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The purpose of this paper is to examine differences in manufacturing managers' perceptions of functional area power in manufacturing organizations to address the perception in the literature that manufacturing has little if any power in the organization.

Survey data gathered from 129 manufacturing executives in the USA are used to examine their perceptions of differences in functional power in manufacturing firms. Relative rankings of functional areas for four types of power – position, expertise, resource, and political – are used to examine perceived differences, and the relationship between power and the role of the manufacturing executive in strategic decision making.

Contrary to prior assertions in the manufacturing strategy literature, it was found that the manufacturing and marketing areas are perceived by manufacturing managers to be the most powerful functions, switching in their dominant roles depending upon the type of power. In addition, a relationship exists between position, expertise, and political power and the role of the manufacturing executive.

Although, this research includes a second respondent from a sub‐sample of firms, future research should examine not only the manufacturing managers' perceptions of intra‐organizational power, but also should dovetail the paper's findings with perceptions of managers in other functional areas as well.

Manufacturing managers can take actions to enhance their role in business‐level strategic decisions and be proactive in increasing the power of their functional area.

This paper addresses intra‐organizational power, which has not been examined in the manufacturing strategy literature from the perspective of the manufacturing manager's perception.

The purpose of this paper is to understand and identify the nature of evaluation criteria, levels and associations among levels of project success in development projects by NGOs in Sri Lanka.

The setting for this study is Sri Lanka, a country currently recovering from civil war and natural disasters and host to a large number of national and international NGOs involved in development projects. Data collection was conducted using a quantitative survey which obtained 447 responses. Multivariate analysis of data was conducted using confirmatory factor analysis and structural equation modelling.

The study confirmed that overall project success in NGOs could be assessed in three levels: project management (PM) success, project success and NGO success. The results conclude that there are strong associations among the three levels of project success; moreover, PM success and project success are indispensable for achieving NGO success.

This study extends existing research to confirm the presence of the three levels of project success and the interconnections among them. These findings can support subsequent research on development projects and also support the design of holistic evaluation tools to support project practices in NGOs.