Shadow of Your Former Self: Exploring Project Leaders’ Post-Failure Behaviors (Resilience, Self-Esteem and Self-Efficacy) in High-Tech Startup Projects

Abstract

Globally, demands for sustainable strategies in the ICT industry have attracted greater momentum as high-tech projects continue to fail in large numbers. Recent studies have underpinned project resilience as a major factor for overcoming these increasing project failures, delays, or termination. However, the complex behaviors of resilient project leaders, especially in post-failure conditions, have been largely overlooked. To address this critical research gap, the present study identifies the direct relationships between three potential behavioral traits of project leaders (i.e., resilience, self-esteem, and self-efficacy) and examines how they move forward beyond project failures. The present study also explored whether self-esteem mediates project leaders’ resilience and self-efficacy. Drawing on data from 232 project leaders in Pakistan’s high-tech start-ups, the new findings suggest that there are significant positive effects of project leaders’ resilience and self-esteem on their self-efficacy, and that project leaders’ resilience and self-efficacy is significantly mediated by their self-esteem. As the project resilience theory gains traction, the present study findings have pinpointed major steps for meeting project challenges ahead of time, allowing leaders and teams to learn from failures, and also for improving organisations’ ability to implement successful and sustainable high-tech projects especially in emerging economies.

Fall Seven Times, Stand Up Eight: Linking Project Management Innovation, Project Governance, and High-Performance Work Practices to Project Success

“…Courtesy of its easy-to-understand path analysis, SEM lets the researchers examine a combination of interrelated research questions systematically and inclusively ( Anderson and Gerbing, 1988 ). An increasing number of studies in the areas of supply chain management, human resource management, marketing, tourism, accounting, and strategic management are employing SEM to good effect ( Hair et al, 2017 ; Zaman et al, 2021a ).…”

“…Nonetheless, project success has continued to receive significant attention in major studies that introduce various elements in the project success framework ( Khan and Rasheed, 2015 ; Aga et al, 2016 ; Musawir et al, 2017 ; Wu et al, 2017 ; Zaman et al, 2022c ). The increasing attempts to fill gaps in project management research that bring improvements to how projects are managed today ( Zaman et al, 2021a ); still, there has never been an examination of project success from the perspective of project management innovation ( Musawir et al, 2017 ; Zaman et al, 2022c ). There is widespread international evidence that persistently supports the dynamic capabilities of management innovation in achieving successful organizational outcomes ( Millar et al, 2018 ; Hassi, 2019 ; Khosravi et al, 2019 ).…”

Feeling “holier than thou”: exploring the critical nexus between project governance, exploitative leadership and multi-dimensional success in ICT projects

“…Practitioners and researchers have been working on improving project performance by enhancing teamwork and focusing on improving project management tools (Besner and Hobbs, 2012; Hebert and Deckro, 2011; Mir and Pinnington, 2014). The relevant literature in the last 4 decades sees project success as a combined achievement of objective and subjective measures which have been set in order to demonstrate the success criteria, and through which the success of the project is measured at the end (Joslin and Müller, 2016; Zaman et al. , 2021a, b).…”

“…But the project success rate has still not improved, as the high scale of project failures (e.g. 66% failure rate in IT based projects) roughly costs $109 million for every $1 billion of project-based investment (McManus and Wood-Harper, 2008; Joslin and Müller, 2016; Zaman et al. , 2021a, b).…”

“…Hence, this research focuses on the emerging IT industry in Pakistan that is showing remarkable growth figures (e.g. $1.9 Billion annual IT export in fiscal year 2020–2021, and projected $6 billion of IT exports by 2023) to explore the relationship between project governance and project success and whether exploitative leadership impacts this relationship in ICT projects in Pakistan (Zaman et al. , 2021a, b).…”