PAPERS

Limits to Effective Leadership Style

and Tactics in Critical Incident
Interventions
Dominic Thomas, Goizueta Business School, Emory University, Atlanta, GA, USA
Elliot Bendoly, Goizueta Business School, Emory University, Atlanta, GA, USA

ABSTRACT
Leadership effectiveness takes many forms. Its
impact on performance can be critical, but by
no means does it stand alone, and hence cannot truly be evaluated in isolation. Nor can it be
assumed that more of any one effective style is
necessarily a good thing. In project management contexts, these issues are particularly
salient. Here we study the impact of multiple
leadership styles on project performance, as
well as the joint role that intervention tactics in
general play. Our empirical study demonstrates
the benefit of moderate mixes of leadership
style and the declining returns on active interventions in these settings.
KEYWORDS: leadership; critical incidents;
interventions; tactics

Project Management Journal, Vol. 40, No. 2, 7080

2009 by the Project Management Institute
Published online in Wiley InterScience
(www.interscience.wiley.com)
DOI: 10.1002/pmj.20118

70

INTRODUCTION

he success of projects relies critically on the effectiveness of their

leadership. The growth in project management training and certification programs, along with an increased shift toward recognizing project-based work in the United States and abroad, indicates a trend in
practitioner understanding of this need. A 2006 State of the Profession study
by the Project Management Institute found that instituting project management offices, which enable project leadership to be better organized and
trained, leads to better budget, scope, and completion outcomes (all findings statistically significant at p 0.05; Andrews, 2007). Other recent reports
indicate that project work has been increasing as a proportion of total organizational work and now constitutes one-fifth of the worlds gross domestic
product (GDP), or approximately U.S. $7.2 trillion annually (Bredillet, 2007).
The academic literature has certainly not ignored the importance of
leadership or project management. Recent research on teams and their productivity in project work reinforces the critical role leadership must play in
getting productivity from teams with heterogeneous specialization. This
research also underscores the need for further study of how leaders may
affect these outcomes (Shin & Zhou, 2007). Another recent study calls for
focus on work design within and between organizations and points to the
trend toward more complex work, often involving new arrangements characterized by multiorganizational team projects (Sinha & Van de Ven, 2005).
Few studies have focused on the role of the team leader (whom we refer to
interchangeably as the project manager) and how he or she may manage
and improve team productivity in emergent forms of multiorganizational and
distributed team projects. In one exception, researchers examined formalization (e.g., explicitly outlining how certain interactions should take place)
and discretion (e.g., favoring and promoting certain interactions over others) given to team members and the resulting impact on productivity
(Naveh, 2007). Yet while research has outlined virtues of various contributors
to project success, such as balancing formality and discretion, there remains
a clear need to understand the dynamics of their effectiveness. In particular,
there is a need to further specify how a project manager may apply leadership styles and tactics when managing actual projects, what synergistic freedom these styles and tactics afford, and of what limitations in these practices
managers should be cognizant.
In this study, we specifically consider the synergies and limitations of two
factors concerning project leader action: breadth of leadership style, which
encompasses both Theory X and Theory Yoriented leadership, and scope
of leadership tactics, which relates to the general extent of intervention at a

June 2009 Project Management Journal DOI: 10.1002/pmj

given point in a project. In order to provide contextual focus, in our investigation we specifically consider each of
these issues as they relate to the effectiveness of leaders in managing communication and worker interactions
within projects. We furthermore focus
on the use of these styles and tactics,
specifically with regard to dealing with
critical incidents of projects or points at
which work breaks down due in part to
interaction failures. Encountering at
least a single incident of breakdown is
not uncommon among projects,
although these events themselves are
often ephemeral and difficult to adequately capture in research. Our decision to pursue this focus is aimed at
providing meaningful and practical
extension of existing thought on interrelated project manager behaviors. It is
also designed to allow for a re-examination of standing theoretical assumptions regarding the applicability of
leadership styles and tactics within a
typical context of knowledge worker
projects.

Research and Hypotheses

We begin our consideration of project
leadership engagement by accepting
the premise that project managers
must manage levels of formalization
and discretion in any and all projects
that involve creativity among groups of
knowledge workers (Naveh, 2007).
Todays project managers face a fundamental problem when it comes to the
management of formalization and discretion levels. They must act to manage
team interaction among workers who
are often linked across organizations in
a supply chain and who probably are
not collocated (i.e., so-called virtual
teams) (Lipnack & Stamps, 2000). This
problem is complicated by the very
nature of project manager roles as well
as their own personal professional
backgrounds. Project managers tend to
be leaders who come from a single disciplinary area within a field relevant to
a project (Project Management
Institute [PMI], 2004), and they will

often focus only on the management

of team interaction at points when
interaction breaks down (Hackman,
2002). In computer-mediated teamwork, researchers have identified an
important and common version of
these breakdowns related to the inability
to interact through information and
communications technologies. These
occasions have been termed critical
incidents (Thomas & Bostrom, 2008) or
discrepant events (Majchrzak, Rice,
Malhotra, King, & Ba, 2000). Successful
leader interventions during these incidents enable better project outcomes
and have the potential to avert project
collapse (Thomas & Bostrom, 2008).
This being the case, one might ask how
project leaders can effectively operate
through the use of various leadership
styles and interventions during critical
incidents. To answer this, we turn to the
leadership literature and its discussions
of both leadership style and intervention.
Leveraging Leadership Style
Existing leadership literature highlights
the notion that project leaders
assumptions about their project workers influence the nature and methods of
their resulting leadership style regarding formalization and discretion
(McGregor, 2006). According to this literature, Theory X leaders represent
those who assume their subordinates to
be less-than-ideally self-motivated (i.e.,
lazy by certain interpretations) and in
need of direct task assignment. In contrast, Theory Y leaders assume workers to be independently motivated and
in need of general direction and
encouragement (McGregor, 1960). The
notions of Theories X and Y continue to
permeate discussions of leadership
style and action and relate to the concepts of formalization and discretion.
A Theory Yoriented leader would
be more likely to take actions that
enable team members to have more
discretion, whereas a leader taking
more of a Theory Xbased approach
would take actions to formalize rules

and tasks. In keeping with these

assumptions, discussions of leadership
style in practitioner sources and even in
some research indicate that a Theory
Xoriented leader may be considered in
terms of being a micromanager or an
individual likely to intervene more
often, even to the point of disrupting
creative processes (Stuart & Tax, 2004).
In the management of professional
workers, it has been suggested that
leaders leaning toward a Theory Y
approach will tend to achieve higher
performance (Mintzberg, 1998; Stuart &
Tax, 2004). Although a critical perspective might suggest that such results are
largely due to the professional and selfmotivated nature of the workers that
allow such leaders to engage in a
Theory Y mode in the first place
(Fiedler, 1967), empirical evidence
from virtual projects has supported this
finding, noting that leadership efforts
to directly control the behavior of highly qualified workers often have negative
consequences (Piccoli & Ives, 2003).
Based on this research, we can expect
that project managers working with
qualified professionals (e.g., those with
professional certifications) in particular would achieve higher success by
employing a predominantly Theory Y
approach. We have no reason to anticipate such a dynamic to be restricted to
strictly virtual settings, but expect
that it might be relevant in all project
management settings (where communication of some sort is fundamentally
critical). In a later section of this article,
we discuss our method to isolate the
actions associated with a Theory X or
Theory Y approach, but for the time
being, we present hypotheses referring
to Theory Y actions or Theory X actions.
H1: Leadership actions characterized
predominantly by Theory Yoriented
actions will exhibit higher levels of performance than those characteristic of
Theory Xoriented actions.

Of course, not all project team members can be characterized as knowledgeable and self-guiding, or even as

June 2009 Project Management Journal DOI: 10.1002/pmj

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Limits to Effective Leadership Style and Tactics

fully cognizant of individual task
dynamics. Recent advances in the theory of leadership in cognitively and
behaviorally complex settings suggest
that, under conditions such as those
faced by most project managers, particularly in projects involving critical incidents and, hence, in need of well-led
redirection, Theory Y actions may be
useful but not sufficient to handle the
possible combinations of variables that
might occur (Bennis, Heil, & Stephens,
2000). Actions much more akin to a
Theory X style may be needed (Bobic &
Davis, 2003). Thus, leaders in highly
challenging project settings, such as
those involving critical incidents,
would likely benefit from the use of
both Theory X and Theory Y approaches in tandem (Denison, Hooijberg, &
Quinn, 1995; Hooijberg, Hunt, &
Dodge, 1997). We could expect to see
synergies in the joint use of Theory X
and Theory Y actions, particularly in
such contexts.
H2a: The interaction effect between
Theory X and Theory Y actions will be a
significant positive predictor of performance in projects involving critical
incidents.

Although we formally pose H2 as a

dynamic to guide our research and
analysis, we do not ignore the fact that
other competing lines of thought exist.
One such line of thought in particular
provides for a very different prediction
regarding the mixed use of management styles and resulting productivity
losses due to team conflict. Project
teams suffer substantial productivity
losses when they devolve into conflict
(Behfar, Peterson, Mannix, & Trochim,
2008). While it is possible that, over
time, conflict management in teams will
be aided by carefully designed work systems embedded in communications
technologies (Chidambaram, Bostrom,
& Wynne, 1991), team technologies in
use today still lack such features. In the
meantime, a key moderator of the ill
effects of conflict on team productivity
is shared identity and context (Hinds &
72

Mortensen, 2005). Shared team identity

helps unify expectations about each
others behavior during times of stress,
such as a critical incident, and shared
understandings about how to refocus
and intervene to improve outcomes
(Cannon-Bowers, Salas, & Converse,
1993; Mathieu, Goodwin, Heffner, Salas,
& Cannon-Bowers, 2000). This being the
case, the team members may have existing expectations about their leader and
how he or she leads, and if the leader
were to use a mix of actions drawn from
both Theory X and Y approaches, this
may confuse and impede shared action
toward improvement during a critical
incident. According to such a perspective, actions consistent with either a
Theory X or Theory Y approach might be
effective on their own, but when used in
alternation, or when excessive fusions
of the two styles are attempted, the
result may be considerably disruptive,
and perhaps even crippling. We hence
simultaneously pose a competing
hypothesis to that outline by H2a:
H2b: The interaction effect between
Theory X and Theory Y actions will be a
significant negative predictor of performance in projects involving critical
incidents.

Tempered Managerial Intervention

Aside from sufficient conditions for
guiding a project team through the resolution of project complications, what
sort of structural interventions by project managers are necessary during such
incidents? To what extent can they be
effectively deployed? Although these
are nontrivial questions, one critical
point of fact is that project work today is
largely computer-mediated, even among
colleagues within the same building
(Davenport, 2005). Teams whose members are also distributed, as in virtual
project teams, will be both computermediated and drawn from multiple organizations (Lipnack & Stamps, 2000).
In such computer-mediated knowledge
work, teams experience repair events
when computer-mediated interaction
breaks down and something must be

June 2009 Project Management Journal DOI: 10.1002/pmj

done to get everyone working together again (Massey & Montoya-Weiss,

2006).
Leader involvement in these
events would consist of taking actions
to manage communications technologies, team processes, and team members, thereby aiding successful repair
by helping the team effectively coordinate themselves to get back on track.
There could be an endless number of
possible intervention actions that
could be taken only by a project leader
by virtue simply of their level of
authorization, regardless of whether
the leader tends to be Theory Y or
Theory Xoriented. The Chinese have
an ancient proverb explaining that in
order to improve ones life, one must
move 27 things. How many and what
sort of actions form this sweet spot for
leaders intervening to improve project
interaction? Clearly, insufficient interventions may offer an insufficient
impact on project work during critical
periods. On the other hand, if project
managers allow themselves to become
overly engaged with changing the use
of communications technologies,
roles, and tasks, teams might not settle
into normal productive work. This ties
in Fiedlers contingency model of leadership in that the creation of poor
ground scenarios can easily derail any
leadership effectiveness otherwise
anticipated (Fiedler, 1967). Thus, the
extent to which the team is redirected
by leader intervention actions during a
project is likely to show something of
an inverted-U relationship with overall
project performance. Such relationships have become increasingly cited
in the operations management literature (Bendoly & Hur, 2007; Linderman,
Schroeder, & Choo, 2006) and are likely to have application here, as well.
Because we expect such effects to be
fundamentally critical to the contexts
in which leadership style is applied, we
hypothesize that such a dynamic will
transcend and, hence, be observable
regardless of the influences of leadership style.

H3: The extent to which management

interventions are applied in projects
involving critical incidents will exhibit
an inverted-U relationship with overall
project performance, observable above
and beyond the effects exhibited by
leadership style.

Method and Data

In order to formally test the proposed
hypotheses, and in so doing shed light
on discussions regarding the effectiveness of specific leadership approaches
during critical incidents of projects, we
pursued an empirical investigation into
the joint use and extent of project manager action in such contexts. Because
our intention here was not to explore
new means by which to measure such
activity but rather the impact of such
activity as observable through existing
scales, we draw heavily on the extant
literature in our overall measurement
approach. Further, our own professional experience within computermediated teamwork contexts and
indications in prior literature guided
our approach. In that the critical incidents needed to be sampled from
actual project work in distributed, computer-mediated contexts to properly
identify the pressures that lead to interaction breakdown over the long life of
actual projects, it was obvious that we
would: (1) face the possibility of recording a considerable quantity of useless
data with no guarantee of capturing an
incident in any specific project
observed and (2) be forced to comprehensively monitor a wide variety (e.g.,
12) of information and communications technologies being used simultaneously in project work interactions
(Thomas, Bostrom, & Gouge, 2007).
Our own experience and prior
research also made it evident that critical incidents involving relationship
breakdowns or other emotionally
charged conflict would likely be accompanied by a switch in media from more
explicit, archival, and, therefore,
observable media, such as e-mail, to
more synchronous and rich media,
such as phone or face-to-face meetings

(Barki & Hartwick, 2001; Dennis &

Valacich, 1999). As a result, attempting
to capture logs and directly observe
interaction would be challenging and
perhaps misleading. We could not guarantee that we would see a critical incident, due to the potential motivation
for individuals to resolve it discreetly
through no one observable interaction.
As a result, we decided to use as our primary approach the collection of anonymous, retrospective data as a best
means for motivating full disclosure,
ensuring usable data from each participant sample, and capturing all types of
breakdown.
Operationalization of Key Factors
To operationalize and understand
methods of enacting formalization or
enabling discretion in terms of leader
actions, we draw on prior literature
identifying forcing and linking actions
by project managers in distributed
information systems development
projects (Thomas & Bostrom, 2008).
Forcing actions include occasions
when leaders confront employees,
define roles, or block employees from
taking action. These actions associate
with formalization in that they enforce
formal structure in a project, add formal structure, or define the nature of
team, task, and technology and how
the team must behave. If team members are interested in having clear
direction, there is some evidence that
these actions would lead to improved
team performance (Bobic & Davis,
2003; McGregor, 1960). Enforcing
actions indicate project management
consistent with a Theory X approach
(McGregor, 1960, 2006). Following the
lead of Thomas and Bostrom (2008),
we asked leaders whether they enacted
each of several commonly exhibited
enforcing actions. Items in our construct mimic those used in past studies
and included Enforced existing
explicit rules through penalties for violation and Mandated adherence to
new or existing explicit roles for interacting.

In contrast, linking actions involve

training employees, encouraging them
to interact, developing consensus, initiating/modeling desired behavior, and
suggesting solutions for specific problems. Such actions have been associated with leaders as coaches and have
been found effective for achieving improved team performance (Hackman,
2002). These actions associate with
building discretion in that they emphasize interaction among team members,
individual team member selection of
how to act in given situations based on
modeling or suggestion, and consensusbased problem-solving. Encouraging
actions indicate a leader acting in a
manner consistent with Theory Y. They
tend to be associated with a more
transformational leader perspective,
with focus on relationship building in
which providing resources, connections, and general direction is expected
to achieve improved outcomes (Bass &
Avolio, 1994; McGregor, 2006). Again,
following the lead of Thomas and
Bostrom (2008), we operationalized
this construct through items such as
Explained why it is important to share
information in a timely fashion and
Reminded team members of existing inexplicit rules/norms for interaction.
Because we also had a particular
interest in how leaders may intervene
to improve team interaction, it was critical to follow our conceptualization and
operationalize such actions as orthogonal to our construction of encouraging
and enforcing. The leadership literature
identifies initiating structure, behaviors
such as setting up modes of interaction
and providing means for interaction, as
a core intervention action that leaders
take within groups (Hanson, 1996).
These are behaviors we believe independent of either a Theory X or Y
approach and indicative of intervening
in a group process. In that effective
leadership is characterized by high
initiation of structure (Halpin, 1966,
p. 127), we expect that, to achieve
improved project outcomes, some

June 2009 Project Management Journal DOI: 10.1002/pmj

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Limits to Effective Leadership Style and Tactics

degree of intervening will be required
in addition to enforcing or encouraging
actions.
Project performance from a project
manager perspective is typically characterized by effectively achieving a
composite goal known as the triple
constraint (budget-time-scope). This
goal consists of bringing in a project on
or under budget, on or before its deadline (time), and fully achieving the
desired scope. Empirical evidence supports the need to approach project
performance from a composite perspective for effective management
(Dimitroff, Schmidt, & Bond, 2005) and
suggests that measures of strategic
value beyond the triple constraint also
need to be considered to maximize performance (Norrie & Walker, 2004). Our
measure of improved project outcomes
takes such a composite perspective and
includes indicators for time, budget,
and scope in addition to factors associated with team and leader performance: organizational learning (Robey
& Sahay, 1996), improvement of team
members skills and abilities (Bass &
Avolio, 1994), client satisfaction, and
overall ability to complete the work
(PMI, 2004). As project managers have
inherent bias in their reporting of success factors, in particular to overweight
time as a factor in failure (Dilts & Pence,
2006), our composite measure helps
ensure reduced bias in reporting performance. It is worth noting, of course,
that any retrospective report of results
may also be subject to recollection
error. Although this is common to most
empirical survey methods, in our case
the merger of subjective assessments
with rich case reporting ameliorated
the risk of recall failure (Bendoly & Hur,
2007). Respondents scored each measure (on a 5-point Likert-type scale)
according to the degree to which they
believed their actions led to improvements or whether their actions were
detrimental. We aggregated these
responses as a composite index for
improved project outcomes attributable to the leaders actions.
74

Standard controls attempting to

account for common issues such as
project size and scope, measured by
items such as the number of group
members involved, project duration,
and average education level of group
members, were each taken into account
as controls in the analysis. Given our
specific interest in the impact of project
manager interventions in project interaction, we also decided to include in
our controls an index representing the
extent to which various critical forms of
communication were available across
the project duration. This index was
essentially a sum product of project
manager ratings of the criticality of a
variety of communication channels
(e.g., phone, fax, IM) and ratings of the
availability of these channels. The use
of composite indices is not uncommon
in the management literature and can
be particularly useful in serving as general controls for multiple related
though not synonymous externalities
(Bharadwaj, Bharadwaj, & Bendoly,
2007; Schroeder, Bates, & Junttila,
2002). Our hope in including this infrastructural control, which we will refer to
generally as infrastructure in our
analysis, was to mitigate the potential
misrepresentation of our highly proactive interpersonal independent variables with the effects of passive technical communication infrastructures
inherent to the project setting.
Data Collection
Our data collection took place in multiple phases over the course of a 5-hour
workshop in which our subject pool
voluntarily participated. Our target
population was practicing members of
the Project Management Institute in
attendance at the annual PMI Global
Congress. The subjects were fully aware
that they would be providing input on
their on-the-job activities prior to the
workshop and, hence, had the opportunity to opt out of the workshop altogether or to leave the workshop, effectively dropping out of our sample set, at
any point. Regardless of these options,

June 2009 Project Management Journal DOI: 10.1002/pmj

our final sample represented a fairly

large and representative sample of PMI
project managers with project efforts
focusing on IT infrastructure (22%) and
organizational systems improvement
(16%), as well as construction (13%),
research and development (R&D; 9%),
and manufacturing improvement (6%).
Of 115 participating project managers, 77 provided complete data and
consent. As a further test of nonresponse bias, we compared the demographics of respondent and firm attributes (e.g., number of employees and
sale volume) to those of the general
PMI constituency (Baruch, 1999). No
statistical differences were detected,
suggesting sufficient representation.
Projects reported had an average of
3.4 organizations, a budget of U.S.
$500,000, and a duration of 6 months to
a year. Fifty-seven percent of project
teams were dispersed to the degree that
they could not meet face-to-face regularly, and, characteristic of current
trends in project management and
matrixed organizations, managers
reported that, on average, few of the
project team members were under
their direct supervisory authority
(Hackman, 2002). Project teams contained at least seven members on average, the point at which the proactive
management of team interaction and
value of information technologies
appears to become much greater
(Fjermestad & Hiltz, 1999). The respondents also reported that they were highly experienced professionals with an
average of 9 to 10 years experience as
a project manager. The team members
meet our expectation for managing
knowledge work in that, on average,
managers reported that all members of
their teams had a college education or
advanced training.
Although individual managers
were providing both dependent and
independent variable data, our design
for collection drew heavily on the suggestions outlined by past research in an
attempt to ameliorate issues associated
with a mono-respondent bias. In line

with the suggestions of past authors

(e.g., Miller & Roth, 1994; Podsakoff,
MacKenzie, Lee, & Podsakoff, 2003), we
provided a clear separation between
the collection of dependent and independent variables by intermingling
these collection phases of our study
with actual nonsurvey activities that
the participants in our study engaged
in. This iteration served as an excellent
mechanism by which to both provide a
clear temporal separation between
reports on factor items of interest, as
well as instill a psychological separation to reduce the risk of additional
mental model development and factor
associations. Anonymity was ensured
through the use of a coding system, and
the notion that there were no right or
wrong responses was reiterated
throughout the collection period in an
attempt to avoid norm-seeking behavior in responses (Das & Joshi, 2007;
Podsakoff & Organ, 1986). The use of
factor-item interspersing and reversecoding of specific items was also applied
in an attempt to reduce halo-type

effects that might bias our data and

analysis.

Analysis and Results

To assess the extent to which the items
reported on could be used to represent
each of the three key independent factors of interest to our study, factor
analysis was conducted. The results of
the analysis following a principal components approach with varimax rotation are provided in Table 1.
As reported, all item loadings were
as predicted by their design and factor
conceptualization, and above the recommended levels established in the literature on convergent validity (e.g.,
Fornell & Larcker, 1981). Cronbachs
alpha values for all three factors were
above the 0.7 threshold recommended
as well (Nunnally & Bernstein, 1994).
In part, the distinctiveness of these
factors along the items of interest in
itself provided support that common
method variance was not a major concern, at least not among the independent variables. An additional unrotated

factor analysis inclusive of the primary

dependent variable, as well, in accordance with Harmans single-factor test,
demonstrated that a total of four
factorsthe three independent factors
and the main independent variable
could be clearly distinguished
(Podsakoff & Organ, 1986). This test has
been used increasingly in similar works
in this field (cf. Gowen, McFadden,
Hoobler, & Tallon, 2006; Kaynak &
Hartley, 2006; Klein, Rai, & Straub,
2007). Overall, 66% of constituent variance was accounted for across the four
factors derived in this test, with the first
derived factor accounting for 17%,
hence further reducing concern over
single-source biases. As a final check
against such biases, we followed the
recommendation of Bardhan (Bardhan,
Krishnan, & Lin, 2007) in conducting a
methods factor test (Williams, Cote, &
Buckley, 1989), along with a direct
product model check (Bagozzi & Yi,
1990).
Factor reliability on the dependent
variable (mean 3.91, SD 1.02) was

Factor 1:
Enforcing

Factor 2:
Encouraging

Factor 3:
Intervening

Created new, explicit rules for interacting

0.734

0.120

0.104

Enforced existing explicit rules through penalties for violation

0.660

0.044

0.026

Enforced existing explicit rules through visibility

0.703

0.141

0.212

Mandated adherence to new or existing explicit rules for interacting

0.532

0.080

0.034

Reminded team members of existing inexplicit rules/norms for interaction

0.162

0.706

0.044

Encouraged team to share information with each other

0.192

0.798

0.057

Explained why it is important to share information in a timely fashion

0.073

0.874

0.055

0.056

0.856

0.046

Manipulated team information or communications technologies

0.117

0.072

0.892

Blocked usage of a communication technology

0.031

0.086

0.719

Set up and made available a new additional communication technology

0.151

0.057

0.701

Reconstructed or reconfigured an existing communication technology

0.275

0.158

0.673

Cronbachs alpha for item sets including only heavily loading

(italicized score) items

0.775

0.813

0.723

Explained why it is important to share information that is accurate

Table 1: Factor loadings and alphas on selected item sets.

June 2009 Project Management Journal DOI: 10.1002/pmj

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Limits to Effective Leadership Style and Tactics

Improved
Outcome

Enforcing

Encouraging

Improved Outcome

1.000

Enforcing

0.165*

1.000

Encouraging

0.251**

0.121

1.000

Intervening

0.163*

0.148

0.102

Intervening

1.000

* p 0.1. ** p 0.05.*** p 0.01.

Table 2: Pearson product moment correlations.

also established, with a Cronbachs

alpha on the measure of outcome
improvement of 0.865. A last check on
discriminant validity among the independent factors was provided through
an examination of the correlations
among these factors. As shown in
Table 2, while each had moderately significant correlations with the outcome
measure, no correlations among the
independent factors appeared significant.
Regardless of seemingly low correlations among the key independent
variables, as a necessary step for testing
the interaction hypotheses of interest,
we followed the standard guidelines for
moderated regression analysis suggested in the literature (Cohen, Cohen,
West, & Aiken, 2003; Jaccard, Turrisi, &
Wan, 1990). To minimize the risk of
multicollinearity among interaction
terms and their component maineffect terms, we first mean-centered all
of the independent variables involved
in creating the interaction terms. The
variance inflation factors in all cases
were substantially below the critical
value of 10, indicating that multicollinearity was not an issue (Neter,
Wasserman, & Kutner, 1990).
In further accordance with recent
work on interaction effects in project
management settings (cf. Bendoly &
Swink, 2007; Tatikonda & Rosenthal,
2000), we adopted a hierarchical multivariate regression approach to analysis.
The stepwise increases in independent
factor variance accountability and
76

significance of the factors and interactions of interest are depicted in Table 3.

Demonstrated by the significant
increases in variance accountability in
the second step, the key factors indicative of leadership style activity (enforcing and encouraging) as well as structural change (intervening) do seem to
have direct relevance to outcome
improvement in projects involving critical incidents. However, a test for differences in the coefficients of enforcing
and encouraging showed nonsignificance. This was true for both the second
step as well as the full model. As a result,
the notion that Theory Y actions domi-

nate those of Theory X with respect to

project benefits (H1) could not be supported.
The third step, or full model,
demonstrates the particularly significant presence of nonlinear effects on
outcome improvement both in the
form of leadership-style interaction
and the quadratic intervention term
(see Table 3). The coefficients on the
leadership-style interaction (enforcing encouraging) were negative and
comparable in magnitude to direct
effects of either leadership style. Hence,
contrary to some elements of popular
theory, the hypothesis regarding potential synergies drawn from the use of
multiple styles (H2a) was not well supported. When high levels of both
Theory Y and Theory Xoriented
actions are pursued, rather than providing positive synergies, negative
effects manifest. Our arguments leading to our alternative hypothesis (H2b)
certainly could shed some light on this
effect; however, this alternative hypothesis cannot be viewed as entirely
supported, either. As suggested by the
magnitudes of the coefficients, it appears
that a very modest level of activity

Step 1
Intercept
Infrastructure

0.260
0.461*

Step 2
0.517

Step 3
0.091

0.456*

0.464*

Enforcing

0.266*

0.475**

Encouraging

0.252*

0.517***

Enforcing Encouraging

0.402**

Intervening

0.192*

Intervening2

0.805***
0.799***

F for the step

10.948***

5.907*

4.868*

F for the regression

10.948***

6.601***

5.873***

0.286

0.395

Adjusted R2

0.163

Note. Aside from the intercept, the main table contains standardized coefficient betas. No other controls
aside from our index of infrastructure were significant at any step.
* p 0.05.** p 0.01.*** p 0.001.

Table 3: Hierarchical regression with outcome improvement as dependent variable.

June 2009 Project Management Journal DOI: 10.1002/pmj

indicative of an opposing leadership

style may be leveraged to successfully
augment a more dominantly applied
form.
To test further for the potential of
such dynamics in our data, since there
is no guarantee that a quadratic term
fully or appropriately captures the
hypothesized nonlinearities, we conducted a simple multivariate analysis of
variance (MANOVA) comparison of
outcome improvement among project
interventions at alternating quartiles of
enforcing and encouraging. The significantly highest performance was
observed among interventions simultaneously positioned at both the second
lowest quartiles of one style and the
highest quartile of the other (p 0.05).
This result is again consistent with the
saddle dynamic on leadership style
suggested by our hierarchical model
results.
The other nonlinear dynamic indicated by our regression model relates to
the role of structural intervention activities. In support of H3, such actions do
appear to be well represented by an
inverted-U dynamic (positive beta on
main effect, negative beta on quadratic), more so than a simple linear
dynamic. Furthermore, this effect is
distinct from and significant above and
beyond effects of leadership-style
actions, as indicated by the incremental
R-square levels, beta significance levels, and the convergence and discriminant analysis presented earlier.
These results suggest that the use of
structured interventions is necessary
when leaders encounter critical incidents of interaction breakdown. An
additional test for interactions between
intervening and the styles failed to
show additional significance. This finding suggests that interventions employing either dominant style are equally as
effective regardless of the amount of
intervention, and casts doubt on prior
practitioner expectations that leaders
who employ a Theory X style may be
micromanagers who intervene more
than Theory Yoriented leaders, at least

within the context of responding to critical incidents.

Discussion
In this study, we expand the current
body of knowledge on project management by empirically examining how
leaders may be more effective intervening to improve project outcomes. This
area has been neglected in existing
research and requires an examination
of leader actions during their interventions, particularly during critical incidents, somewhat ephemeral and elusive occasions, which are very difficult
to observe and sample in practice due
to their existence in computer-mediated and often distributed team contexts.
With a focus on these contexts, we have
re-examined the notion that the styles
implied by Theory X/Y are exclusive.
Through our analysis, we demonstrate
the potential synergy of the styles,
counter to traditional interpretations of
Theory X/Y. Leaders may employ some
enforcing or encouraging actions in
addition to their actions from the other
approach during interventions and in
so doing enjoy particularly positive outcomes. At the same time, however, the
counterargument posed by the literature on leadership under behavior
complexity (i.e., that leaders need to be
ultimately flexible and responsively
selecting their behaviors to fit the contexts in which they act) does not seem
to be entirely applicable here. In a critical incident intervention scenario, project managers need to communicate a
coherent or at least dominant identity
to their teams. Ultimately, the key
appears to be one of focusing on a single approach predominantly characterized by either enforcing or encouraging
actions, and then augmenting such an
approach with modest and selective
use of a contrasting one. This finding
has implications for how we train future
leaders. As a follow-up, when we informally polled 40 MBA students, having
explained the option of a leader intervening in a critical incident with either
a predominantly Theory X or Y or mixed

approach, two responded that Theory X

would be best, seven responded that
Theory Y would be best, and 31
responded that a mix would be best.
Our evidence suggests that the basic
notions they now retain will not serve
them well for interventions in contexts
that are increasingly common to everyday business. It may be that for day-today leadership, a mixed approach is
best on a generalized basis. Within specific interventions, this may not be true.
Albeit limited to a sample size of 77
complete records, the analysis of our
data indicates that it is not true for critical incident interventions.
Based on existing literature on leadership style and effectiveness, we might
wonder whether leaders assumptions
about workers impact their performance as leaders. Some research over
the past several decades on the topic of
leadership style and approach supports
this notion. Is the same true about
workers? Do worker assumptions about
their leaders impact their performance?
We found no studies exploring this
notion, but it stands to reason that the
inverse of leaders assumptions about
workers impacting their behavior
may be true, especially the more we
recognize the ability of workers to
autonomously think and judge. Thus,
among professional, educated workers
trained to a degree of specialization in
their own fields, we can expect that they
would make assumptions about their
leaders and act as followers according
to these assumptions. To the degree
that this is true, our findings that leaders may be equally effective taking
either a Theory X or Y approach, but
focusing on one approach and only
modestly drawing on the other for augmentation, does seem to make sense.
Team members need to be able to
coherently understand the expectations of behavior being changed by
leaders during interventions. It appears
likely that, in agreement with the theories supporting H2b, team members
draw on their understanding of projectmanager identity in interpreting leaders

June 2009 Project Management Journal DOI: 10.1002/pmj

77

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Limits to Effective Leadership Style and Tactics

actions. This enables them to follow and
adapt more effectively during critical
incident interventions aimed at improving team interaction and productivity.
What is needed is a comprehensive
empirical examination of both managerial actions and work reactions during
interventions to validate this notion.
Above and beyond interpersonal
actions as indicative of leadership style,
we have also contributed to the literature
on project management by demonstrating the distinctive role of intervening
structural actions that may benefit outcome improvements in critical incident
scenarios. The nonlinear nature of the
relationship observed between intervening actions and outcome suggests a crucial trade-off between the importance of
being an active manager involved in
the operations of team interaction and the
importance of not overly disrupting the
context into which future work will transition. Too little intervention has little
chance of making a positive impact,
while too much intervention may lead to
still worse performance.
However, aside from these findings,
one might ask what are the warning
signs of too much intervention in team
interaction design? Some indications
come from the cases in which we see
such activity to be high. Although our
goal here was not to investigate the subcauses of critical incidents, in the cases
where several types of actions were
tried, we consistently see that incidents
were characterized by trust and relationship problems involving two or more
groups within a team not cooperating
with each other. These sorts of incidents
involving unwillingness to cooperate
appear particularly challenging for
interventions and may require the most
types of action by leaders. Our mathematical analysis suggests that somewhere between three and six types of
action overall (project managers indicated the types of actions they tookwe
did not directly observe and count the
exact number of actions taken due to
design considerations discussed earlier)
characterize the sweet spot for interven78

tion. The aforementioned incidents

involving cooperation breakdown were
characterized by at least 16 types of
actions each.

Conclusion
Our research demonstrates the importance of examining the behavior of
project managers and, in particular, the
importance of specific choices in leadership styles and interventions aimed
at successful outcomes. Contrary to
some indications in literature about the
value of an overly customized approach
to leading and concerning the importance of a facilitative approach for
knowledge workers, our data reveal that
leaders need to clearly demonstrate a
dominant approach during critical incident interventions. That approach may
be either Theory X or Ydominated but
may gain from a relatively minor degree
of approach modification. Moreover, as
suggested by situational theories such
as that of Fiedler (1967), effective leadership cannot be expected to flourish in
the presence of excessive interventions.
Managers should be forewarned to
temper their tactics, as well as remain
conscious of the dominant leadership
style they chose to apply during critical
incidents.

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Dominic Thomas joined the Goizueta Business

School in 2005 after receiving his PhD in management information systems from the
University of Georgia. Prior to pursuing his PhD,

June 2009 Project Management Journal DOI: 10.1002/pmj

he worked in education, education system

reform, and international development in the
United States, Russia, Japan, and Nepal. He has
personally managed large, multinational projects in Nepal and Japan. He has served as an
advisor for two large-scale information systems
projects, one involving implementation of an
enterprise resource planning system in a global
energy company and one involving re-engineering the core processes and systems with an
object-oriented architecture at a government
agency. His research is in press at the Journal of
the ACM, Information Systems Research, and the
Journal of Management Information Systems.

Elliot Bendoly is an associate professor at

Emory Universitys Goizueta Business School.
He holds a PhD from Indiana University in operations management and decision sciences, with
an information systems specialization. He
serves on the editorial boards of the Journal of
Operations Management and Decision Sciences.
His research has been published in numerous
elite academic journals, including Production and
Operations Management, Information Systems
Management, MIS Quarterly, the Journal of
Applied Psychology, the International Journal
of Operations and Production Management,
Information & Management, Journal of Operations
Management, Decision Sciences Journal, and
Decision Support Systems. He is also coeditor
of Strategic ERP Extension and Use and author of
Excel Basics to Blackbelt.