گردش مالی مدیریت پروژه : علل و اثرات روی عملکرد پروژه

Changes in management personnel – variously termed displacement, succession or just turnover – have been found by many to have significant negative effects on organisational performance. This paper provides the results of a web-based survey designed to examine this in the project management context. The main findings are that turnover occurs predominantly during the execution phase of the project life cycle, with the main causes being related to career and personal development and dissatisfaction with the organisational culture and project management role. The results also confirm that turnover disrupts and negatively affects the performance of the project team, the project, and potentially negates the competitive advantage of organisations concerned.

The importance of the project manager and continuity of leadership is a recurring theme, both in practice and research (e.g., Sotiriou and Wittmer [1]). For many successful project teams, their invariable disbandonment on project completion is a regrettable, if necessary, destabilising factor (Heizer and Render [2]). Similarly, during the project life cycle, the team composition often changes to match the tasks to be implemented – further decreasing stability as well as adding an additional layer of management complexity (Kloppenborg and Petrick [3]). It is not surprising, therefore, that lack of continuity of individual managers is thought to be a primary factor behind inadequate project execution (e.g., Abdel-Hamid [4]; Rondinelli [5]), completions, system upgrades, morale, teamwork, workloads, group stress levels and “a host of other intangibles” (Longenecker and Scazzero [6]). Although the occurrence of staff turnover in general has been an area of substantial research,1 only a relatively small number have addressed the topic of management changes – variously termed displacement, succession or just turnover – with most concentrating on consequences rather than causes. The majority of these have pointed to a significant negative impact on performance and profitability (Birdir [7]). However, as noted by Carroll [9] ‘researchers have often ignored the organizational context of succession, the timing of succession relative to the organizational life cycle, and the type of transfer undertaken in control surfaces’. Adams and Barndt [10], for example, have also suggested that the idea of specifically choosing a project manager to see the project completely through its life cycle may need to be discarded in favour of selecting at each phase point, a new project manager best suited to the anticipated project environment. This paper describes a web-based survey designed to investigate this further. In particular, the goals were to: • find the reasons for project management turnover; • examine the extent to which project management turnover is associated with a particular phase of the project life cycle; and • investigate the effects of project management turnover on project performance.

The importance of the project manager and continuity of leadership is a recurring theme, both in practice and research (e.g., Sotiriou and Wittmer [1]). For many successful project teams, their invariable disbandonment on project completion is a regrettable, if necessary, destabilising factor (Heizer and Render [2]). Similarly, during the project life cycle, the team composition often changes to match the tasks to be implemented – further decreasing stability as well as adding an additional layer of management complexity (Kloppenborg and Petrick [3]). It is not surprising, therefore, that lack of continuity of individual managers is thought to be a primary factor behind inadequate project execution (e.g., Abdel-Hamid [4]; Rondinelli [5]), completions, system upgrades, morale, teamwork, workloads, group stress levels and “a host of other intangibles” (Longenecker and Scazzero [6]). Although the occurrence of staff turnover in general has been an area of substantial research,1 only a relatively small number have addressed the topic of management changes – variously termed displacement, succession or just turnover – with most concentrating on consequences rather than causes. The majority of these have pointed to a significant negative impact on performance and profitability (Birdir [7]). However, as noted by Carroll [9] ‘researchers have often ignored the organizational context of succession, the timing of succession relative to the organizational life cycle, and the type of transfer undertaken in control surfaces’. Adams and Barndt [10], for example, have also suggested that the idea of specifically choosing a project manager to see the project completely through its life cycle may need to be discarded in favour of selecting at each phase point, a new project manager best suited to the anticipated project environment. This paper describes a web-based survey designed to investigate this further. In particular, the goals were to: • find the reasons for project management turnover; • examine the extent to which project management turnover is associated with a particular phase of the project life cycle; and • investigate the effects of project management turnover on project performance.