Study On The Impact Of Humble Leadership On Project Success

Recently,project success has been the emphasis of research related to project management.Project managers and team members are the critical elements to ensure the achievement of project goals.Project-based organizations need a motivated,resilient,and committed project manager and project team who are willing to exert a high level of effort and strive to achieve their objectives despite facing difficulties.Among a variety of factors contributing to project success,project managers' leadership role and employees behaviors are vital in project success.However,the literature has largely ignored the project manager's impact and his/her leadership style and competence in project success.Some of the studies examined the transformational leadership style and its effect on project success as leaders behave differently in different situations.Thus,there is a need to study other leadership styles(e.g.,humble leadership)on project success.Previous studies have focused on technical issues(such as time,cost and quality,etc.)for project success.However,no work is done on human-relevant issues such as(psychological empowerment,team building,and innovative work behavior).Also,project management literature's main problem is that the underlying mediated and moderated mechanism through which humble leadership affects project success is mostly ignored.In order to cover the gap in the existing literature,we explored the mechanism and boundary conditions of humble leadership on project success,and provide theoretical basis and practical guidance for strengthening the positive role of humble leadership and promoting project success.The relationship between humble leadership and project success is essential to know how humble leaders motivate employees toward accomplishing a project.We postulate psychological empowerment,team building,and innovative work behavior as the three mediating mechanisms between humble leadership and project success.Besides,this study investigates top management support as the boundary condition for the effect of humble leadership on project success.Existing theories and research indicate that both the leadership role of project manager and senior management support is simultaneously important in project performance.Multiple studies have called for the need to explore the boundary conditions of the effectiveness of humble leader behavior,so we further investigate how top management support serves as a boundary condition for the motivational effect of humble leader behavior.This research has opted for the questionnaire survey method to gather empirical data.Following the convenience sampling method,data were collected from 337 employees the project managers,process leaders,and project team members working in information technology companies operating in Pakistan.The reason for selecting this sector is that the IT industry is project-oriented,where firms are given a fixed period.New technologies' life period is concise due to the high competition derived from new rivals and continuous innovation by the existing IT organizations that focus on disruptive innovation and introduce new technologies that have changed the way people live.As consumers seek these technologies to improve their lives,attaining project success is a great challenge for IT organizations.Thus,project managers' leadership styles are crucial in any project-based organization,especially in optimizing IT projects' success in this era of fast pace and rapid changes.The results found a positive correlation between humble leadership with project success,psychological empowerment,team building,and innovative work behavior.The study found out that psychological empowerment,team building,and innovative work behavior provided a partial mediating impact between humble leadership and project success.Besides,findings suggest that top management support moderated both the direct and indirect effect of humble leadership and project success through innovative work behavior.Top management support has not moderated the direct and indirect effect of humble leadership and project success through psychological empowerment,team building.Thus,the weaker correlation between humble leadership and project success is enfeebled by the lower management support.Moreover,the present study deepens the understanding of all endogenous variables used in the study in Pakistan and the project context.The results contribute significantly to project management's existing knowledge areas by revealing humble leadership on project success with triple mediating roles of psychological empowerment,team building,and innovative work behavior.Top management support plays a moderating role directly and indirectly except the relationship between humble leadership and psychological empowerment and team building.Grounding our research in Conservation of resource theory,we posited that humble leadership enhances psychological empowerment,team building,and innovative employee behaviors and how the project team becomes motivated towards achieving the project goals.How superior management support moderate the relationship between humble project managers and the project team directly and indirectly towards accomplishing the project.This thesis helps further investigation into the impact of a humble project manager.It highlights the importance of different theoretical models for studying various aspects of project team members' contentment.The topic is of interest to theory and the organizations,as more and more companies are extensively relying on the project manager and project team members for their best outcomes.Superior decision-makers and project managers can get critical insight from this study to develop such policies that may help team members cope with demanding circumstances better.Results,implications,recommendations for future investigation,and implications are discussed.