Impact of Leadership Behaviors on Project Team Performance: A Study on Software Projects of Punjab- Pakistan

Abstract

Many projects still fail despite the employment of established project strategies and techniques because the leadership ability needed for higher project team performance is found lacking. A project’s success is, in part, depending on effectively managing the constraints of your time, costs, and performance expectations. So as to attain this it's essential that the project manager possess and show applicable and appropriate leadership skills and behaviors. The current study could contribute to overcoming several leadership challenges encountered by organizational leaders particularly in IT context. The objective of this study is to contribute to the current and existing project management leadership research by exploring and considering that among boundary-spanning, change, task-oriented and relation-oriented leadership behavior, which behavior affects project team performance more. Data has been collected through a well-structured questionnaire from 235 project managers working in software houses located in Lahore, Islamabad and other cities of Punjab. Different statistical tools such as one way ANOVA, Descriptive Analysis, Linear Regression and Correlation analysis have been applied to analyze the data to produce results. The relationship among proposed leadership behaviors and project team performance is proved. The findings of the study provide clear understanding about the positive significant impact of selective leadership behaviors on project team performance. The study also provides significant implications for project managers to apply specific types of leadership behaviors to make the attitudes and behaviors of project teams more productive for the organization and for themselves as well. The limitations of the study and future implications for research have also been discussed in the study.