Effect of leadership style on project performance: a case of construction project manager in kaffa zone

Abstract

The purpose of the study was to assess the effect of leadership style on project performance of construction project manager in kaffa zone, to achieve this objective, relationship between components of leadership style, Leadership Experience to construction project performance were analyzed. This study focused on ongoing public construction projects in kaffa zone, SNNP/Ethiopia. The study respondents comprised construction project managers, project team members and community leaders in ongoing construction projects of kaffa zone. The study used a descriptive survey design targeting a population 65 ongoing projects within the study area. Questionnaire were administered to at least for one project manager, one project team member, one community leader from each project selected from the sampled 56 projects identified using stratified random sampling technique. Questionnaires had both open and closed ended questions. A pilot test was done and a reliability test score was 0.805. Data analysis was performed using SPSS version 20.the study used simple descriptive statistics. The results were presented in frequencies distribution tables, percentages and charts. The finding of the study conclude transformational leadership style had the most influence on performance of construction projects on kaffa zone with aggregate mean of 3.62.Leadership experience was the second with aggregate mean of 3.55. Transactional leadership style had the least influence on performance of construction projects on kaffa zone with aggregate mean of 3.01. In conclusion the study found that majority of a project experience significant budget and time over run and it can be conclude that project objective achievement and beneficiary satisfaction was the most important parameter of project performance on kaffa zone. The study also found that although transformational leadership style to be the best it is imperative for project managers to adopt individual aspects of transactional leadership styles with significant influence to project performances in order to improve performance of construction projects. The study recommended that managers adopt transformational leadership style and project managers experience that support by leadership skill have a great impact to ensure effective performance of projects. The study also recommend transactional leadership styles compromising using motivations like reward and recognition schemes for their workers to have some level of job satisfaction. The study suggested further studies to be done on number of organization and can enlarge a bigger sample data size in different industries such as travel, banking and hospitality on aspects of projects performance and leadership styles.