Investigation of Leadership Competences of Project Managers in Construction Industry

Interdisciplinary Description of Complex Systems 20(6), 707-722, 2022 INVESTIGATION OF LEADERSHIP COMPETENCES OF PROJECT MANAGERS IN CONSTRUCTION INDUSTRY Ivana Šandrk Nukić*, Josipa Matotek and Zlata Dolaček-Alduk Josip Juraj Strossmayer University of Osijek, Faculty of Civil Engineering and Architecture Osijek, Croatia DOI: 10.7906/indecs.20.6.4 Regular article Received: 15 November 2021. Accepted: 12 October 2022. ABSTRACT Leadership has been widely studied both in business schools and by scholars. However, little attention has been given to leadership specifics in project-based organizations, especially in the construction industry. Aiming to decrease the gap in aforementioned body of knowledge, this article intended to contribute by identifying competences that are crucial to the success of project management as well as by revealing their manifestation in future construction project engineers. Therefore, theoretical framework of this article offers a literature review on variety of leadership theories. Building onto that, empirical part investigated importance of different leader competences, as perceived by future project managers, being graduate civil engineering students. The use of the mixed method research has been chosen as the most appropriate for this study. It combined the use of qualitative methods with survey obtained data based on a Likert scale. In respect of that, theoretical framework was constructed relying on the research of secondary data sources, whilst empirical part data were processed using descriptive statistics and nonparametric tests. Findings show that there are no significant differences in opinion among students in respect of their gender and almost none in respect of study course. The lowest rated competence concerns indecisiveness, suggesting high level of students’ self-confidence and self-awareness. The highest rated competence indicates students’ tendency to have things under control. Such reluctance toward risk taking has been found as potentially harmful for their personal and professional growth. Although their propensity to risk is expected to increase with experience, fostering emotional intelligence related competences has been advised as a tool of smarter risk perception. KEY WORDS leadership style, leader traits, leader competences, project management, civil engineering CLASSIFICATION JEL: D23, L74, M12 *Corresponding author, : ; +385 91 2240 752; *Vladimira Preloga 3, HR – 31 000 Osijek, Croatia I. Šandrk Nukić, J. Matotek and Z. Dolaček-Alduk INTRODUCTION Leadership is usually defined as the ability to influence people so that they willingly and enthusiastically perform a task, i.e. act towards accomplishment of organizational/project goals [1]. Its importance can be indicated by the stand of many scholars, that it is the only real function of management [2]. However, leaders are not necessarily managers [1]. The essence of leadership is not in the formal position of the leader but in the willingness of people to follow him [3]. Because of that there has been an enormous amount of studies trying to identify the key characteristics of a leader as well as to detect can one become a leader or the leaders are born as such. Although leadership is obviously highly valued in general management literature, and it has been extensively studied for almost a century now, only recently have researchers been trying to investigate leadership style and competences within the field of project management, especially in construction industry [4]. Surprisingly, literature on project success factors ignored the project manager, his/her leadership style and competence [5]. Today, this knowledge gap is one of the most dynamic research topics. Building on different leadership schools which derived different leadership style typologies, key project manager’s competences are being detected and considered the key to the success of project management [6]. Aiming to contribute to this discourse, research presented in this article intended to identify perception of relevant competences by future project managers in the construction industry. Such an aim is especially important at this moment of time, when investments in national infrastructure and other projects in all sectors of Croatian economy are fully certain [7], so the needs and interest in the profession of project management, especially in construction industry, are particularly emphasized. Fulfilment of so defined aim would enable both scholars and professionals to better direct their future efforts in developing successful project leaders as well as successful projects. Based on the aforementioned, ensuing research question can be formulated: What is the self-evaluation of final year graduate students at the Faculty of Civil Engineering and Architecture Osijek, based on project managers’ leadership competences advocated by various leadership schools? Due to such research question, following hypotheses are defined: H1: Future project managers in construction industry, being final year graduate students at the Faculty of Civil Engineering and Architecture Osijek, perceive themselves to be competent in respect of both innate traits and competences that need to be learned. H2: Future project managers in construction industry, being final year graduate students at the Faculty of Civil Engineering and Architecture Osijek, perceive themselves to have intellectual, managerial and emotional inteligence competences. H3: There are no statistically significant differences among respondents in respect of gender. H4: There are no statistically significant differences among respondents in respect of study course. The structure of the article is as follows: section two reviews the main leadership schools, section three describes the chosen research methodology and applied methods. In section four the findings of the empirical part of the research are presented and commented. The article ends with concluding remarks and recommendations for future research. LEADERSHIP STYLES AND COMPETENCES As early as the beginning of the 20th century, Chester Barnard, an American business executive and the author of pioneering work in management theory, suggested that leaders should have 708 Investigation of leadership competences of project managers in construction industry both managerial and emotional functions. Managerial functions he considered as cognitive functions, including directing, guiding and decision making, whilst he looked at emotional functions as at cathetic functions, comprised of motivational aspects of goal-setting, developing faith and commitment [8]. His book and opinion became a landmark at university courses in management and organization, so it is understandable that it more or less influenced all future schools of leadership theory. Due to the huge amount of leadership related research, specific approaches might be classified as presented in subsequent subsections. THE TRAIT SCHOO (...truncated)