The Project Manager and Project Team Involvement: Implications for Project Leadership.

Executive Summary

Team leadership is vital to the successful performance of a project team. One important factor that influences the success of team leadership efforts is the structure of the project team. We identify four distinct project team models and their leadership implications. The relative degree of involvement of the project manager and the project team members is the primary characteristic used to distinguish between the project team models. Our findings suggest that each project team model imposes different challenges that should influence the team leadership approaches adopted by project managers.

Introduction

The subject of project leadership has captured the interest and attention of many researchers for several decades. Throughout the modern project era, project team structures have evolved to reflect the changes in the structure of the organizations that perform projects. In a corresponding fashion, the challenges that confront project-managers have evolved to reflect the nature and the implications of the project team structure. It is in the face of these emerging challenges that project managers must become project leaders.

Background

As early as 1962, Davis observed that organizations tend to evolve as they become more sophisticated and as the problems they face become more complex (Nicholas, 2001). These evolving organization structures gave rise to four types of project managers: project expeditors, project coordinators, matrix managers, and pure project managers. The four types of project managers were defined largely by the structure of the parent organization and the principal purpose they served. The implications derived from these four models influence the authority possessed by each of the four types of project managers and the control that each exerts over the various types of project resources including the project team members (Davis, 1962).

Galbraith further examined the intricacies of the matrix organization in particular. Specifically, Galbraith developed a continuum of project management structures that included three types of matrix organizations: the functional matrix, the balanced matrix and the project matrix. The continuum was anchored on each end by the functional organization and the project team, respectively, resulting in a total of five cases or models (Galbraith, 1971). Along the continuum from the functional organization to the project team, the relative degree of authority and control exerted by the functional managers decreases and shifts to the project managers. There are challenges that confront project managers to varying degrees in each of these five project management structures. These challenges include: