Leadership and Motivating the Employees Research Paper

Introduction

A project is a temporary endeavor that is undertaken to produce a product or provide a service. Project management is an analysis that seeks to define how a particular project executes its operations, monitors the already executed operations, and how the executed operations are controlled (Kerzner 2010:14).

Any project has some requirements that are necessary for the successful completion of the project tasks; these requirements are commonly referred to as resources.

Project resources are not standard since individual projects will call for different capital resources, human resource, scope, technological skills, and target market, among other factors. To accomplish the mission and vision a given project, the project must take into account the analysis of the scope, the financial requirement, as well as the short, middle, and long-term goals of the project.

Most importantly, project management cannot thrive without adapting to leadership style that is congruent with the needs of the employees. The subsystems of the firm have to adjust to an effective organizational structure in order to facilitate success of the project.

The effective integration of values can be achieved by leadership development, as this helps to highlight the changes that are taking place within a particular market segment. This study will be guided by one key question: is the issue of leadership an extremely complicated task while motivating the employees working in projects?

Background Of The Study

Jovanović & Petrović (2000) affirm that proper dissemination of project management plan should be provided to the employees in a manner that outlines vigilant steps, which point out the corresponding responsibilities, the person responsible for the task, the timeline for performing the task, and the expected output (Kerzner 2010: 23).

However, the management of projects highly depends on the flow view theory, which seeks to eliminate the unforeseen risks (Hanisch et al. 2011). Additionally, the theory of value generation view is used in project management to facilitate an assessment of the clients prior to provision of goods and/or services. This theory substantiates that the needs of the clients should be viewed differently from the work process.

Thus, the project management should define the plan, the cost, the activities, the project’s human and capital resources planning, and judgment of duration of time for the completion of the projects (Rad 2002: 36). An effective budgeting of the project’s cost facilitates this, while an effective execution should define time and quality specification, as they are critical in ascertaining a project’s sustainability.

Controlling, on the other hand, should be designed in such a way that it is able to use performance reporting that executes corrections or overall change control that recommends changes at the planning procedure (Kerzner 2010:94).

But while all the above are valid procedures and theories that aim at ensuring that projects achieve their main objectives, the strategy of using the resources and time constrains remains unconvincing, given that motivation plays a critical role in the performance of a project.

Some of the key motivators include organizational hierarchies, relationship with the boss, working conditions, relationship with the peers, and recognition in the workplace (Miner 2007:158). However, these theories often seem challenging in the process of their implementation, making some organizational cultures disapprove their authenticity in the project management.

This stems from the fact that different cultures have different opinions regarding the use of organizational theories in the projects.

The United States, for case in point, believes that the use of hierarchy tends to break a project’s task into smaller achievable and manageable task and find vertical leadership more appropriate, while the Asian culture, which believes in authority ranking, finds the vertical form of leadership more appropriate(Miner 2007:169).

Thus, the Western culture manages their projects by encouraging employees’ participation through brainstorming sessions as opposed to the some of the Asian cultures. These two perceptions need to be substantiated in order to come up with an effective management of projects.

But according to Maslow’s Hierarchy of needs, organizations as well as people’s needs change overtime, and therefore, employee motivation is a continuous practice rather than a task (Miner 2007:177). Thus, a good motivation theory for projects should involve finding new ways of motivating their employees.

It is imperative to note that a number of factors associated with the leadership/ managerial practice may lead to higher than necessary rates of departure prior to ending the project’s contracts. Key among them include restricted motivation, insufficient socialization, cases where employees feel discriminated, exempted from making decisions that regard them, insufficient levels of commitment, and lesser acceptance (Miner 2007:142).

There are some empirical studies reporting on the experiences of leaders taking the role of motivation to explain the complexities of projects with regard to productivity (Miner 2007:69). Some of the studies also link the motivation role mostly to management outcomes.

These studies contribute to a research gap on the importance of the managers’ role in improving project management processes and outcomes based on data from a qualitative perspective. The results enhance leadership knowledge by providing another perspective of the manager’s role with implications on the acceptability and viability of employees’ participation.

Methodology

Purpose of Study

The purpose of this qualitative study is to investigative whether the issue of motivating employees is an extremely complicated task in project management. Using a qualitative study allows a thorough investigation of the research problem because it collects data on the accounts and descriptions of employers as well as employees working in a construction project (Creswell 2003:183).

The research design involves causal investigation of the research problem by using a wide range of resources (Yin, 2006). Thus, the causal relationship investigated involves linking leadership and motivation with the productivity of a construction project.

The study answers one key question: is the issue of motivating employees an extremely complicated task in project management? This question draws insight into the challenges surrounding the leadership role as they seek to motivate employees working in projects.

Design of the Study

The study employs the qualitative method. This method applies to studies that require in-depth investigation of accounts and descriptions of the research problem studied (Creswell 2003:194). This included company’s structure, the work processes involved, and the relationships between the employees, as well as the relationship between the employees and the managers.

This is the appropriate method because it is able to investigate how important motivation is in improving project management process and outcomes based on qualitative data. While the study also involves variables, the intention is to determine the importance of the role of leadership to the employees in the construction project, and not to measure the relationship of variables.

The research design involves an in-depth inquiry into a single finding by using multiple data sources to provide understanding of the multiple factors attributed to the research problem (Yin 2006). This supports a thorough investigation of the research problem, as it uses a wide range of data collection methods, including document analysis, interviews, archival research, and observation.

The selection of the sources was carried out in a manner that interconnects all the theories of leadership and management, and therefore facilitated an effective analysis that created room for understanding how they motivate the employees differently. The primary data, on the other hand, was obtained from the employees working in a construction project

Data Collection

The data collection method for the secondary sources was carried out by determining the scope of the research and then defining the extent to which management and leadership theories influence employees working in projects.

This was followed by determining the evidence that demonstrates the challenges facing the leadership theories and frameworks while motivating the employees towards achieving the goals of the projects. Finally, the researcher organized the ideas collected from the secondary sources, including textbooks as well as from the journals articles. These ideas worked as the background for the questionnaire provided in the case study.

Results of the Study

The primary data revealed that the construction project has already adopted modern communication technology in an effort to facilitate effective communication between the employees, as well as between the employees and the clients, due to tight working schedule and a high turnover of customers.

This strategy, however, is faced with challenges due to poor company structure and work processes such as lack of prioritizing project’s information due to huge number of emails, presence of scattered data due to saving data in diverse formats, low levels of email security , ambiguity due to unclear terms used for products’ descriptions, and work overlap between the workers.

The findings obtained from the qualitative design are consistent with the Fiedler’s contingency model as they portray that employees working in projects would only be motivated if the leaders put much emphasis on organizational culture that seeks to achieve organizational goals through close human relations (Daft & Marcic 2010: 196).

This stems from the fact that the model provides a link in the organizational structure as the go-between of management and employees. More so, the model helps the employees increase a sense of accountability for their tasks since they have already developed a sense of confidence with their leader.

This model is imperative since it introduces the employees to a thorough analysis that facilitates definition of how a particular project executes its operations, monitors the already executed operations, and defines how these operations are controlled through teamwork amongst the employees (Daft & Marcic 2010: 197).

More so, using this model helps the leaders express confidence on the subordinates’ abilities to learn how to share great information with their leaders. And in this regard, the leader advices the subordinates to learn how to focus on results by providing them with tips on how best they can acquire expected results based on teamwork.

This claim is supported by Herzberg’s theory of motivation, which states that a good relationship between workers, as well as between the workers and the managers, serves as a key motivator towards the employees (Miner 2007: 183).

However, according to Kerzner (2010: 95), adopting a theory that is relationship oriented does not motivate task-oriented workers, simply because relationship oriented models are vulnerable to teamwork discrepancies. This translates that one or two members of a team will not work, and hence, others will be working for such an individual(s).

Additionally, adopting relationship-oriented leadership does not help because at the end of the day, evaluation of the project’s employees goes back to an individual level as opposed to a teamwork level. Therefore, each individual has to undergo self-reflection to establish his/her contribution towards the success of the project.

Kerzner (2010: 98) affirms that employees working in projects are always looking for individual recognition and that employees who do not attest to this fact are ordinary performers who are fond of preferring teamwork because they do not want the public to know that they do not have many talents at an individual level. This idea, therefore, complicates the role of leadership in motivating the employees working in a project.

Additionally, the study used the Hezberg’s theory to highlight how leaders can motivate employees working in projects by exploring the extent to which employees can be motivated by job enrichment as well as job rotation.

And while the primary sources revealed that a project could only acquire a good leader/ employee relationship when the leader is charismatic as opposed to autocratic, Miner (2007: 210) affirms that motivating employees depends entirely on the character of the employees.

In this regard, the employees from group X necessitate carrot and stick motivation, while employees from group Y necessitate recognition and job enrichments as the prime motivators. All these show that using leadership theories to motivate employees is an extremely complicated task in project management.

Limitations of the Study

Even though the research attempted to employ casual investigation of the problem by using a user-friendly approach that would encouraged the participants to be honest with each other, the research study was still imperfect because some respondents proved to be unresponsive.

This was more evident when it came to discussing the Adam’s equity model, perhaps due to the sensitivity of this area because some responses could be termed at discrimination following unfair judgments of other people’s inabilities.

Conclusion/ Recommendations For Future Leadership Strategies For A Project

From the finding presented in this paper, it is clear that the use of leadership theories to motivate employees is an extremely complicated task in project management.

However, despite the challenges faced with leadership in an effort to motivate the employees working in projects, effective leadership calls for a close cooperation between the employees and the leaders/ managers of the organization. It is from this cooperation that the leaders demonstrate full responsibility of assessing the key motivators of the employees.

Thus, evaluating the future strategy of leadership potential in the project should bring rise to a number of questions: what are the theories of leadership/management that the workers consider as motivators?

What do employees anticipate as some of the disadvantages that would result from such theories? And most importantly, what do employees anticipate as some of the advantages that would result from such theories and frameworks.

The answers to these questions should be achieved through a brainstorming session comprising of employees who have dissimilar theoretical backgrounds relative to motivation. This emanates from the fact that a project management is greatly enhanced by leaders who adopt a leadership style of sharing their personal knowledge and opinions with all their employees (Mears 2009:57).

Through sharing of views, the management should realize that one of the main challenges experienced by a project while coming up with a new line of business is inadequate training that would ensure the employees take the upcoming jobs.

However, this challenge can be countered by adopting a talent development approach, which takes into account that projects should always assess the talents of its employees in order to outline the level of competence along the new line of operation.

Therefore, the management should encourage the employees to develop their skills before the actual shift occurs, as this helps to eradicate fear and resistance to the proposed vision of the project. This can be achieved through a performance management program, which should be characterized by the following feature: standardization, validity and conciseness, and due process.

In standardization, the ideal performance management system requires that the aspects of performance measured are uniform and there is a constant level of strictness in its operations. (Kerzner 2010: 114). This is meant to ensure that employees do not loose faith in their managers and the system that might result from variations, such as unreasonable teamwork.

According to Kerzner (2010:123), validity and conciseness translates that evaluation criterion of every employee is done only on issues that regard their line of work, as this would serve to motivate the workers who view work itself as the key motivator.

Due process, on the other hand, should endeavour to motivate employees who are lowly rated by giving them set guidelines that dictate the appraisal of good performers with high salary increases and bonuses should they improve their performance.

List Of References

Creswell, J. W. 2003. Research design: Qualitative, quantitative, and mixed methods approaches (2nd ed.). Thousand Oaks, CA, Sage.

Daft, R., & Marcic, D. 2010. Understanding Management. Independence, KY, Cengage Learning.

Hanisch, B., Wald, A., & Project Management Institute. 2011. A project management research framework integrating multiple theoretical perspectives and influencing factors. Project Management Journal 42(3).

Jovanović, P., & Petrović, D. 2000. Project management and multiproject management in a company. Senet Project Management Review (1)1, 34-43.

Kerzner, H. 2010. Project management best practices: Achieving global excellence. Hoboken, N.J., John Wiley & Sons.

Mears, M. 2009. Leadership elements: A guide to building trust. New York, iUniverse.

Miner, J. 2007. Organizational Behavior: From theory to practice, Volume 4. Armonk, NY, M.E Sharpe Publishers.

Rad, P. 2002. Project estimating and cost management. Management Concepts, Vienna, Va.

Yin, R. K. 2006. Case study research: Design and methods. Thousand Oaks, Calif, Sage.