The impact of customer knowledge management capability on project performance-mediating role of strategic agility

Purpose The purpose of this study is to examine the relationship between the customer knowledge management capability (CKMC) on project performance through strategic agility in the context project based software companies of Pakistan. The aim of the paper is to find out whether and how is customer knowledge beneficial for project performance and recognized as the important source of advancement of the knowledge management (KM) theory and the essential subject in practical ground. Design/methodology/approach In this study, non-probability, simple random sampling method was used to collect the data because it excludes bias from the data collection process. Although, the population of this research includes 307 employees working in different 30 public and private projects based software firms, operating in twin cities Rawalpindi, Islamabad. The respondents are project supervisors, team members, customers working on these different projects. Because of time limitation data has been collected within four months (i.e. November 2018 to February 2019) for this study, it is not time-lagged study and the data were collected at one time, so the design is cross-sectional in nature. The analysis was established using partial least squares-structural equation modeling (Smart PLS-SEM v.3.2.8) software to test hypotheses. Findings The results revealed the structural equation modeling that the components creating, transferring, integrate and influence ensure the most significant job in clarifying the customer knowledge and enhancing the capability to understand the customer needs and want which lead to decrease project delay, over consumption of the budget and directly lead to increase the project performance. The analyzed results also successfully justified the gap of this research study by showing the significant relationship between CKMC and project performance, also the indirect effect of CKMC through strategic agility on project performance more than its direct effect. So, the strategic agility plays positive and significant mediating role between CKMC and project performance, therefore the all sub-hypothesis and primary hypothesis were accepted. Originality/value This study sets the context with a brief summary of the key characteristics of the CKMC to improve the new product performance, enhance product/service quality, also reduce costs and enhance the competitiveness of organizations. Organization ought to acknowledge how to use KM to generate their revenues and achieve their goals. However, available techniques and methodology to measure the sufficiency are dissatisfying and consistent need for assessments and evaluations of this issue are felt.