Vijay K. Verma

Bio: Vijay K. Verma is an academic researcher from Simon Fraser University. The author has contributed to research in topics: Project stakeholder & Project management. The author has an hindex of 1, co-authored 1 publications receiving 17 citations.

Project Manager to Project Leader? and the Rocky Road Between...

Abstract: In recent years there has been a spate of publications on "Leadership" and “Team Building” bynumerous authors such as Bennis, Drucker, Covey, Depree, Byham, McLean and Weitzel,Dilenschneider, Fisher, Batten and others. Much of this has been directed to the "Captains of NorthAmerican Industry". However, in our opinion, leadership, management and team building, while allclosely allied, are sufficiently different in the project environment that they require special study.The old image of a powerful project personality with a burning vision of the future state rounding up thetroops and charging off to Nirvana, is hardly consistent with modern management thinking.Consequently, some of the current concepts of leadership and attributes required of the leader of anenterprise need to be carefully rethought when applied in the project context. That is, if a project is tosucceed and be viewed as successful. So the question is: What sort of leadership or management is themost relevant to project management in the decade of the 1990s and beyond?Considering the extent of management literature published in recent years, it might be thought that thisis no longer an issue. However, few writers actually define leadership and the context is generally not inthe project environment. To understand the difference, it is necessary to examine both the requirementsof a project team and the changes that occur through the project life cycle.

Project management turnover: causes and effects on project performance

Abstract: Changes in management personnel - variously termed displacement, succession or just turnover- have been found by many to have significant negative effects on project performance. However, researchers have often ignored the organizational context of succession, the timing of succession relative to the organizational life cycle, and the type of transfer undertaken in control surfaces. It has also been suggested that the idea of specifically choosing a project manager to see the project completely through its life cycle needs to be discarded in favour of selecting at each phase point, a new project manager best suited to the anticipated project environment. To examine this further, a web-based survey was designed and developed from a detailed literature review, with 67 completed surveys collected, equating to a 45% response rate. This aimed to: find the reasons for project management turnover; examine the extent to which project management turnover is associated with a particular phase of the project life cycle; and investigate the effects of project management turnover on project performance. The most significant findings are that project management turnover occurs predominantly in the execution phase of the project life cycle and that the main reasons for the turnover event are career motives, including the need for personal development, and dissatisfaction with the organisational culture and project management role. The results confirm that the turnover event disrupts and negatively affects the performance of the project team, the project, and potentially negates the competitive advantage of organisations in which it occurs.

Examining effective and ineffective transformational project leadership

Abstract: Purpose – Aims to examine effective and ineffective leader behaviors from direct participant observations in several cases of a large multiyear cross‐industry international research project to prove the hypothesis that effective team performance management requires strong transformational leadership.Design/methodology/approach – Transformational and charismatic leadership theories are briefly discussed from management science to explain how their principles can apply to and be analyzed in the project domain and other fields. Several popular and proven group leader behavior measurement constructs are discussed to show how they can be applied for assessing group leader behavior in any field. Two flexible taxonomies are built for assisting in quantitatively and qualitatively explaining stakeholder perceptions of group leader behaviors and team performance. Four theoretically sampled case studies are analyzed. The taxonomies are analyzed quantitatively and the results are qualitatively evaluated.Findings – Th...

Assessing leader behaviors in project managers

Abstract: Purpose – The purpose of this research was to explore the leadership style of graduate project management students vs other MBA students.Design/methodology/approach – 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.Findings – 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.Practical implications – 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.Originality/value – The paper shows that the selection and training of project managers based on bahavioral tendencies can relate to ...