How do public owners’ dynamic capabilities improve project resilience in megaprojects: a configurational perspective

Purpose Recent studies suggested that owner dynamic capabilities (ODCs) enabling public owners of megaprojects to activate, orchestrate and reorganize resources to uncertainties were beneficial to improving the project resilience of megaprojects. However, most of them pay insufficient attention to the specific context of long cycles and deep uncertainty in megaprojects, neglecting the causal complexity that different dimensions of ODCs and learning mechanisms interact with each other in terms of enhancing project resilience. Therefore, this study aims to systematically unveil the complex causality among ODCs, learning mechanisms and project resilience of megaprojects. Design/methodology/approach This study introduces a configurational perspective to explore how multi-dimensional ODCs combine to improve project resilience in megaprojects along with different organizational learning mechanisms and learning orientations. Based on 330 ODC events in 19 construction megaprojects, a multi-temporal crisp-set qualitative comparative analysis method is adopted to extract configurations of ODCs for project resilience improvement and unveil their evolution features over the whole megaproject lifecycle. Findings Six configurations are identified for improving project resilience in megaprojects, including cognition-dominant, cognition-deficient, transformation-dominant, innovation-driven, value-co-creation and exploitative-transformation configurations. The results also indicate that distinct megaproject stages appeal to corresponding ODC configurations for project resilience improvement under unique uncertain contexts. Originality/value This study not only makes theoretical contributions to the literature on dynamic capability and project resilience in the megaproject management field but also provides useful practical guidance for public owners of megaprojects to better utilize ODCs for project resilience improvement.