Comparison of research and industry views on project managers’ competencies

Abstract

Purpose The success of projects clearly relies on project management personnel and particularly on project managers. Their performance and capacities are based on the achieved competencies. The purpose of this paper is to address possible discrepancies between the views arising from the research results and standards of practice related to project managers’ competencies. Design/methodology/approach For reaching the aim of the study, a comprehensive literature review, covering previous studies and related standards of practice was conducted, and analyses of competencies in the studies and standards of practice containing the rank of competencies based on frequency of appearance were developed. Findings The findings are proposing four discrepancies between the results of previous studies and standards of practice: commonly existing/missing competencies; uneven priority of some competencies in the view of researchers vs standards of practice; uneven degree of consensus on the importance of competencies; and research results are more context-oriented than the standards of practice. In addition, 98 project managers’ competencies were identified, from which 68 were qualified as weighty ones. Moreover, a categorization of project managers’ weighty competencies was developed. Finally, a list of competencies of relevance for different project types and their targets is presented. Originality/value The findings of this study provide a contribution with respect of present knowledge over project managers’ competencies by recognizing certain discrepancies between research results and standards of practice. Another contribution of the study is the comprehensive list of competencies together with considerations of their relevance in different project contexts and in different project types.

Project Managers’ Competencies in International Development Projects: A Delphi Study

“…The general competency standards are broadly adopted based on performance instead of knowledge (Crawford, 2005; Hanna et al, 2016; Moradi et al, 2020a). The standards are; the International Project Management Association’s (IPMA) standards, the Project Manager Competency Development (PMCD) Framework by Project Management Institute (PMI) based on PMBOK Guide (Project Management Institute, 2008), and National Competency Standards for Project Management by the Australian Institute of Project Management (AIPM).…”

“…The general competency standards are broadly adopted based on performance instead of knowledge (Crawford, 2005;Hanna et al, 2016;Moradi et al, 2020a (Project Management Institute, 2017). These competency standards have been broadly used to evaluate a project manager's role with the assumptions that: (i) managerial practices are universal and context-independent, and (ii) project manager's performance can be led by certified PMs based on Competency Standards (Chen et al, 2008;Crawford, 2005;Hanna et al, 2016).…”

“…Consequently, many ID projects perform poorly. As argued by Ahsan et al (2013), Alaloul et al (2016), and Moradi et al (2020a), only a competent project manager (PM) can successfully meet varied stakeholders’ concerns and expectations. However, the lack of qualified project managers and low administrative capacity is a human factor related to IDP failure (Shafiei & Puttanna, 2018).…”

Reach for the sky: analysis of behavioral competencies linked to project success

“…Third, although the notion of project managers' behavioral competencies has gained growing interest in recent years, we find that there is a dearth of quantitative analysis in this domain. Specifically, prior research has examined behavioral competencies in different ways: Dogbegah et al (2011) and Othman and Jaafar (2013) conducted a comprehensive literature review to understand the most influential competencies for project success; Ara ujo and Drebes (2015) and Sang et al (2018) performed in-depth interviews with professional project managers to detect which competencies are the most important; Chipulu et al (2013) and Vale et al (2018) used a coding method and extracted the core competencies from job advertisements; and Moradi et al (2019) performed a comparison of research and industry views on project managers' competencies. However, studies adopting a quantitative approach that measures the influence of behavioral competencies on project success are rare.…”

Project Managers’ Competencies in Collaborative Construction Projects

“…The more recent studies conducted between 2015 and 2019 suggest that the focus on investigating and identifying project managers' competencies in construction projects has been continued [13,18,[51][52][53][54][55][56][57]. A recent study [20] concerning project managers' competencies has also shown that construction projects have been considerably focused on by the research community among the other specific project types for addressing project managers' competencies. Reviewing relevant studies resulted in a synthesis of 184 competencies of project managers for construction projects.…”