Behavioral Aspects of Project Management
The purpose of this paper is to explore how organizational culture and human behavior
influence the success of projects, in particular projects beset with issues. This paper will
first answer how organizational culture influences the selection, sponsorship, prioritization,
and ultimate success of projects. Secondly, answer the question of what role the project
leadership plays in the success of projects and how a project manager can build and
manage a successful project team. Finally, the paper will offer some strategies that could
be used by a project manager to successfully manage the relationships among project team
members and the relationships among the project team and external resources.
Organizational culture influences the selection, sponsorship, prioritization, and ultimate
success of a project by establishing the standards for what an organization is to
accomplish. Gray and Larson (2005) have identified 10 cultural dimensions of an
organization which form an environment that is beneficial to carry out most complex
projects which engage employees from various disciplines (p.77). The cultural dimensions
include the following: 1. member identity, 2. team emphasis, 3. people focus, 4. unit
integration, 5. control, 6. risk tolerance, 7. reward criteria, 8. conflict tolerance, 9.
means-end orientation, 10. open-system focus. These characteristics determine the success
or failure of a project within an organization. Each organization culture is used to develop
strategies and solutions that are more likely to be understood and accepted. In this manner,
the organization culture avoids violating key norms that would otherwise jeopardize the
effectiveness of the strategies and solutions within the organization.
An organization culture can create conditions that could lead to a project falling behind
schedule, over budget, key team members resigning in disgust, and plummeting morale of
the remaining team as these team members fear extra work without compensation. In order
for an organization to avoid the above situation from happening, the following checklist
should be consulted: engage sponsors, the project manager, and the team; timely
communicate the risks and the risk strategies; ensure management is available for help
with project management deliverables; provide formal training, mentoring and coaching in
order to develop project managers skill sets; offer rewards for successfully managed
projects; and define a project success at the organizational level. When an organization
actively supports project management, the odds of its success will be greatly increased.
Every organization performs projects; however, the most successful projects adopt a
formal project management process which incorporates the organization culture. For
