THE INTERPLAY OF SHARED LEADERSHIP, DEGREE OF AUTONOMY, TEAM PERFORMANCE, COMMUNICATION AND PROJECT SUCCESS IN THE SOFTWARE PROJECT TEAMS

Abstract

Despite its shown effectiveness in project management, researchers have not given shared leadership the same empirical and theoretical attention as heroic, transactional, or transformational leadership. This study explores the influence of shared leadership on project success, precisely in software development project context. The research work additionally investigates the mediating role of degree of autonomy, team performance and communication in team as moderator. Data were collected from 266 team members working on software development projectS in Pakistan and was analyzed by the means of SPSS and SmartPLS through Structural Equation Modeling. It was found that shared leadership has positive influence on project success and degree of autonomy and team perforMance mediated this relationship. As hypothesized, it was found that communication significantly moderates the relationship between Team Performance and Project Success but moderation was insignificant on the relationship of Degree of Autonomy and Project Success The study discussed in details the theoretical and managerial implications. The current research work delivers a theoretically useful framework for understanding the success and usefulness of shared leadership in software development project teams. Specifically, the current results recommend the importance of considering team performance and the appropriate degree of autonomy in relation (used as mediators) to shared leadership processes. for organizations, they should boost shared leadership in projects but specifically where small execution team is working on development projects because it helps empowering the working team members, letting them to prompt their understandings on accomplishing the project targets and schedule.

VIII The primary limitation of the current research work is that it focuses on the project environment in Pakistan and keeps only its national context into consideration. The results of this study should be taken with caution and consideration because it involves the responses from such respondents who are either working currently on software development projects or they have worked recently on such project as a project team member.