Investigating the Role of Total Project Leadership on Project Success: A Case of Pakistan

Abstract

Prime goal of this research work was to find the role of Team Member Leadership and Strategic Leadership, in augmenting the competencies of Project Manager to achieve Project Success. The point of the study eventually, is to help projectized organizations and project managers in making programs for development of leadership and ideas that can support leadership as a mandatory characteristic among the participants of the project. The model of the study is based on the concept of leadership levels. The concept, according to DuBrin (2010) is that fundamentally, three levels of leadership in projects exist, which are: (a) Executive (b) Management (c) Operational Level Keeping in view these three levels, we can safely say that there is a corresponding relationship in terms of leadership between the executives of organizations; project managers and project team members that play their roles towards project success. The competencies of project manager are stressed by the existing project leadership practices as the main driving force in project success. Howell and Shamir (2005) state that lot of writers on the topic of leadership have a consensus that leadership is a co‐dependent association between the leader and the follower but yet, the theories of leadership are very “leadercentric”. Beyer (1999) and Yukl (1998) in Howell and Shamir (2005) also criticized fascinating leadership theories which promote the concepts of “heroic leadership” that single‐handedly, on their own, decide the fortune of the organizations and that followers are just a submissive brigade to the demands of leader. There are different thoughts and commentaries on project success. This was discovered during the study of literature. Team members and project managers mainly emphasize on typical goals of operation which are time, cost and quality to gauge the output of business whereas, top management is only concerned about the business results. Furthermore, the literature revealed that project managers are only recognized for leadership according to some theories of leadership. On the other hand, a few other theories established that prescribed leadership is viii becoming immaterial and that followers themselves are leaders. Leadership is meant to be distributed among numerous role players in a team. The research study had a structured questionnaire which was distributed to the executives, project managers and project team members in various projectized organizations only in Rawalpindi and Islamabad. The earlier mentioned questionnaire was designed to gather opinions regarding project accomplishment and leadership, especially the part portrayed by strategic and team member leaderships as efficient and effective role players that go together for the achievement of project success with the project manager. The outcome of the research study depicted:  The project success includes both the achievement of time, cost and quality triangle requirements as well as strategic business results.  A relation between the led and the leader is leadership and it must be spread to various participants on a team.  The role of team members empower the project leader and influence his/her behavior and resultantly determine the outcomes of leadership relationship thus, team members play an active role in leadership. With the help of enhancing project success, recommendations have been presented through total leadership including:  The definition and understanding of project success must be expanded at all levels by the management in projectized organizations.  The projects must be viewed as strategic arsenal by the executives of a project organization to compete in a competitive market.  Project team members must be considered as active players in project leadership relationship. The assumption that the project manager having good leadership qualities will make the team members to follow automatically is an old and obsolete idea.