Effect of construction project team on its leadership: case studies in Sri Lanka

Abstract

Construction industry adopts different project team settings within its product deliver process with the construction project manager as the leader of such a project team. These construction project teams possess unique features which can have differing effects on the leadership of the construction project manager where studies redominantly focusing on that area are rare particularly within Sri Lankan context. Therefore, this study explored the effect of construction project team on the leadership of theconstruction project manager. The aforesaid research problem was approached through a multiple case study including three construction projects. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with the respective project managers and with other three distinct team members. The findings highlighted that the effect on the leadership from construction project team can be identified with relation to the unique features of a construction project team discussed under team purpose, team composition and method of working. Effect of the purpose of the team is mainly due to the client's influential nature while the effect of the team composition is governed by the reason that team consists of professionals and the different team settings described as 'single-organisational teams' and 'multiple organisational teams '. Further, the effect of method of working on the leadership could be identified mainly as; contractual nature of relationship between team members, inter-dependent nature of works and appointment of members at different stages.