Browsing by Author "Dr. Syed Muhammad Irfan"

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Crafting Careers of Project Management Professionals: The Role of Job Crafting in Fostering Sustainable Careers through Project Engagement
(Library Information Services, COMSATS University Islamabad, Lahore Campus, 2025) Danish Min Allah; SP23-RPM-005; Dr. Syed Muhammad Irfan; LHR TP 9829
Project management literature predominantly focuses on exploring and measuring project success, largely ignoring how project employees sustain their careers. Akkermans et al. (2020) suggest that there is a need to examine how individual agency, proactive behaviors, and contextual enablers contribute to boosting individual careers. They further suggest that project management literature needs to be integrated into other fields, such as careers and human resource management (HRM), to enrich this field. Project management scope expands from traditional construction projects to various domains of life, including software development, marketing, fashion design, and interior design, among others. Similarly traditional, waterfall rigid step-by-step methodologies to flexible, iterative such as agile, Kanban, hybrid, and lean methodologies have emerged. The software industry is among the fastest-growing sectors in Pakistan, and agile project management requires project team members to demonstrate proactive behaviors towards job design and be responsible for managing their careers. Based on Job Demands and Resources (JD-R) theory, this study aims to investigate project management professionals sustain their careers through job crafting, mediated by project engagement. We examine whether the contextual factor, such as protean careers, further strengthens these relationships. This study utilizes a cross sectional (time-lag) research design and survey approach to collect data from 315 employees working on software projects in Lahore, Pakistan. A structural equation modeling approach was used to analyze the relationship between the studied variables. We run the structural model using Hayes (2018) process model 7 and use self-developed estimands to analyze the moderated mediation relationships instead of using SPSS x macros. The results of this study show that job crafting significantly contributes to protean career orientation and career sustainability. Project engagement partially mediate the positive relationships between job crafting and career sustainability. The results of this study provide help to human resources managers, project managers, and organizations to develop strategies and policies to stimulate proactive behaviors, making employees responsible for their career sustainability.
Employee’s Creative Self-Efficacy and Creative Performance at Projects: The Mediating Role of Innovative Work Behaviors and the Moderating Role of Organizational Support
(Library Information Services, COMSATS University Islamabad, Lahore Campus, 2025) Noor E Iman; CIIT/FA23-RPM-005/LHR; Dr. Syed Muhammad Irfan; LHR TP 10112
In present VUCA software industry, agile methodology is seen as an important and efficient methodology for delivering successful projects with innovative outcomes. The success of agile projects depends on multiple factors. It majorly depends on processes employed but it also depends on employees’ personal and organizational resources. Our research is rooted in Job Demands–Resources theory and it investigates how employees’ Creative Self-Efficacy (CSE) transforms into Innovative Work Behavior (IWB). CSE is described as employees’ creative confidence and IWB involves the process from idea generation to implementation. Further, the study investigates how IWB mediates the link among CSE and creative performance at projects and to what degree does Perceived Organizational Support (POS) moderates the relationship between CSE and IWB. For analysis, a quantitative survey design will be adopted, data will be collected in two phases to investigate proposed framework. The target population for the survey will be employees working at agile projects in software houses based in Lahore, Pakistan. The findings aim to show how employees’ personal and contextual resources work together to foster IWB leading to creative performance in agile projects. The findings will also offer practical insights for software houses looking forward to increase employees’ creativity and performance.
I am my Own Project Manager: How Project Workers’ Self-Leadership Triggers Job Crafting and their Creative Performance
(Library Information Services, COMSATS University Islamabad, Lahore Campus, 2025) Amina Amjad; FA23-RPM-003; Dr. Syed Muhammad Irfan; LHR TP 9830
Individual agencies are crucial for fostering creativity and enhancing performance in software development organizations, particularly those with project-based operations. Through the mediating role of job crafting, this study examines how self-leadership, which refers to an individual's ability to inspire and influence themselves to enhance creative project performance, is facilitated. Additionally, this study examines how perceived organizational support for creativity serves as a moderator, suggesting that a supportive corporate climate enhances the benefits of job crafting on creativity. Grounded in Job Demands–Resources (JD-R) theory, this study examines how project workers utilize their personal job resources through self-leadership and redefine their roles through job crafting by accumulating these resources to enhance their creative project performance. Furthermore, in the presence of additional job resources from perceived organizational support, project employees are motivated and engaged in job crafting to further strengthen the proposed relationships. A quantitative, time-lagged survey design will be employed to test the proposed framework, collecting data from employees involved in software development projects. The findings aim to advance theoretical understanding of the interplay between self-leadership, job crafting, and organizational support in enhancing creativity. Practically, the results offer valuable insights into the software industry in formulating strategies and interventions that encourage self-leadership and job crafting behaviors to boost creative project performance
Uncovering Project Management Professionals Careers: A JD-R and Career Construction Theory Approach
(Library Information Services, COMSATS University Islamabad, Lahore Campus, 2024) Mahnoor; CIIT/SP23-RPM-008/LHR; Dr. Syed Muhammad Irfan; LHR TP 9621
The project management literature on how project employees experience their unique careers is still understudied, and there is little knowledge about the career paths of project employees. Interestingly, literature regarding sustainable careers, their antecedents, consequences, and boundary conditions is also in its infancy. This research addresses these research gaps by integrating careers and the project management field to understand better the procedures and structures that influence the career sustainability of project employees. Considering the individual perspective, this research uncovers and enriches our understanding of how job crafting behavior contributes to career sustainability and satisfaction through optimization of job demands and resources by considering Job Demands and Resources (JD-R) and Career Construction Theory Lense. Additionally, examine whether employee autonomy at projects as a boundary condition strengthens the proposed relationships. This study utilizes a cross-sectional (time-lag) research design and survey approach to collect data from 230 employees working on software projects in Lahore, Pakistan. A structural equation modeling approach was used to analyze the relationship between the studied variables. We run the structural model using Hayes (2018) process model 7 and use self-developed estimands to analyze the moderated mediation relationships instead of using SPSS macros. The results of this study show that job crafting significantly contributes to career sustainability and career satisfaction. Sustainable careers partially mediate the positive relationships between job crafting and career satisfaction. Further, the moderated mediation results show that additional job resources, such as job autonomy, further strengthen job crafting and career success relationships mediated by career sustainability. The results of this study provide help to human resources managers, project managers, and organizations to develop strategies and policies to stimulate proactive behaviors, making employees responsible for their career sustainability.