Abstract
It is widely accepted that project leaders should adapt their behaviour to meet the unique leadership demands of a variety of situations. Recently, vertical, shared, and horizontal styles of leadership have gained prominence, especially in the project management literature. Several factors are believed to play a role in determining an appropriate balance between these leadership styles. This theoretical study explores the influence of project types, the stage in the project life cycle, organisational project management maturity, and the level of trust and collaboration between project team members on the appropriate balance of leadership styles in projects. This paper presents a conceptual framework of these factors, while empirical results will be reported on in the sequel to this paper.
Highlights
Leadership can be seen as the practice of influencing others to agree about work and how it can be done effectively, and as the process of enabling individual and collective efforts to accomplish a shared objective [1]
P2: The more complex a project, the more the appropriate balance is towards shared leadership
The above leads to proposition 4: P4: The higher the level of technology involved in a project, the more the balance is towards shared leadership
Summary
Author affiliations 1 Department of Engineering and Technology Management, University of Pretoria, South Africa. # The author was enrolled for a PhD (Project Management) degree in the Department of Engineering and Technology Management, University of Pretoria. Several factors are believed to play a role in determining an appropriate balance between these leadership styles. This theoretical study explores the influence of project types, the stage in the project life cycle, organisational project management maturity, and the level of trust and collaboration between project team members on the appropriate balance of leadership styles in projects. Verskeie faktore speel ’n rol in die bepaling van ’n geskikte balans tussen hierdie leierskapstyle. Hierdie artikel stel ’n konseptuele raamwerk van hierdie faktore voor, terwyl empiriese uitslae in ’n opvolgartikel gerapporteer sal word
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