The Effect Of Project Manager's Paradoxical Leader Behavior On Construction Project Performance

Construction projects are often characterized by a large size,a high degree of asset specificity and complexity,which cause uncertainty and make the project implementation process complicated and changeable.Thus,the tensions and contradictions that project teams confront become increasingly salient and persistent.What is more,project managers often face contradictions arising from the inconsistent demands between the structure and the team members.Dealing with these contradictions well is a great challenge for project managers' management work.Therefore,project managers have to adopt a flexible management approach to resolve these contradictions or conflicts.Research on paradoxical leader behavior,although developed in the organizational field,has not given adequate attention to the area of construction project management.Using a paradoxical lens,the authors investigate whether and how project managers' paradoxical leader behavior,defined as the seemingly conflicting yet interrelated behaviors to meet contradictions in construction workplaces simultaneously and over time,influences construction project performance,and the moderating role of external uncertainty on the relationship between project managers' paradoxical leader behavior and team adaptation.The empirical analysis of a survey of 187 Chinese general contractors clearly indicates that there is a positive relationship between project managers' paradoxical leader behavior and construction project performance.Moreover,this relationship is fully mediated by team adaptation.However,the moderating effect of external uncertainty is not significant.The findings have significant theoretical implications by integrating leadership theory and paradoxical theory for effective construction project management in several ways.First,our findings enrich the leadership literature in the construction industry by examining a new type of leadership in managing and leading team members to deal with contradictions in construction teamwork.Furthermore,because paradoxical leader behavior is characterized by integrative complexity and holistic thinking cognition,our results empirically support the usefulness of the paradoxical leader behavior construct in explaining construction project performance.Moreover,we introduced the team adaptation as a mediating variable to explicate how paradoxical leader behavior improves construction project performance for the first time in the current construction research literature,which enriches the paradoxical leadership literature by uncovering its process through which it affects construction project performance.The findings have significant managerial implications for effective construction project management.First,we found that paradoxical leader behavior is helpful to increase team adaptation and in turn increase construction project performance.Chinese general contractors can benefit from the results by noting the importance of paradoxical leader behavior which will help them to cope with tensions or conflicts in their teams more easily.Moreover,to improve team adaptation in the changing environment and increase project performance,project manager could influence team members by stressing complexity sensitive and holistic thinking towards the competing demands and engaging in paradoxical behaviors.Last,general contractors can include paradoxical perspective training into leadership development programs.