Theory Building from Inter-organizational Project Management Learning in Iran Petroleum International Consortiums

Inter-organizational learning is one of the main sources of knowledge acquisition and development. Because of the limitation in financial, managerial and technological capacities in developing countries, they benefit from participation with international companies in executing their infrastructure projects. This would provide developing countries with plenty of opportunities for transferring and learning different capabilities such as project management. With inductive approach and by using a structured design of grounded theory, this study identifies important concepts and parameters in inter-organizational learning and presents their relationships in 6 propositions and a conceptual model. The results indicate that inter-organizational learning of project management capabilities requires attention to “intent of local companies to inter-organizational learning” as the core category, the level of foreign partner capabilities in project management, tendency of local companies in developing project management capabilities and commitment of employers to executing project management process as inter-organizational learning antecedence. Learning capacity of local companies, teaching capacity of foreign companies and communications and interactions between them are identified as learning context which is effective in learning level of tangible and intangible project management capabilities by using appropriate inter-organizational learning mechanisms.