رهبری تحول گرا در یک محیط مبتنی بر پروژه: مطالعه تطبیقی ​​سبک رهبری مدیران پروژه و مدیران خط

Leadership is widely considered to be an important aspect of project-based organising and there are several reasons to suggest that transformational leadership is of particular relevance in this context. However, there is a dearth of both theoretical and empirical work on leadership in project-based organisations. The aim of this paper is to report the findings of an empirical study comparing the relationship between transformational leadership style and employee motivation, commitment and stress for employees reporting to either project or line managers. The results show that although project managers are not perceived as less transformational, the relationships between transformational leadership and outcomes tend to be less strong for employees reporting to project managers than for those reporting to line managers. Implications for future research on leadership in the project context are explored.

Much of the current work on leadership – in both the general leadership literature as well as in specialist project management literature – stresses the importance of so-called `transformational leadership' [1] and [2]. Transformational leadership is a concept that has come to prominence in the last two decades, and is also associated with terms such as `visionary' and `charismatic' leadership, e.g. [3] and [4]. Collectively, Bryman [3] labelled these `new leadership styles' to distinguish them from other prominent models of leadership that emphasise leader characteristics, leaders behaviours or a contingency perspective (see for example [5] for an overview of the literature). Transformational leadership is associated with strong personal identification with the leader, the creation of a shared vision of the future, and a relationship between leaders and followers based on far more than just the simple exchange of rewards for compliance. Transformational leaders define the need for change, create new visions, mobilise commitment to these visions and transform individual followers and even organisations [1] and [6]. The ability of the leader to articulate an attractive vision of a possible future is a core element of transformational leadership [7]. Such leaders display charisma and self-confidence. While a leader's charisma may attract subordinates to a vision or mission, providing individualised consideration and support is also needed to gain desired results and helps individual subordinates achieve their fullest potential. Individualised consideration implies treating each individual as valuable and unique, and aiming to aid his or her personal development. It is in part coaching and mentoring provides for continuous feedback and links the individual's current needs to the organisation's mission. Finally, intellectual stimulation is also part of the transformational leadership style. An intellectually stimulating leader provides subordinates with a flow of challenging new ideas to stimulate rethinking of old ways of doing things [1], [6], [8] and [9]. Transformational leadership is often contrasted with transactional leadership. Transactional leadership is based on (a series of) exchanges between leader and follower. Followers receive certain valued outcomes (e.g. wages, prestige) when they act according to the leader's wishes [6] and [10]. Transformational leadership goes beyond the cost-benefit exchange of transactional leadership by motivating and inspiring followers to perform beyond expectations [6]. As Hater and Bass [11] point out, contrasting transactional and transformational leadership does not mean the models are unrelated. Burns [10] thought of the two types of leadership as being at opposite ends of a continuum. However, here we follow Bass [6], who views transformational and transactional leadership as separate dimensions. This viewpoint implies that leaders could show both transactional and transformational behaviors. Bass argues that transformational leadership builds on transactional leadership but not vice versa. Transformational leaders (when compared to transactional leaders) were shown to have subordinates who report greater satisfaction, motivation and commitment, and who more often exert extra effort. Transformational leadership is also associated with higher levels of trust in the leader on the part of subordinates, which in turn leads them to show more so-called “organisational citizenship behaviours” [12] and [13]. In sum, leaders with a transformational style are seen as more effective by subordinates and superiors and tend to have higher performing units and businesses [14] and [15]. The aforementioned findings were mostly obtained in non-project-based organisations. The question we ask here is whether this style of leadership is also relevant to the project-based context. The issue of how to lead employees in project-based firms is one that attracts considerable attention in the specialist project management literature [2], [16] and [17]. Leading commentators have recently begun to suggest that transformational leadership may be of particular interest in the project-based context. They stress for example the growing importance of emotional and motivational aspects of the role of project managers, and the necessity for project managers to develop faith in and commitment to a larger moral purpose in their role as chief executive officers in temporary organisations [18]. Project managers are conceived of as leading “a diverse set of people despite having little direct control over most of them” [16, p. 467], and transformational leadership resonates with the leadership demands of project-based organising in emphasising the visionary, inspirational role of leaders [2]. Because project managers are conceived of as leading “groups of talented people in an environment of collaborative bureaucracy” [17, p. 72-2] the emphasis has shifted from control and compliance to identification, loyalty and commitment. Such processes are central to transformational leadership. Thus, transformational leadership is a style of leading that may suit the project context well. Although it is widely accepted that “projects are becoming increasingly complex, requiring multi-disciplinary teams comprising of specialists and consultants from different organisations” [19, p. 71-1], not all project teams are the same. There are different forms of project-based working and these have varying consequences for leader behaviour and effectiveness. Different types of project organisation are used to organise the labour process. Although there are different typologies to describe these, the results are generally quite similar [20] and [21]. Drawing on the work of Turner [20] these include for example the functional hierarchy, the co-ordinated matrix, the balanced matrix, the secondment matrix and the project hierarchy. The choice of which form to use depends on several factors including one of which is of particular relevance to us in this paper – the question of where to locate project resources. There are two extremes that we can discuss to draw out important theoretical issues – (1) resources can be either isolated from normal operations being placed in a task force, or else (2) integrated with operations by working on a project from their normal place of work [20]. In cases where it is decided to isolate the resources, project members are released full-time from their nominal organisational homes, for example the function or department with whom they generally work, and placed in a separate project location. Cleland and Ireland [16] describe a `pure project organisation' as one in which the project manager has complete line authority over the project personnel such that project participants work directly for the project manager. Turner [20] describes this form as `project hierarchy'. Project team members may work on `isolated' projects in the company with whom they are employed (often in a project room laid aside for the duration of the project) or at another location (for example offsite at a client company). In both cases, the relationship between the project member and their traditional leader – for example their line manager – is altered. The line manager may have less impact on the behaviour or performance of the project team member because the two are isolated from each other for the duration of the project. In this case, contact can be maintained through planned social events or chance meetings, but the day-to-day contact is likely to be reduced. For the duration of the project, the line manager is also less able to influence the learning events or career development of the project team member, and has fewer opportunities to assess the person's progress and performance except at a distance. The relationship between the project team member and the project manager as leader is likely to be different from the traditional leader–follower relationship in a functional hierarchy. Although the project manager is responsible for the day-to-day work of the team members – often for long periods of time – he or she often has an unclear clear role to play in the overall development, career plans and longer-term goals of the project team member. As stated, helping subordinates develop to their fullest potential is an integral part of transformational leadership. This role may be harder to play for project managers than for line managers in a traditional functional hierarchy. The decisions and issues regarding development and careers – of crucial importance to team members – often remain the formal responsibility of the functional or line manager. This becomes problematic, however, when projects last for long periods of time. A situation can arise where the project manager has most insight into the performance of the project worker, and perhaps the best insight into the kind of developmental experiences that might benefit the worker, but no formal authority to influence these kinds of issues. Allowing the project manager to provide leadership at this level is one way to resolve this difficulty. However, this can meet with resistance from the line manager or be hampered by the rules and regulations set by the organisation for for example conducting performance appraisals or succession planning. Added to this, in the heat of the project much can be gleaned from a project members performance in terms of their potential, but when projects are disbanded and people allocated to new projects with pressing deadlines, these issues tend to lose urgency and the communication needed between project leaders and line managers does not always take place. Significant learning opportunities – for both individual project members and for organisations in general – can be lost as projects disband and members go their separate ways [22]. Perhaps signalling the difficulties project team members experience in managing the interface between project working and traditional structures of career management, a study of career development in the film industry by Jones and DeFillippi [23] highlights the transitory nature of projects and necessity for project team members to be proactive in managing their own careers and developing their own vision of career development as opposed to relying on other parties. As support for career development and progress are widely associated with the leadership role, this may suggest that leadership is less important to project-based personnel than to personnel in more traditional organisational relationships, a consequence of project-based working we might expect to intensify for project members working across multiple projects and thus under various project leaders [24]. All of this suggests the necessity for closer scrutiny of the idea that transformational leadership is an appropriate and effective leadership style for managers in project-based organisations. Keegan and Turner [25] identified several other features of project-based working of potential relevance to leader–follower interactions beyond the ambiguous role of project managers in influencing rewards and career progress of project team members. They also mention shifting and unstable collegial and managerial relations and low levels of belongingness reported by respondents working in projects. While commenting on the positive effects of project working including flexibility, co-operation with colleagues from other functions and departments, and the opportunity to work closely with clients, respondents also articulated a less desirable side of (multiple) project working associated with feelings of disconnection, low levels of social integration, and lack of clarity regarding the role of (project) leaders in giving direction, creating career development paths and managing the learning processes taking place across multiple projects and differing time frames. These aspects of project-based working were described as `stressful' and frequently associated with the removal of artefacts that serve to create stability of a sense of having a `home' such as one's own desk, post-box, computer facilities or simply somewhere to hang one's hat. Keegan and Turner [25] coined the term `no-home syndrome' to summarise these features. Older research had already pointed to the stressful and ambiguous facets of working in an environment characterised by low levels of formal structure and reporting relationships and correspondingly high levels of technological change or competitive pressure creating the necessity for flexibility in orientation to clients and the market, see for example [26], [27] and [28]. Burns and Stalker [26] for example theorised that although strict formal hierarchies associated with `mechanistic' management forms or `machine bureaucracies' [27] are often depicted as undesirable places to work, more attention should be given to the potentially negative aspects of so-called `organically managed organisations' including stress and uncertainty arising from the necessity to constantly exercise high levels of discretion and autonomy while working in a fast-moving, uncertain and temporary organisational environment. Alvesson [29] and [30] has conducted several studies on leadership in knowledge intensive firms and describes for example the disintegrative tendencies of this kind of work deriving from frequent changes of project assignment and shifting, unstable relationships between those working on projects and the people who (nominally) lead those projects. The disintegrative tendencies described by Alvesson [30] can be explained by that fact that the assumption that employees and their managers/leaders share the same work location does not hold true in many forms of project-based work arrangement. Location and payment are the defining features of traditional Western conceptions of work [31]. Hiltrop [32] suggests that organisational complexity and ambiguity is growing all the time as a consequence of external pressures, and that – `many people experience a sense of restlessness inside themselves with relation to their employers' [32, p. 70]. Modern organising conditions, in general, and project-based organising, in particular, may undermine strong identification between leaders and followers that is a core aspect of transformational leadership. The identification and trust-building processes involved in transformational leadership may thus be less likely to occur or less easy to achieve in such temporary, shifting relationships. To summarise, notwithstanding the positive results attributed to transformational leaders, and the apparent affinity between this leadership style and the challenges of leading in project-based work arrangements, we must bear in mind that research on the effects of transformational leadership has largely been conducted in traditional hierarchical arrangements. While the literature would suggest that transformational leadership could be highly relevant to and valuable for project-based firms, there is a dearth of empirical studies to confirm this and there is also reason to suggest that the effect of transformational leaders might be weakened by features inherent to project-based working, including the participation of personnel in multiple projects reporting to different project leaders. The aim of the present paper is to contribute to knowledge in this area by reporting the findings of a study on transformational leadership and its correlates, comparing project and line managers. To address whether transformational leadership styles in project-based contexts seem to produce the kinds of positive outcomes found in traditional line contexts, we examine whether perceptions of the leadership styles of project and line managers differ and whether the correlations between leadership and employee's motivation, stress and commitment are equally strong for employees reporting to both types of leaders. As stated, in previous research done in non-project-based contexts, employees' affective commitment to the organisation and their motivation (e.g. in terms of the effort they are willing to extend) were found to be positively related to transformational leadership, e.g. [33]. We extend previous research by addressing these relationships in a project context. We also assess the relationship between this type of leadership and perceived stressfulness of the job in the project context. Previous research in non-project-based contexts has shown negative relationships between transformational leader behaviour and stress, e.g. [34]. Based on the above we expect: Hypothesis 1. Project managers' leadership style is on average perceived as less transformational than that of managers of functional departments. Hypothesis 2a. Transformational leadership style is positively related to employee motivation and employee commitment and negatively to employees perceived stressfulness of the job. Hypothesis 2b. The relationships between leadership style, commitment, motivation and stress (see Hypothesis 2a) are weaker in project teams than in functional departments.

The aim of the current study was to extend previous research on the positive impact of transformational leadership on employee motivation and commitment by testing whether these relationships also hold when leadership is a temporary arrangement rather than a permanent one. The project workers involved in our study did similar work as the line workers. However, all of the project workers simultaneously reported to multiple project leaders and to all for limited periods of time. The line workers all reported to only one manager at a time, for an unlimited period of time. We compared perceived leadership and its relationship with motivation, commitment and stress in the project teams with that in the line teams. We did not find mean differences between the groups on any of the variables. Thus, on average, subordinates of the project managers in our sample do not perceive their leadership style as less transformational. However, we did find that transformational leadership correlates positively with commitment and motivation in the line teams, but that there is no significant link between transformational leadership and commitment in the project teams. We also looked at the relationship between this kind of leadership and stress, an outcome that is not considered as often in the literature on transformational leadership. The few available studies suggest a negative relationship between transformational leadership and stress and stress research in general has also pointed to the potentially beneficial role of social support from the supervisor or manager, e.g. [41]. Here, we find a strong relationship with one leadership variable (individualised consideration), but only for employees who have the more permanent working relationships with their boss. Thus, while line manager's individualised consideration appears to provide a buffer to employees in terms of stress, project manager's leadership style may be less related to stress outcomes for their personnel. This might suggest that employees reporting to project managers may not seek their social support from their project managers to the same extent.