Moderating Role of Project Planning on the Relationships between Servant Leadership and Shared Leadership, and Project Success

Abstract

In general project failure is a common phenomenon in every industry, but IT Projects have relatively higher ratio of failures as compared to other industries. That is why researchers have been trying to find out various factors that may increase the chances of project success in IT sector. By their very nature, IT projects require a different approach for planning and exhibition of some unique leadership styles, such as servant and shared leadership styles, by project manager that heavily relies on active involvement of team members. Therefore, this study investigates the moderating role of Project Planning on the relationships between Servant Leadership and Shared Leadership, and Project Success by analyzing the data collected from 263 employees working in project based leading IT companies located in Rawalpindi and Islamabad. Furthermore, this study significantly contributes toward project management literature. Results of this study indicates that both the servant and shared leadership styles improves the chances of IT project success. Moreover, the results also show that Project Planning positively moderates the relationship between Servant Leadership and Shared Leadership and Project Success in IT projects. Therefore, project managers and project management practitioners in the IT sector can increase the chances of project success by exhibiting shared and servant leadership styles through formal project planning