Applied leadership styles on various contract types
Sarah Heemskerk (TU Delft - Architecture and the Built Environment)
Hans Wamelink – Mentor
Fred Hobma – Mentor
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Abstract
Background:
This report is the graduation report of Sarah Heemskerk for the master Management in the Built Environment at the TU Delft. The research is done into the difference of leadership styles of project managers in real estate projects when the contract type differs. Integrated contracts are seen more and more often in the real estate sector and that raises questions about the work of the project manager. This research gives the first view on differences in applied leadership styles when this relatively new contract type is compared with the traditional contract type.
Methods:
For this research the leadership style of project managers is measured on the base of seven competencies: vision and imagination, strategic perspective, engaging communication, empowering, self-awareness, emotional resilience and influencing. A self-assessment questionnaire has been developed based on the LDQ of Dulewicz and Higgs (2005), since the LDQ was not available to use. The questionnaire consist of two parts: general and project-based. The scores on the competencies are used to define the applied leadership style of project managers in situations with different contract types.
Results:
54 project managers participated in the research and filled out the questionnaire. The sample was largely male, had a long experience as project manager and worked in the public real estate sector. The participants themselves did expect a difference in leadership style when other contract types are concerned.
Conclusion:
While the results show little statistical differences, there is still enough reason to take conclusions from the results. The project managers in general do not show large differences on the score of the competencies, but there are differences visible in the project-based score for different contract types. The emotional competencies and vision and imagination have a higher score when integrated contracts are used. Strategic perspective has a lower score when integrated contracts are used. For traditional contracts there is a bias towards a goal-oriented leadership style, while for integrated contracts there is a bias towards an engaging leadership style.