Making IT work: A job characteristic approach examining the interplay between project managers and project outcomes

Dong, Hao (2022) Making IT work: A job characteristic approach examining the interplay between project managers and project outcomes. EURAM 2022: Leading Digital Transformation, Zurich University of Applied Sciences, Winterthur/Zurich, Switzerland. 15 - 17 Jun 2022. (Submitted)

Abstract

Information technology (IT) projects are increasingly complex in dint of the fast-innovative changing landscape of technology aligned to stakeholder expectations. They are progressively important for social, environmental, and economic priorities, and yet persist to endure high failure rates. In many cases IT projects either suffer from very low project efficiency and effectiveness, are terminated midway, or never utilised. Within these scenarios, the role of project managers and their job characteristics in planning, developing, and implementing IT projects to support successful outcomes, is both paramount and highly complex due to the nature and context of competing project requirements. Prior literature portrays a wide range of applications of job characteristics and the importance of critical elements of project management. For example, studies have applied job characteristics theory to analyse IT employees’ job satisfaction, work exhaustion and turnover intention. However, there is a dearth of significant application of job characteristics theory for project management and successful project outcomes. Therefore, this study conceptualises the interplay between project managers job characteristics and project outcomes. Through an empirical study of IT project managers, we draw on core job characteristic dimensions to examine how skill variety, task identity, task significance, autonomy, and feedback, affect the interplay between project managers and project outcomes. This study adds to the discourse on project management outcomes with implications for research and practice, as our findings suggest that beyond core job characteristics, project managers and project outcomes are also influenced by emergent project team characteristics.

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Contributors

Author: Hao Dong

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