An investigation of the influence of organizational design on project portfolio success, effectiveness and business efficiency for project-based organizations

• We investigate organizational design that influences project portfolio management effectiveness and success.
• We perform a comprehensive literature review on project portfolio management effectiveness and success.
• We conduct a quantitative study using a survey on the organizational design and the portfolio.
• We study the moderation effect of steering committees' involvement as a governance body on the organizational design and the portfolio success.

Many researchers have investigated the organizational structural factors and their influence on project success. Later, researchers moved towards investigating the portfolio success and effectiveness as a new area of study. We note that all such constructs are a product of strategy, and if not aligned correctly, a dichotomy will appear between strategy (portfolio) and its translation (structure) with an effect on performance. Our literature review revealed that no research has investigated the relationship between structure and portfolio elements. In this research we present the portfolio success and the Project Portfolio Management (PPM) effectiveness in one global construct which represents business efficiency for the project-based organization. A significantly strong relationship was then established between the project manager's influence on the organization – as part of its structure/design — and the business efficiency constituent variables. We also investigated steering committee's level of involvement which successfully acted as a moderator for the research established relationships.

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