Ambidextrous Leadership and Sustainability-Based Project Performance: The Role of Project Culture

Junwei Zheng,Hongtao Xie,Guangdong Wu,Hui Xu

doi:10.3390/su9122336

Abstract

Most studies in the project management field emphasized the effects of leaders or managers, but these effects have rarely been examined at the project level. To cover this research gap, this study applies organizational ambidexterity theory to examine the effects among ambidextrous leadership, ambidextrous culture and sustainability-based project performance. Using a valid sample of 217 project leaders and members from Chinese construction projects, the method of multiple linear regression was adopted to assess the direct relationship among ambidextrous leadership, ambidextrous culture and project performance. Moreover, the bootstrapping technique through structural equation modeling, has been used to analyze the mediating effect of ambidextrous culture. Additionally, the sample data was divided into different groups according to the median value of the variables to conduct the ANOVA and to assess the within-group differences. The results indicated a positive and direct relationship that ambidextrous leadership has on project performance and ambidextrous culture. In addition, there was also a mediating impact of ambidextrous leadership on project performance via ambidextrous culture. Thus, ambidextrous leadership combined with transformational leadership as well as transactional leadership likely has a stronger positive impact on project performance through fostering the adaptive culture and consistent culture. Our findings contribute to an in-depth understanding of the role of the leader and culture for project outcomes. The project-based organization in construction projects could train project leaders’ ambidextrous leadership behavior to facilitate the formation of an ambidextrous culture and to increase project performance. Moreover, this study enriches the existing literature on leadership and project management by highlighting the important path of ambidextrous leadership and ambidextrous culture on the performance at the project level and going beyond the single leadership behavior or single culture.

Highlights

Numerous studies have indicated that the construction industry has a low efficiency level compared to manufacturing or electricity industries [1]
The results suggest that there was not a single factor structure that all items emerged, or one factor that accounted for the majority of the total variance
An estimate of the indirect effects of transformational leadership and transactional leadership on project performance were positive and statistically significant. These results suggested that the adaptive culture and consistent culture totally mediated the effects of transformational leadership and transactional leadership on sustainability-based project performance when both mediators were in the model, which provided the additional support for Hypothesis 4a and 4b

Summary

Introduction

Numerous studies have indicated that the construction industry has a low efficiency level compared to manufacturing or electricity industries [1]. To meet the requirements of technological, organizational and sustainable development, construction companies or project-based organizations should seek new operational and managerial approaches to achieve a more efficient production or construction process [2,3]. The project-based character burdens the project management and its implementation with paradoxes and tensions, project management processes are complex and nonlinear, which leads to an ever-changing cycle of events or requirements [5]. The organizational ambidexterity is necessary but difficult to be implemented at the project level in order to achieve the pre-defined goals and being innovative under the discipline. The firm-level ambidexterity is a topic recently discussed [7], issues such as organizational ambidexterity at the project level have not yet been addressed or developed in the literature

Objectives

Results

Conclusion