Does a Project Manager Assignment Process Affect Project Management Performance Indicators? An Empirical Study

Abstract

Practitioners in most firms use intuition to assign project managers to projects, despite this decision being one of the vital factors contributing to project management performance linked to sustainable utilization of resources. Extant research reveals the need to improve the project manager assignment (PMA) process. However, existing empirical studies are currently limited, thereby restricting our understanding of this process to a specific context. This study builds on this limited area by extending our understanding to other contexts. Questionnaires and interview surveys were conducted with 73 informants across 12 firms, covering several industries engaged in different types of projects. The results provide strong empirical evidence of unstructured and ineffective PMA processes that significantly affect sustainability issues in terms of a thriving firm such as project manager performance, project manager rewards, and project success. This empirical evidence is a contribution to existing project management knowledge for three reasons: (1) empirical testing of a project management theory for the first time, (2) falsification of the conventional understanding of the theory of PMAs by using the concepts of an index rather than a scale, and (3) adding depth to existing knowledge by extending our understanding of PMA processes.