Title: Strategic leadership as contributory factor for engineering project success

Authors: R. Murugesan

Addresses: Crescendo Consulting India, B-1, 'Ceebros Lakshmi', New # 25, 4th Main Road, Kasturbanagar, Adyar, Chennai – 600 020, India

Abstract: In the current turbulent times of global economy with no clues in sight yet to resolve the Euro zone crisis, every nation is facing the need for competent leaders to set the tone right for the future. Project management is a complex profession as each project environment is unique in itself. Leaders in the field of project management share many of the same characteristics as leaders in operational or functional roles. However, the unique nature of projects with their set budgets, timeframes coupled with other constraints often results in failure of projects causing greater concern to the resulting decline in the organisational image and team fatigue. There is an urgent need to address this dominant issue to involve strategic leadership of choice to enhance engineering project success to meet the expectations of the project stake holders. The available literature on the impact of leadership on project management challenges is scant. Over the years, the rate of project failures has far exceeded the rate of project successes. The author has attempted to combine his own practical experience in project management with an exhaustive review of published literature in this work. In this study, typical leadership strategies that would enhance project outcomes are addressed.

Keywords: strategic leadership; competitive environment; project stakeholders; project success; triple constraint; engineering projects; project management.

DOI: 10.1504/AJMSA.2014.063378

Asian Journal of Management Science and Applications, 2014 Vol.1 No.2, pp.121 - 140

Received: 08 Jul 2012
Accepted: 13 Jan 2013
Published online: 30 Jul 2014 *

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