Impact of relationship value on project portfolio success — Investigating the moderating effects of portfolio characteristics and external turbulence

Abstract

Companies today need project portfolio management (PPM) to cope with the increasing number of projects and use it to ensure comprehensive management, strategic alignment, and efficient use of resources. Moreover, customers are demanding more value from their suppliers. The management of a project portfolio and the corresponding customer relationship portfolio implies a link between PPM and relationship management. By combining the fields of PPM and marketing, this study hypothesizes a connection between relationship value and project portfolio success. Because both parties need to extract value from a relationship, relationship value is divided into relationship value for the customer and relationship value from the customer. The results are based on a cross-industry sample of 174 German, Swiss, and Austrian medium-sized and large companies and rely on two informants from each firm. We find a significant relationship between relationship value and project portfolio success as well as moderating effects of portfolio interdependency, portfolio size, and technological turbulence.