HIGHLIGHTING APPROACHES TO LEADERSHIP STYLE IN PROJECT MANAGEMENT: THE NEED FOR A BROADER RESEARCH APPROACH TO THE CONTEXT‐RELATED USE OF LEADERSHIP STYLES

Abstract

A project manager’s leadership style has a considerable impact on project success. However, there is no one best ap ‐ propriate leadership behavior. The characteris ti cs of the project and the organiza ti onal context determine which lead ‐ ership style could be appropriate in di ff erent situa ti ons. To provide a clear picture of the complexity of contextual features, leadership style, and its rela ti on to project success, there is a need for a systema ti c review of leadership style–related papers focusing on project management. This paper has two aims: to provide a content analysis of pre ‐ vious papers to determine which leadership style approaches were studied in project management; and to provide a detailed content analysis of previous fi ndings of project management studies in terms of matching project character ‐ is ti cs and organiza ti onal features with the appropriate leadership style of the project manager. The fi ndings of this paper give a comprehensive analysis of previous results, and also highlight the weaknesses in terms of neglected as ‐ pects of conceptualiza ti on and de fi ciencies. Our results indicate the lack of comprehensive context ‐ related studies of project manager’s’ leadership. Thus, there is a need for research examining project characteris ti cs and contextual fea ‐ tures in detail to iden ti fy the appropriate project managers’ leadership style by means of deduc ti ve reasoning.