000;Yassien, 2015), but practically slightly discussed (Chang, 2012;Leonidou, Leonidou, Fotiadis, & Aykol, 2015;Lin, Su, & Higgins, 2016) Moreover, a direct impact for DC on IS project success, upon to the researcher knowledge, has never been discussed neither practically nor theoretically, which considered a major contribution.
This paragraph discusses the four sub-hypotheses related to H 0 1. The alternative sub-hypothesis of H 0 1-1 has been confirmed in this research with a fair significant impact of knowledge absorbing on IS project success in telecommunication industry in Jordan. This finding is consistent with the proposed foundations of DC in theoretical studies considering Knowledge Absorbing as part of DC (Augier & Teece, 2009;Davies & Brady, 2016a;Eisenhardt & Martin, 2000;Yassien, 2015). It's also consistent with the findings of theoretical and practical studies of D'Souza & Kulkarni (2015) and Biedenbach & Müller (2012) that prove using interviews and online survey which Absorb knowledge contributes to performance outcome in general.
Regarding the other three sub hypotheses, upon the best knowledge of the author, there was no research studies found on the impact for sensing, shaping and seizing as main factors on IS project success. But, there were several theoretical studies which ensure their impact as sub-factors of DC on organizational performance, productivity, and competitive advantage.  (2015), that DC and strategic management control and mobilize PC and that organizations depend on certain DC to manage their PC to achieve better results. The results also coincide with Söderlund & Tell (2009)'s results that project-based organizations rely on DC to find new opportunities and exploit their potentials. Practical studies were not found, so this study provides a major contribution in this regard. H 0 3, hypothesis according to this research is not accepted and the alternative hypothesis have been accepted with a fair significant impact for project capabilities on IS project success in telecommunication industry in Jordan. This finding goes in line with the concept that running projects efficiently and effectively (Achieving organizational strategy) as pointed by researchers (Andersen, Birchall, Arne Jessen, & Money, 2006;Turner & Zolin, 2012) would lead to higher rates of project success and better organizational impact.
This result also goes in line with the studies of (Davies & Brady, 2000, 2016a who confirmed the importance of research stream in this area to study how DC and PC may work together to benefit high-tech and complex projects.

H 0 4: There is no significant impact for Project Capabilities to explain the impact of Dynamic Capabilities on IS Project Success.
H 0 4, hypothesis according to this research is not accepted and alternative hypothesis have been accepted with a significant impact for project capabilities to explain the impact of DC on IS project success in telecommunication industry in Jordan, which is considered another major contribution for this study.

Theoretical and Practical Impact
Bredin (2008) points out that the biggest dilemma of projects implementation occurs when temporariness of projects meets the permanence of the organization, which causes tension between project's autonomy and the desire of management to implement stable and routinized systems to keep the operations under control (Davies & Brady, 2016b). PC tries to solve the well-known aspect of organizational theory differentiation vs. integration tension (Lawrence & Lorsch, 1967). In project implementation, there is a strong need for differentiation because projects are temporary endeavor designed for unique and customer-related tasks (DeFillippi & Arthur, 1998). However, the need for the balance between the two perspectives is important; organizations must keep long term and strategic perspectives to create long lasting performance and projects must keep highly efficient customerfocused.
Focusing on differentiation limits organization's perception of project implementation to low-level and operational rather than being strategic (Kawamura & Takano, 2014) which does not reflect the whole picture and purpose of project implementation, and skip the main purpose of implementing these projects in the first place, which is mainly to meet the organizational strategy (Melkonian & Picq, 2011).
Integrating the strategic dynamic capabilities with operational project management activities can have a great impact on organizational and project success. Running projects efficiently and effectively (Achieving organizational strategy) as pointed by researchers (Andersen et al., 2006;Turner & Zolin, 2012) would lead to higher rates of project success and better organizational impact.
Although DC was researched in relation with many fields including its original field (Strategic Management) (Barreto, 2010), it was rarely studied in relation with project management knowledge field within IS industry.
This scientific and critical gap motivated the researcher to focus on this particular knowledge area whereas the author seeks to study it through the model presented in the next section.

Conclusion
A main problem arises here because of the lack of coordination between strategic activities such as DC and operational activities such as project management activities, due to the well-known dilemma of Organizational Theory: differentiation vs. integration tension. The dilemma appears clearly in this research, as the paper shows a noticeable impact of DC on IS project success with small numbers, which implies that telecommunication organizations lack integration and coordination between DC and project management activities.
Statistical analysis of the data mainly highlights the following conclusions. First DC along with its four main dimensions, contribute to all three dimensions of IS project success (Operational success, client satisfaction and organizational success). Most influencing capabilities of DC are the shaping and knowledge absorbing. Project success is mostly achieved on operational level. Telecommunication organizations lack integration and coordination between DC and project management activities. Project capabilities play a major role mediating the impact of DC on IS project success.