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To demonstrate two distinct leadership requirements for project managers and establish a theoretical basis for distinguishing between these two types of leadership.

A framework linking transactional and transformational leadership qualities with project management attributes is developed.

Explains how reactive decisions relating to monitoring of schedules and budgeting data of projects has received the greatest attention in the literature but this is only one aspect of project control. Project leadership that is proactive in controlling projects is more effective.

The implications of our findings are substantive. Project managers who focus on proactive leadership behaviour will be more successful in completing projects on time, on budget and to the specified standard as well as achieving the strategic purpose of the project.

Project managers need to pay more attention to the progress of their projects and forestall any problems rather than just being reactive problem solvers.

The paper provides a framework for establishing the linkage between proactive decisions that impact on the direction that the project is progressing and reactive decisions that solve the existing problems of project management. It is a different focus to the traditional project management leadership knowledge base.

The purpose of this research was to explore the leadership style of graduate project management students vs other MBA students.

Graduate project management and MBA students attending a regional comprehensive university in USA returned surveys that assess their leadership style emphasis of concern for task or concern for people.

Project management students rate themselves significantly higher on the concern for people leadership style and were found to have a balance between the concern for task and concern for people leadership style vs MBA students.

Individuals exhibiting a concern for people leadership style and those with a balance between concern for task and concern for people leadership styles are good candidates for project management positions as well as training/education in project management.

The paper shows that the selection and training of project managers based on bahavioral tendencies can relate to project success.

The purpose of this paper is to raise awareness of the need to understand the differences between management and leadership within the project environment.

First stage research involved data analysis from forum, workshops, group to one, one to one interviews. Second stage research involves a five‐year PhD study undertaken by the author.

The paper highlights the need not only to understand the difference between project management and leadership, but also to use this differentiation in the identification, assessment and development of project services providers and as an integral part of organisational and people development for all companies involved in sponsoring, supporting or delivering projects.

The premise is that the emphasis needs to be on project leadership to achieve a successful project

The paper includes research within a specific industry based on identification of a market niche.

Organizations are full of contradictions and leadership dilemmas. Managers often face challenges such as selecting between two contradicting options such that which one is more important can hardly be judged. To manage contradicting dynamics, today’s managers can adopt the paradoxical leadership approach. We build a theoretical model to investigate the influence of paradoxical leadership on multi-dimensional project agility (proactivity, adaptability, and resilience), and multi-dimensional project success (management, investment, and ownership success).

Drawing on survey-based data from the China–Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) megaproject (N = 209), we performed covariance-based structural equation modeling to test the conceptual model.

The findings show that (1) paradoxical leadership has a significant positive impact on megaproject success, (2) paradoxical leadership has a significant positive influence on project agility, (3) project agility has a significant positive effect on megaproject success, and (4) project agility has a significant effect that mediates the link between paradoxical leadership and megaproject success. This research provides a theoretical and practical comprehension of paradoxical leadership with a new perspective on megaprojects.

This study provides an extension of the existing studies on paradoxical leadership and identifies the role of contradicting dynamics and their impact on multiple facets of megaproject success. It not only clarifies the relationship between paradoxical leadership and megaproject success, but also identifies the mediating role of project agility that can play an effective role in mobilizing success in megaprojects.

The traditional Chinese culture has always emphasized the authority of leaders and their “top-down” influence over subordinates tangled with “bottom-up” management. Paternalistic leadership can both nurture and restrict growth in mega-construction projects, due to the unique consequences (i.e. positive vs negative implications) for project teams. Hence, the present study aimed to explore the impact of paternalistic leadership (PL), team members’ voice (TMV) and team resilience (TR) on the mega-construction project success (MPS) in China's Belt and Road Initiative (BRI).

A surveyed-based sample of project professionals (N = 563) directly linked with the BRI was employed for statistical estimations with partial least squares (PLS) structural equation modeling (SEM).

Paternalistic leadership styles, including authoritarian leadership (AL), moral leadership (ML) and benevolent leadership (BL), significantly influence the mega-construction project success in BRI. The findings empirically validated that both BL and ML increase the likelihood of mega-construction project success. However, AL could impose a threat through its underlying negative influence. In addition, leaders with benevolence and morality have a positive influence on TMV and TR, while leaders with authoritarianism signal a negative impact. Furthermore, both TMV and TR significantly and positively mediate the relationships between AL-MPS (Model-1), BL-MPS (Model-2) and ML-MPS (Model-3), respectively.

The present study is a groundbreaking endeavor that fills a crucial research gap by investigating mega-construction project success in the BRI through paternalistic leadership, project team members' voice and team resilience in a multi-mediation model. These novel findings offer valuable strategic insights for managing mega-construction projects in countries with paternalistic solid cultural foundations, enabling project managers to navigate cultural nuances and optimize megaproject outcomes.

This study investigates the link between servant leadership and project management effectiveness in developmental projects in non-governmental organisations (NGOs). Further, this study examined the mediating role of conflict resolution and moderating role of organisational culture.

A three-wave survey of 288 non-governmental organisation (NGO) employees was used to evaluate the hypotheses. Hierarchical regression analysis and Hayes' PROCESS macro technique were used for data analysis.

In this study, servant leadership positively affects employee project management effectiveness in developmental projects in NGOs, and conflict resolution mediates the relationship. Furthermore, the results show that organisational culture moderates the positive relationship between servant leadership and employee project management effectiveness. Moreover, the authors investigated the hypotheses via a moderation mediation model. The strength of the mediated link between servant leadership and project management effectiveness (via conflict resolution) depends on organisational culture strength.

Leaders that practice servant leadership care for their employees genuinely and serve them by allowing them to make their own decisions. Every organisation may benefit from this leadership style since it encourages project effectiveness

New empirical data from this study suggests that servant leadership positively and substantially affects employee project management effectiveness in developmental projects in NGOs.

The development of project managers and leadership has been highlighted as crucial for improving project success and performance, resulting in a rise of interest in project leadership research over the last two decades. While several qualitative reviews have been conducted, there have been limited quantitative and systematic reviews on project leadership. This study fills this gap by portraying the knowledge landscape and tracking the evolution of project leadership research from 1998 to 2022 through bibliometric approaches.

Based on 816 records, including 793 articles extracted and selected from the Web of Science database and specific journals, and 23 articles selected from three non-SCI/SSCI indexed journals, the authors used CiteSpace and bibliometrix R-package to depict visualizations of the trajectory of co-cited references, the landscape of co-occurred keywords and emerging trends in project leadership via reference co-citation analysis, keyword co-occurrence analysis and thematic mapping.

The bibliometric analyses enabled the authors to understand the conceptual aspects of project leadership and its theoretical background. Three stages of the intellectual bases were identified and tracked: the infancy phase (1998–2007), the growth phase (2008–2014) and the new development phase (2015–2022). The results of keyword co-occurrence analysis indicated that the research focus evolved from investigating traits and competences to examining the effects of traditional leadership behaviors, and then considering context-specific leadership. The findings of thematic mapping and theoretical interpretation illustrate the potential directions of the competence comparison, new and appropriate leadership, and the interaction between leadership and context.

This study advanced the field by providing a systematic review of project leadership, developing potential future directions for project leadership research and providing practical implications for career development and training.

Temporal leadership is a new construct that predicts team outcomes. This study examines the mediating role of shared temporal cognitions and the moderating role of time pressure in the relationship between temporal leadership and project success within sustainable construction projects.

The multi-source and multi-wave data were collected via self-administered questionnaires from teams working on sustainable construction projects. The direct and mediating hypotheses were tested using multi-level structural equation modelling, while moderated mediation hypotheses were examined by applying the bootstrap method using SPSS Process Macro.

The results showed that temporal leadership enables project success via shared temporal cognitions. Temporal leadership is most beneficial for facilitating project success via shared temporal cognitions when teams experience high time pressure.

This is the first study examining shared temporal cognitions as a mediator of the relationship between temporal leadership and project success. Also, this is the first study that considered time pressure as a boundary condition that influences the relationships between temporal leadership, shared temporal cognitions and project success within sustainable construction projects. The study provides valuable advice to project managers and project-based construction organizations about using and managing time within projects.

Infrastructure projects are pivotal for regional economic development, but also face low project effectiveness. Leadership is always regarded as a key enabler for project team effectiveness, including vertical leadership and team-level leadership. The purpose of this paper is to examine how vertical leadership facilitates shared leadership in infrastructure project teams.

This paper develops the conceptual model based on the literature review. Then the questionnaire survey was conducted. The empirical data obtained from 117 infrastructure project teams in China were analyzed by partial least squares structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM) for validating the proposed model. Finally, the results were comparatively discussed to explain the dual-pathway between vertical leadership and shared leadership. And the practical implications were presented for the project managers in infrastructure project teams.

Drawing on social learning theory and social cognitive theory, the results show that both participative leadership and task-oriented leadership can facilitate shared leadership. Further, team atmosphere fully mediates the link between participative leadership and shared leadership. Team efficacy fully mediates the relation between task-oriented leadership and shared leadership. Also, role clarity has a negative moderating effect on the former path.

The study extends the knowledge of leadership theory in the construction field. Based on the proposed conceptual model and PLS-SEM results, this study unveils the black box between vertical leadership and shared leadership and contributes to the theory of leadership on how the impact of different vertical leadership on team process promotes shared leadership.

This article presents four basic innovation leadership styles: charismatic, instrumental, strategic and interactive innovation leadership. The leadership styles and their characteristsics relate to process and product innovations in construction projects. A theoretical framework – which synthesizes these relations – enables explorative research into the effects of leadership on organizational innovativeness. Four case studies, observing the same manager in four comparable projects, explore the effects of each leadership style on a construction project’s innovativeness in ecological terms. On an analytical level the case study explorations indicate that a manager’s consistent performance of a leadership style stimulates the project’s ecological innovativeness when the manager also injects the project with ecological information, knowledge and competence. It also indicates that a manager’s consistent performance of a leadership style, without an injection of information, knowledge and competence in the project, does not stimulate the project’s ecological innovativeness.