Leadership in the Project Environment: A Correlational Study of Leadership Practices and Project Performance

Business    Managers/Executives/Administrators

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TITLE: Leadership in the Project Environment: A Correlational Study of Leadership Practices and Project Performance
 
RESEARCHER: Dorothea T. Pomfret
School of Organizational Leadership
University of Phoenix
Unpublished doctoral dissertation: March 2008

OBJECTIVE
The purpose of this study was to determine whether a relationship existed between the leadership practices used by product development project managers and project performance.

METHODOLOGY
The study’s population consisted of project managers leading North America automotive product development teams in Michigan and the sampling frame consisted of 96 product development project managers employed by Johnson Controls’ North American automotive operations. Project managers’ leadership practices were collected from subjects’ cross-functional team members (between 5 and 15) who were asked to assess their project manager’s leadership using the Leadership Practices Inventory (Observer). Performance scores were provided by the organization for each participant.

KEY FINDINGS
No significant relationships were found between project performance and project managers’ leadership practices. The author suggests that “the range of performance scores available for this study may have been too narrow to detect a relationship with leadership practices” (p. 81).