Investigating Key Project Success Factors: Leadership Practices and Communication in the Australian Construction Sector
Creators: name: Rehan, Ashok
Publisher: name: University of Southern Queensland
Year: 2024
Subjects: Relationship Management
Success Factors
Leadership Practices
Project Success
Conflict Management
Communication

description: The construction industry has traditionally emphasised hard skills, such as technology and project management, as essential for achieving project success. However, complex projects face challenges such as design intricacies, evolving stakeholder expectations, a shifting construction landscape, and uncertainties, including cash flow disruptions, schedule delays, quality and health-related issues, and stringent regulations. These challenges expose the limitations of traditional management models. Continuous technological advancements and project failures globally prompt project managers to refine leadership strategies and develop innovative practices to navigate evolving complexities, emerging technologies, and stakeholder expectations. A literature review highlights the importance of leadership and communication practices, trust development, collaboration, stakeholder management, and people-oriented, relationship-building approaches in addressing these challenges. This study aims to provide insights into the relationship mechanisms between leadership practices, communication, and project success and introduces a novel framework that encourages practitioners to adopt innovative behavioural practices. The study addresses challenges in the Australian construction industry, including project complexities, inefficiencies, supply chain issues, communication barriers, digitalisation, and regulatory protocol compliance. It aims to bridge the gap in empirical evidence-based research by examining relationship mechanisms through 2 mediators: relationship and conflict management. The study aimed to meet the following objectives: (1) To identify key project success factors related to leadership practices and communication in the Australian construction sector. (2) To examine the impact of project leadership practices and communication on project success. (3) To develop a framework for effective leadership and communication practices that ultimately improves project success. The research employs exploratory factor analysis, multivariate regression, Process Macro-Model 4 analysis, t-tests for independent samples, and the relative importance index (rank and mean) to analyse data collected from project managers/leaders, and followers (including project engineers, supervisors, team members, and senior managers) on 66 diverse projects in the construction industry. The results are validated using (1) an independent dataset of 43 followers and (2) 5 face-to-face interviews with an independent group of practitioners. The research identified key project success factors and their associated contributing leadership and communication behavioural practices. The key factors identified are (1) communication effectiveness, (2) relationship management, (3) leading by example, and (4) self-management, along with highlighting interpersonal sensitivity. These factors emphasise inclusiveness, collaboration, interpersonal sensitivity, self-feedback objectivity, information sharing, relationship-building, exemplary leadership behaviours, and emotional control, all of which significantly impact project success. The study identifies high-to-moderate levels of interpersonal and emotional behaviours, emphasising people-oriented and relationshipbuilding practices to enhance project success through effective communication and collaboration over task-oriented leadership. The behavioural practice characteristics of Australian project leaders differ significantly from those extracted from global research studies. Furthermore, Australian practitioners need to be aware of sustainability considerations to address and manage social, environmental, and economic concerns in resource utilisation. Additionally, this research's originality lies in introducing a nuanced and comprehensive leadership practices and communication dimensions (LPCD) framework, which illustrates the underlying relationships and interactions mechanism among variables, encouraging practitioners to devise innovative strategies to address the challenges of the Australian construction industry's dynamic, multidimensional project environment.