Project Management Assignment
The globe has begun to focus on megaprojects following their increased popularity. Various scholars have developed literature material concerning the concept of megaprojects. Maddaloni and Davis (2017) state that a project has three factors, namely strategical alignment, costs exceeding the US $500 million, and a span of many years (1537). However, the level of failure of these megaprojects is increasing due to poor decision-making and misrepresentations. Turner, Muller, and Dulewicz (2009) state that in recent times, attention has moved from tools and techniques of managers to their competences (199). The type of leadership and the kind of impact on the success of the project are the focal points. There is a lot of spending on the sector of megaprojects, which makes it vital to consider the knowledge, skills, and personality characteristics that will eventually contribute to the success of the project.
Reading 1: Stakeholders
Projects and stakeholders working on them are a temporary organization. The project managers have to tune into the cultural, organizational, and social environments of where the projects stand. There is a deficiency in the evaluation of stakeholder management procedures at the micro-level of Public Infrastructure and Construction Projects (PIC) (Maddaloni and Davis, 2017, 1537). The minimization of the impact of megaprojects on the local community is not fully understood. This research study paper evaluates the different literature available concerning megaprojects how they relate to the local society. The study seeks to point out issues that prevent the full integration of stakeholder engagement on PIC projects—the study intends to challenge all assumptions on stakeholder management by proposing future developments.
Methodology
The methodology uses the Systematic Literature Review (SLR) and PRISMA regarding stakeholder management practices in PIC. In the systematic procedure, the best quality evidence was the criteria that included and secluded relevant research material. First of all, the researchers compiled a list of all keywords which were more connected to the objective of ‘investigating stakeholder management procedures on the local community affected by megaprojects development’ (Maddaloni and Davis, 2017, 1538). Moreover, discussions with senior academics and industry practitioners were an added advantage toward revealing the few words related to the study topic. The first procedure ended with a list of eight words, including megaprojects, large infrastructure projects, major construction projects, stakeholder analysis, stakeholder identification, stakeholder classification, stakeholder assessment, and the local community.
Secondly, the research involved the development of search strings. A Boolean operator *AND*/*OR* incorporated the keywords obtained from the systematic procedure to ease the search and access of all relevant literature material. Two academic databases, ABNI/INFORM Complete and Business Source Premier, provided related publications because they possess international coverage of some of the major journals in business. The search filtered the period of books down to 1997-2015. Most of the relevant publications on project management started appearing from the year 1997. Out of 91 papers selected, 34% came from two leading journals in Project Management, the International Journal of Project Management (19 documents), and the Project Management Journal (12 papers). The researchers established connections between three domains: megaprojects, stakeholder analysis, and the local community, with an effort to organize the framework.
Research Conclusion
Stakeholder management in PIC has extensively relied on traditional approaches. Ideally, the focus has been on stakeholders who have the potential to manage and control resources. There is a lack of an existing method that combines both the views of the primary and secondary stakeholders who the project impacts their daily lives. It is also evident that not much effort G toward understanding the social and political impacts of the significant PIC on secondary stakeholders. Moreover, there were very few instances when the objectives of PIC aligned with those of the local community. In this regard, seeking local community opinions at the initial stage of a project and monitoring the impact of the project at this level can result in the success of the project.
Reading 2: Leadership
This second paper differentiates between the leadership competencies of two types of leaders, project managers, and functional managers. In the past, scholars have looked for predictive measures that reveal the success of a project (Turner, Muller, and Dulewicz, 2009, 199). However, recent attention is moving towards the competence of the project manager. Suggestively, there could be a close inter-relationship between the success of the projects and the abilities of the project managers handling the project. This paper, however, aims to reveal that the leadership factor is not the highest criterion that determines the success of a project.
Methodology
In the study, a total of 414 project managers completed a psychometric test. The psychometric test involved a leadership development questionnaire (LDQ) which examined each manager with their profiles of leadership competencies. The LDQ contained 187 questions that compared the leaders’ competence against 15 competences. However, the study generalized the skills into three areas, namely: intellectual (IQ), managerial (MQ), and emotional (EQ). The survey avoided bias by presenting the LDQ questions in a random order to prevent an apparent nature of the sequence.
The study took place from a global perspective. The researchers distributed a link to a web-based questionnaire by email to two categories of people. The first were members of professional project management organizations via representatives of the country organization. The other group comprised of post-experience master students in the project management field, aided through their course directors (Turner, Muller, and Dulewicz, 2009, 204). The drawbacks of intra-method ratings, however, come in the sense that scores focused on self-assessment and not the holistic assessment by followers. The research ended with a six-step analysis of the competencies through methods like regression analysis, t-tests, and style-context fit.
Research Conclusion
The study revealed that candidates who have strong conscientiousness, sensitivity, and critical thinking are the ones fit for project management jobs. On the other hand, the general management sector appears to fit individuals with secure communication and development. Moreover, the success of the management of projects does not apply to general management. The results are less different from Goleman’s (1995) theory, which states that the success of any project comes from the combination of EQ and IQ without secluding the MQ factor (Turner, Muller, and Dulewicz, 2009, 213). As much as EQ suffices for both project and general management leadership roles, a project will also need strong MQ and IQ. Therefore, a careful application of these results may be the gateway to success both in a project and functional management.
Conclusion
Megaprojects are taking a new perspective all around the globe. The high level of investments into megaprojects and the disparity in output are the fundamental areas of concern for various scholars and researchers. Following the increase in failure of projects, their criteria for selecting the best managers now no longer focuses on tools and techniques but rather on their competences. The type of leadership that a project manager uses to run a project will surely determine the success of the project. Moreover, local community opinions at the initial stage and monitoring the project’s impact is vital at the initial stages of a project. The three fundamental factors of a good project and general manager are EQ, IQ, and MQ. Conclusively, for a project to succeed, consideration should shift from traditional factors like techniques and move onto the leadership competencies of the manager.
References
Di Maddaloni, F. and Davis, K., 2017. The influence of local community stakeholders in megaprojects: Rethinking their inclusiveness to improve project performance. International journal of project management, 35(8), pp. 1531-1556, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijproman.2017.08.011
Turner, J.R., Muller, R. and Dulewicz, V., 2009. Comparing the leadership styles of functional and project managers. International journal of managing projects in business, https://doi.org/10.1108/17538370910949266