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How do you manage the pressure? : How time, type, complexity and cultural diversity affects the relationship between leadership styles and project success

The study examines the relationship between project leadership styles and success when affected by pressures such as time, project type, complexity and cultural diversity. The research examines the two well-known leadership approaches of transformational- and transactional leadership, and argues that transactional leadership, which has less focus on the leader-follower relationship, is more suitable and successful in projects with limited time. The transformational leadership style, which has more focus on vision and relationship between the followers takes time to build, and is therefore more successful for long-term projects. In order to examine this, a questionnaire was developed and sent out to 56 project leaders around the world. Findings indicate that time in projects have a negative effect on project success, and that both transformational and transactional leadership style has a dampening effect on this negative relationship, hence increasing the success. Furthermore, the study finds strong correlation between the two leadership styles, indicating that these should not be seen as two different attitudes, as leaders can show behaviors from both the transformational and transactional leadership style, possibly explaining the similar dampening effect. No further significant moderating effects were found in the variables project type, complexity and the project’s cultural diversity.

Identiferoai:union.ndltd.org:UPSALLA1/oai:DiVA.org:uu-202611
Date January 2013
CreatorsJohansson, Per, Cherro, Samir
PublisherUppsala universitet, Företagsekonomiska institutionen, Uppsala universitet, Företagsekonomiska institutionen
Source SetsDiVA Archive at Upsalla University
LanguageEnglish
Detected LanguageEnglish
TypeStudent thesis, info:eu-repo/semantics/bachelorThesis, text
Formatapplication/pdf
Rightsinfo:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess

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