From inclusion to action: Does project manager’s inclusive leadership drive team members’ project citizenship behavior?

Drawing upon affective events theory, this study attends to the emerging line of project behavior research by examining the role of the project manager’s inclusive leadership style in predicting project team members’ project citizenship behavior. Additionally, the mediating mechanism of positive affectivity and the moderating role of proactive personality has been examined in this relationship. To test our theorized model, time-lagged and multi-source data was collected from 221 project team members working in three IT and two construction sector project-based organizations. For examining the hypotheses, partial least squares structural equation modeling analysis technique was used. The findings show that inclusive leadership positively affects project citizenship behavior and positive affectivity mediates this relationship. Also, the relationship between inclusive leadership and positive affectivity is stronger in the case of team members who have a highly proactive personality. Theoretically, the findings highlight the importance of emotions derived from inclusive leadership for project success. Practically, this study encourages the adoption of an inclusive leadership approach towards project team members as it leads to positive project outcomes.