A power‐based leadership approach to project management

Abstract

The concept of leadership relates to power structuring whereby the project leader may lead and motivate through power disposition. Power, in its diverse guises, combines interpersonal and structural elements and can be enhanced through political manoeuvring. Power may also be distributed unevenly between individuals in the project team. In this article a power‐based model of project leadership is developed, underpinned by a behaviour‐performance‐outcome approach and an appropriate methodology is developed for testing the construction enterprises in China using structural equations modelling. The fitness indices show that the resulting model which postulates that the motivational function of good leadership operates through managing power gaps by means of power‐sharing and power‐amassing is acceptable. The effects (both predominant magnitudes and statistical significance) from the project managers' referent power to power‐sharing and power‐amassing show that the project manager's inherent personal traits and credentials are critical to his/her power exercising so as to motivate members to secure management effectiveness.

Keywords:

• Managerial behaviours
• motivation
• power
• project leadership

Acknowledgement

This article was supported by the Hong Kong RGC competitive earmarked research grant, project no. HKU 7021/02E.

Notes

1. Please refer to Mueller (1996), for an explanation of endogenous and exogenous constructs in structural equations modelling – a common statistical method used in model testing beyond simple correlation analysis.

2. See Coolican (1996) on goodness of fit, significance levels and the use of statistics in research. See Mueller (1996) on structural equations modelling.