Project Managers’ Leadership Styles in Information Technology Sector of Pakistan

By Muhammad Khalique Ahmad, Abu Bakar Abdul Hamid and Sazali ABD Wahab

In these competitive and turbulent times, project organisations face severe challenges. Despite the advancement of project management tools and techniques, the rate of project failure exceeds that of success. Regardless of calls for further empirical studies on the role of project leadership, researchers struggle to find the best leadership styles for project success. New digital transformation phenomena have forced organisations to offer more autonomy and decision-making authority to those at lower hierarchical levels. In this scenario, top management support plays a facilitator role. To the best of the researcher's knowledge, no past studies have examined these critical project success factors simultaneously in a project environment. Embedded in the theories of contingency, goal-setting, and social cognition, this study raised the hypothesis that project managers’ leadership styles impact project success via the mediation of goal clarity, empowerment, and self-leadership as well as the moderation of top management support. Data was collected by administering a cross-sectional survey to 289 project organisations in the IT sector. The results demonstrated that project managers' transactional leadership style does not impact project success because goal clarity has an insignificant association with project success. However, the transformational leadership style showed a positive impact on project success because empowerment significantly and positively relates to project success. The project manager's empowering leadership style was also found to positively influence project success through followers’ self-leadership. Additionally, top management support revealed a significant moderating role by strengthening the relationship between empowerment and project success. This study successfully fills theoretical gaps by introducing a novel moderated mediation model. The findings also offer useful insights to practitioners by revealing that project managers’ transformational leadership and empowering leadership are needed to enhance and encourage employee empowerment and self-leadership, and ultimately secure project success.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Partridge Publishing Singapore
• Release date: Oct 26, 2021
• ISBN: 9781543767124

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Copyright © 2021 by Ahmad, Hamid, Wahab.

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Contents

Acknowledgements

Dedication

About The Authors

Chapter 1 Preamble

Chapter 2 Scholarly Reviewed Analysis

Chapter 3 Scientific Investigation Method

Chapter 4 Information Discovery

Chapter 5 Discourse And Conclusion

References

Appendices

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

We deeply appreciate the invaluable assistance given by professor of PUTRA Business School including Professor Sazali Abd Wahab and Professor Abu Bakar Abdul Hamid; and in particular, Dr Muhammad Khalique Ahmad who were deeply involved in this study.

We specially acknowledge Ms Mazni Mahadi for her immense secretatarial efforts in completing the project.

We are so grateful for the support from 289 IT software companies in Pakistan who participated in this project

DEDICATION

To my lovely wife, sons and daughters

Muhammad Khalique Ahmad

To my wife and kids

Abu Bakar Abdul Hamid

To my wife and children

Sazali Abd Wahab

ABOUT THE AUTHORS

Muhammad Khalique Ahmad

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Dr Muhammad Khalique Ahmad holds a PhD degree from Putra Business School (UPM Malaysia), an MBA from Institute of Business Administration (IBA) Punjab University Lahore, and Bachelor of Civil Engineering from University of Engineering and Technology Lahore (UET), Lahore, Pakistan. He has served 17 years in the industry local & multinational environment. His key research areas are leadership, engineering management, project management, operations management, organizational behaviour and entreprenureship.

Abu Bakar Abdul Hamid

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Dr. Abu Bakar A. Hamid is Professor of Marketing and Supply Chain Management attached with PUTRA Business School Malaysia. He earned his BBA and MBA from Northrop University (USA) and PhD degree from University of Derby (UK, 2003).

He has demonstrated an excellent record of teaching and supervision for more than 30 years both undergraduate and postgraduate levels. Above all, his achievement in graduating more than 45 PhD candidates and 21 Post Doctoral Research Fellowship are under his supervisions proves his ability, capability and passion. He has shown excellent records of impactful research and publications which directly has strengthened his expertise in the area of his interest. He managed to secure several competitive national grants and consultant for various projects and later profoundly published in more than 300 articles in competitive international journals, proceedings, books and book chapters.

His notable contributions are recognized locally and internationally, as proven by the multiple invitations he had received as visiting professor, invited speaker, reviewer, and board of editor in journals, external assessor, and internal and external examiner. With such caliber, he has much to contribute to the academia worldwide and was pronounced The Best Supply Chain Professor by The Golden Tigers 2019.

Sazali Abd Wahab

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Prof. Dr Sazali Abd Wahab is professor of management and organizational sustainability at Putra Business School, Universiti Putra Malaysia (PBS-UPM). Prof Sazali serves as the Adjunct Professor for University of Jos (UNIJOS), Nigeria and University of Science and Technology (USTC) Chittagong, Bangladesh. In recognition of his significant contributions to the strategic management and business domain, various leadership roles, researches conducted, and papers published on various management and business issues, he was appointed as the Fellow of Chartered Management Institute, UK (FCMI) in 2019. Prof Sazali is professionally recognized for his multi roles as the regional keynote speaker, moderator and paper presenter, international and local higher education academic consultant, advisor and strategic leaders, assessor for professors’ academic promotion, international journal reviewer, postgraduate programs advisor and assessor, PhD viva-voce examiners, PhD coach, mentor and motivator. As at 2021 Prof Sazali has successfully written more than 250 impactful academic publications which include more than 100 articles, 18 academic books together with various chapters in books mainly focusing on sustainable development goals (SDGs), organizational sustainability, sustainable organizations performance, organizational and corporate behaviors, inter-firm technology transfer and international joint ventures. His works have been regularly published in many reputable, high indexed and cited international and local journals. He has successfully supervised more than 40 PhD and Masters students. Prof Sazali holds the prestigious professional leadership certificates of Oxford Advanced Management and Leadership Program, University of Oxford (OAMLP, 2015) and Authentic Leadership Program (ALD, 2013), Harvard Business School (HBS). Prof Sazali also holds a certified Apple Foundation Trainer (AFT) from Apple Asia Singapore. Currently he serves as the committee members of Oxford Business Alumni (OBA) Kuala Lumpur Chapter and Harvard Business School Club Malaysia (HBSCM). His academic works can be found in Amazon.com, Barnes & Noble, eBay.com, Emeraldsight.com, Springer, Google Scholar, Research Gate, and LinkedIn. As a trained lawyer, Prof Sazali passionately teaches advance research methodology module and various management courses at doctoral and master’s levels.

CHAPTER 1

Preamble

1.1 Introduction

The first chapter presents the introduction of the study. It starts with the study’s background, followed by reports from a preliminary study containing communication with professionals working in the field. The problem statement then gives a view of past research, brief results for each path, and the literature and contextual gaps. The last section discusses the research objectives and research questions, operational definitions of the variables, and the study’s significance.

1.2 Background

In the race to create business value, organisations run their businesses’ operations through projects, turning to project management to help them move beyond positions of competitive advantage or parity (Jugdev and Muller, 2005; Kazmi et al., 2016). Projects have become the strategic and tactical tool for organisations’ competitive advantages (Zhang et al., 2018) and survival strategy (Ul Musawir et al., 2017). Nonetheless, projects are different from organisations in terms of their uniqueness, novel process, and definite start and end (Turner and Muller, 2003). Additionally, the factors affecting the success of a project necessarily affect the success of the organisation, but this surprisingly may not be true vice versa (Tripathi and Jha, 2018). When a project is successful, it delivers advantages to the project’s firm and its stakeholders, which accomplishes commercial objectives (Ika, 2015). Successful projects also fulfil organisational objectives through timely completion and satisfaction for customers and stakeholders (Raziq et al., 2018).

The Information Technology (IT) sector, in particular, is characterised by a prevalence of project-based organisations (Ali et al., 2018). The IT sector was preferred for the current study due to its prominence and valued contribution to the global and Pakistani economy, where it has a widespread impact on industrial and business processes (Holmes, 2018). In 2016, USD11.5 trillion was the real volume of the global digital economy, comprising 15.5 percent of global gross domestic product (GDP). On average, over the past three decades, an investment of USD1 in digital projects has produced a surge of USD20 in GDP, 6.7 times greater than for non-digital investments (Huawei and Oxford Economics, 2017). Meanwhile, with a population more than a 200 million, Pakistan stands as the sixth most populated country in the world and the second most populated Muslim nation (The Nation, 2019; World Population Review, 2019) with a nominal GDP per capita of USD1,641 in 2018 (Finance Division of Pakistan, 2018). Amounting to USD3.5 billion, Pakistan’s IT sector’s share has reached almost one percent of national GDP (Board of Investment, 2019) and is projected to rise to at least 3.5 percent in the next five years. During the 2018-19 fiscal year, Pakistan’s software exports were eight percent greater than the preceding year (Export, 2019). Moreover, IT export remittances rose to USD887.470 million at a growth rate of of 26.24 percent from July 2019 to February 2020, in comparison to USD702.990 million during the same period the previous year (GOP, 2020). The IT industry size is targeted to surpass USD20 billion by 2025, as per the digital policy of Pakistan 2018 and Pakistan Vision 2025 (Board of Investment, 2019).

Past literature has revealed expanding activities and investments in the Pakistani IT sector, both private and public. Pakistan has more than 2,000 IT firms and call centres, which is not surprising as 60 percent of its 200 million population are aged between 15 and 29. Additionally, it has over 300,000 English-speaking IT experts, 13 software technology parks, and more than 20,000 IT engineers and graduates produced per annum (Board of Investment, 2019). Regarding freelance development, Pakistan has been graded at number four globally (Board of Investment, 2019). The country also has experienced professionals available to firms at all levels, including programmers, IT managers, and so on (World Bank, 2020). Despite its huge potential, Pakistan’s global market share in computer services has been minimal and relatively stagnant at just 0.7 percent (World Bank, 2020). Moreover, despite its mammoth workforce and capital investments, exports declined by almost two percent from the 2017-18 fiscal year (Export, 2019), which is a continued trend that has eventually led to the country’s per capita IT goods exports decreasing by 80 percent between 2005 and 2017 (World Bank, 2020).

In addition, the project industry depicts a bleak scenario with a failure rate that is higher than its success rate (Raziq et al., 2018; Ul Musawir et al., 2017). IT organisations are wasting an average of USD101 million for every USD1 billion spent on projects because of poor project performance, compared to the worldwide average of USD114 million for every USD1 billion spent (PMI, 2020). In summary, about 67 percent more projects and 11.4 percent more investments fail outright due to undervalued project management (PMI, 2020). Despite investing in project managers’ project management skills, technical skills, and experience, both developing and progressive countries are facing the same phenomenon of project failures, and software projects are not an exception (Butt, 2017; Ebad, 2016; Hayat et al., 2010; Jalil and Shahid, 2008). Unfortunately, the literature on IT project management mainly addresses this issue in the Western context, while in developing countries like Pakistan, it has been largely ignored (Kanwal et al., 2017). Therefore, software development projects put enterprises at greater risk (Faisal et al., 2006) and are not easy to manage in Pakistan (Shahzad et al., 2017).

At a time of extraordinary change, success requires people equipped with the skills and mindset to deliver big and bold projects (PMI, 2020). However, to be successful, project management only considers specific processes and tools while ignoring the project type and its fit with the project manager’s personality (PMI, 2013). Researchers claim that the most significant project management component for business organisations is human capital, i.e., the project manager (Saade et al., 2015). Project managers are the chief executive of the temporary organisation. Their roles in setting goals and motivating team members are emphasised more than their limited roles in planning and executing work (Turner and Muller, 2003). PMI’s (2020) report shows that most organisations place almost equal focus on cultivating leadership skills as they do technical skills (65 percent and 68 percent, respectively) to avoid failing projects. In this context, the link between project performance and the project manager’s leadership style has gained empirical attention (Maqbool et al., 2017; Müller et al., 2018). The project manager’s leadership has become a key success factor in the IT sector, indicating the significance of his/her competencies, roles, and leadership influence (Kayworth and Leidner, 2001). On this basis, this research concludes that the continuous problem of project failures underscores the reliance of a project on the project leader (Drouin et al., 2018; Raziq et al., 2018).

Organisations are in a fix because despite adopting seasoned project management techniques, the project failure rate in project-based organisations is worrying and accelerating (Albert et al., 2017; Joslin and Muller, 2016a). Adding to the problem is the diminutive impact of leadership on the success of projects (Dayan and Benedetto, 2009; Liu and Cross, 2016). Project organisations are still in a great dilemma on whether leadership has a direct role on project success (Fenwick and Gayle, 2008; Ogbonna and Harris, 2000) or an indirect role through some process (Mir and Pinnigton, 2017; Zhu and Kindarto, 2016), presenting inconclusive and dissimilar results in the literature (Damayanti et al., 2019). For example, PMI’s detailed research found no impact of leadership on project performance (Nixon et al., 2012). Conversely, researchers have found that projects fail due to a lack of leadership (e.g., Berg et al., 2016; Nixon et al., 2012). Indeed, in projects, leadership is a prime reason for failures (Gottschalk and Karlsen, 2005). Thamhain (2004) also suggested that several vital qualities of leadership are major factors of project performance. Organisations’ main apprehension is thus whether a project manager’s leadership style can help resolve the continuous failure of project outcomes in the project management field (Love et al., 2011). The selection of the right mix of leadership is the most important as leadership success is influenced considerably by the choice of leadership behaviours (Dong et al., 2016; Eisenbeiss and Boerner, 2013). Moreover, in leadership research, situational and contextual moderators have been found to influence the relationship between leadership behaviours and outcomes (Bass 1995; Bilal et al., 2020).

Leadership refers to the relationship formed between a leader and his followers (Keskes et al., 2018). Leaders can mobilise the right team members to help the company move faster and achieve results that enable it to thrive in the project economy (PMI, 2020). Consequently, factors related to the project team play a significant role in project success, which refers to the accomplishments and realisations of project goals (Zaman et al., 2019). However, projects are uncertain in nature (Turner and Muller, 2003), as are innovative project processes, which produce further challenges for conventional project management (Bianchi et al., 2021). Ironically, Pakistan’s organisational environment typically does not prioritise motivating individuals to put extra effort and has an extreme lack of purpose clarity which can not be ignored in project environment (Ali et al., 2020; Raziq et al., 2018; Tayyab and Tariq, 2001) which may be due to high power distance. The project manager therefore holds the fundamental responsibility to communicate openly with his/her subordinates regarding the project’s objectives and purposes (Bockova et al., 2019).

Geoghegan and Dulewicz (2008) stated that a project’s problem-solving capacity is expressedly correlated to leadership features like empowerment. Traditionally, empowering behaviour relates to employees’ being encouraged to manage their own behaviour and to take initiative, which was initially considered a managerial prerogative (Mills and Ungson, 2003). Things are now moving from managerial control to employees’ self-management and self-leadership (Yun et al., 2006). Over the last three decades, empowerment interventions and practices have emerged as critical approaches to promoting employees’ constructive attitudes and behaviours. Another crucial challenge for organisations is to match leadership styles with the appropriate situations to gain maximum performance from their human capital (Amudsen and Martinsen, 2015).

Moreover, modern project management involves substantial capital investments and longer durations, due to which top management has gained immense criticality in strategic IT projects (Dong et al., 2009). Interestingly, both minimal and excessive management involvement are mentioned as the main reasons for project failures (Lauesen, 2020). Despite this confusing practical situation, top management support has a significant role in Pakistan’s IT projects under leadership control (Mughal et al., 2019). However, in organisational set-ups, top management is not solely responsible for project outcomes (Smith, 1999), as the impact of leadership may vary depending on the organisation’s characteristics. As such, the relationship between project leadership and project success needs to be demonstrated by empirical studies (Oh et al., 2019). Another issue hampering IT projects is the presence of a challenging gap between accepted wisdom in IT projects in Pakistan (Mughal et al., 2019) and the absence of leadership skills among project leaders in the country’s corporate arena (Sial et al., 2013). Adding to this, limited leadership capability and unsupportive top management are badly impacting the performance of projects in Pakistan (Ahmed and Mohamad, 2014). Unfortunately, empirical results on project leaders and the enabling conditions for top management support to improve IT project success have not provided much guidance for organisations (Kanwal et al., 2017; Madanayake et al., 2009).

1.3 Problem Statement

Despite the significant focus on project management and technology for the easy management of project execution (Alami, 2016; Haq et al., 2016), attaining project success is still a great challenge for IT organisations (Khan et al., 2020). This bleak situation calls for a shift in focus from technical topics to a broader organisational perspective (Geraldi and Soderlund, 2018). Critical success factors (CSFs) are common in projects today as a means of assessing and improving project success (Aga et al., 2016), out of which leadership has emerged as the most important CSF for project success (Yang et al., 2011). In the project environment, in terms of the human element, the project manager lies at the centre of the action (Ng and Walker, 2008; PMI, 2013), but his/her role does not get due attention (Javed et al., 2018; Muller and Turner, 2005; Raziq et al., 2018). Project leaders might lack specific sets of leadership skills to navigate the complexities necessary for successful project completion (Cleveland, 2020). Instead of merely examining direct relationships, there is an obvious requirement to add mediators when an area of study attains a certain maturity level (Bono and McNamara, 2011). In this regard, few studies have been conducted to identify the underlying mechanisms linking leadership to project success (Tyssen et al., 2014). Due to scarce empirical testing, researchers have called for studies to fill this gap and examine the project leader’s role in project success, either directly or through some mechanism (Ding et al., 2017; Muller and Jugdev, 2012; Raziq et al., 2018; Yang et al., 2011).

Martin and Liao (2013) recommended that future research examine the effectiveness of a blended, hybrid model with new leadership styles (Bilal et al., 2020) as varied leadership styles can coexist (Cooper, 2016). Additionally, organisations are successful through both leaders and subordinates (Jha, 2013). Follower competency can thus play a vital role in mediating leadership behaviour (Kindarto et al., 2020), which clearly indicates that a model with intervening variables represents the actual reality of projects (Clarke, 2012). Moreover, in leadership research, situational and contextual moderators influence the relationship between leadership behaviours and outcomes (Bass 1995; Bilal et al., 2020). Researchers therefore recommend looking at moderators to fine-tune leadership theory (Kindarto et al., 2020) and explore inconsistent results in leadership research (Crede et al., 2019).

In this context, although leadership literature classifies various leadership styles and their probable impacts on project success (Raziq et al., 2018), there is still no consensus on one best style (Clarke, 2012; Damayanti et al., 2018; Lei et al., 2020). For instance, researchers have established that a transactional leadership style is preferred for simple projects (Higgs and Dulewicz, 2004; Muller et al., 2017), a transformational leadership style is suited for complex projects (Ding et al., 2017; Muller et al., 2017; Turner and Muller, 2006), and an empowering leadership style is best for less structured, creative, analytical, complex, and uncertain projects (Faraj and Samabamurthy, 2006; Kahai et al., 1997; Manz and Sims, 2011).

Regarding the first leadership style, although past research on transactional leadership (Bass, 1990) reveals positive results on project performance (Alrowwad et al., 2020; Damayanti et al., 2018; Oh et al., 2019; Raziq et al., 2018; Tahir, 2015), scholarly attention has shifted away from it without fully exploring transactional leader behaviours (Young et al., 2020). This scenario may be due to its limited impact or adverse outcomes in different contexts (Afsar et al., 2017; Damayanti et al., 2018; Kindarto et al., 2020; Young et al., 2020). Moreover, researchers have suggested a direct link between transactional leadership and project success (Yang et al., 2011; Raziq et al., 2018) as well as an indirect link via goal clarity as a potential mechanism through which transactional leadership impacts performance (Bass, 1995; Tyssen et al., 2014). However, studies have also reported inconsistent mediation results of goal clarity (Bilal et al., 2020; Raziq et al., 2018). Therefore, researchers have called for more studies on this relationship for project success in the IT sector (Aga et al., 2016; Raziq et al., 2018).

Irrespective of project situations, project managers apply a certain level of transactional style (Turner et al., 2009; Yakhchali and Farsi, 2017). Nevertheless, this leadership style alone is not sufficient to ensure project success (Raziq et al., 2018). Additionally, unless firms do not migrate from the traditional model to an additional democratic approach (Jha, 2014), employees may not feel commitment and empowerment (Dewettinck and van Ameijde, 2011). This specific phenomenon falls under transformational leadership (Bass and Avolio, 1993) and psychological empowerment (Spreitzer, 1995). In fact, past studies have depicted the paramount role of the transformational leadership style in project performance across different contexts (Afzal et al., 2020; Mughal et al., 2019; Ul Haq et al., 2020; Zaman et al., 2019). Still, researchers emphasise that it has not been adequately investigated in the project management area (Kissi et al., 2013) and call for further empirical research on