Study of Effective Virtual Project Management through Emotional Intelligence, Empowerment and Leadership Style in Partly and Truly Global Projects

Abstract

Increasing globalization of organizations and proliferation of new technologies have made multi-cultural virtual teams not only a reality but important also. Global virtual team members rarely meet face-to-face and thus deal with challenges which not associated with traditional collocated teams (Lipnack & Stamps, 1997). These challenges faced by virtual project team members form the basis for the first phase of research. The research was conducted in three phases. Initially, in phase one of the research, important behavioral contributors to virtual project management were identified from the literature. The researcher gathered these contributing factors within a framework named the “Factor Reinforcing Model®”. This model was empirically tested through statistical method, against data on the relevant variables, obtained from a survey of fourteen software houses in Pakistan. Findings from the model conclude that several contributing factors of virtual project management (VPM), namely, communication, motivation, information security, trust building etc reinforce each other to lead to effective virtual project management. In the second phase of the thesis, the researcher conceptualized that Emotional Intelligence (EI) plays a very decisive role in the performance of managers even in a VPM environment. She tested the proposition that there is an overlapping relationship between the factors contributing to effective virtual project management and the competencies of emotional intelligence. Findings highlight that emotional intelligence together with soft skills and intelligence help in uplifting motivation, reducing cultural barriers, resolving conflict, building teamwork and collaboration and enhancing communication among professional project team members. Thus research findings establish that EI helps project managers to cope with the challenges of VPM through self-awareness, self-management, social awareness, and relationship management. In phase three of the research, the researcher analyzed the preferred leadership behaviour for effective project management. Leadership behavior is measured by concern for tasks and ivconcern for people in partly and truly global projects. Factors based on leadership behaviour were identified like participative decision making, open communication, conflict management, delegation of power, task monitoring, time management, coaching, and team work and a model for effective project management was proposed in leadership context. In addition to above, in the third phase, the relationship of social intelligence and leadership style in partly and truly global virtual projects was also analyzed. Results showed that social awareness and relationship management were positively related to concern for task and concern for people and was higher in truly global than partly global virtual projects. A model of effective virtual project management was proposed from research findings regarding SI. The relationship between empowerment climate and leadership style and customer service as a measure of effective project management was also analyzed in projects with varying degree of virtuality. Initially the researcher compared the empowerment environment among more and less virtual projects. Then she examined the moderating effects of degree of virtuality on the relationship between empowerment climate and leadership style. The findings of this research suggest that high empowerment climate and concern for people are highly demanded by truly virtual projects than partly virtual projects. A model of effective virtual project management was proposed with respect to empowerment climate, leadership style (concern for people) and customer service. Moreover, it was found that virtuality moderates the relationship between empowerment climate and concern for people. The findings of this research have significant implications for leadership skills and behaviours at partly global and truly global project management workplaces.