دانلود رایگان ترجمه مقاله رهبری برای صنعت ساخت و ساز آینده – الزویر 2008

رهبری برای صنعت ساخت و ساز آینده: دستور کاری برای رهبری اصیل

Leadership for future construction industry: Agenda for authentic leadership

1. Introduction

With increased emphasis on project management systems, construction firms are now seeking professionals with better management and leadership skills rather than technical skills [1]. However, educational institutions and construction firms continue to produce managers who lack leadership skills. This is due to traditional academic curricula which do not cover the development of individuals as leaders, the conventional transactional mentality and task-orientation of industry professionals. Moreover, the industry has focused on management, to the exclusion of leadership. That is probably the reason that construction project managers are not perceived as leaders and are mostly termed as managers [2]. Their day-to-day work involves management of activities and achievement of the short-term goals of the project such as conforming to budget, schedule, and quality. They are focused on the end goals and not the means to achieve the results. This mindset of construction project management makes the managers more production-oriented rather than relationship-oriented. They mostly end up managing their teams and day-to-day work rather than leading their people to achieve long-term objectives. Such conventional systems produce professionals who frequently do not see widely or deeply enough in the designs they produce, and ignore issues such as environmental and cultural degradation caused by engineering works. Previous works on the subject mention several reasons for this situation, for example: technically focused curricula in engineering education, limitations of the standards of performance, the requirements in standards and codes, and budget and time limits [1]. To address what may be called ‘‘leadership crisis’’ [3,4], authors of this paper argue that there is a need for leadership development in the project managers in the construction industry. The construction industry is in a new period of a challenging socio-economic, cultural, political, and business environment. Many recent corporate scandals, instances of management malfeasance [5] in the business world have also left unfavorable impressions about leaders, leadership, and leadership authenticity. This situation urgently calls for fresh perspective of implicit leadership drives, suitable leadership behaviors for construction projects, practical and authentic performance standards, effective leadership interventions that can help to accelerate leadership development, influence of leadership on project outcomes, influence of leadership on followers and organizational outcomes in the long-term. Moreover, there is a need to promote a positive culture in the construction industry and to develop leaders who possess positive values and practice high levels of moral and ethical standards. These leaders should be capable of changing the conventional paradigm of management in the industry and set exemplary standards for others to follow. To achieve this goal, the authors argue that the construction industry needs to concentrate on developing a new breed of future project leaders through authentic leadership development. Authentic project leaders are not only good managers of projects but they are also leaders of people and visionaries of future. George [6] asserts that authentic leaders have a unique leadership style that is consistent with their personality and character. They understand their purpose, practice solid values, lead with heart, establish connected relationships, and demonstrate high level of self-discipline [5]. Having these attributes, authentic project leaders are able to motivate people, win the support of their followers, and obtain project objectives as well as veritable performance for their parent organizations.

1.1. Objectives of paper

To emphasize the need for authentic project leaders and authentic project leadership, this paper focuses on the following objectives: To rationalize the need for authentic project leadership development (APLD) for construction project leaders and develop a theoretical framework. To discuss the research and practical implications of the proposed theoretical framework. To offer suggestions for measures which can be taken with regard to authentic leadership development in the construction industry.

2. Leadership research in the construction industry

Research has shown that the project manager is one of the most important success factors of projects. Site managers have an impact on the overall quality and cost of the project and the quality of the individual site manager may affect the project cost by as much as 10% [7]. Leadership is one of the most important subjects in management studies [8]. However, many authors have not been able to articulate the idea of leadership despite the large volume of research and literature on the area [9,10]. Particularly in the construction industry, not much work has been done on leadership [11]. Dulaimi and Langford [12] argue that most studies on leadership in the construction industry concentrate on investigating the motivational factors and the personal characteristics of project managers. Few studies focus on leadership development in construction project managers. However, due to the changing environment of the construction industry and increasing realization of people-side of project management, researchers have shown more interest during last few years. Toor and Ofori [13], in their recent review of empirical work on leadership in construction, have shown that the number of publications in this area have consistently grown during the last decade. Out of total 44 publications, Toor and Ofori [13] show that more than 50% have been published during the last decade. This shows a mounting interest of the research community in leadership in the construction industry. The lack of focus on leadership is not limited only to research in the construction industry. Practicing construction professionals are also hardly seen as leaders [14]. A recent poll of the American Council of Engineering Companies (cited in [2]) revealed that very few people view consulting engineers as community leaders while a large percentage of respondents perceived them as technical consultants. Several reasons have been suggested to explain why the construction industry has not undertaken any significant research on leadership and its practical use in the industry. Langford et al. [15] opine that the low volume of leadership studies in the construction industry is due to the lack of understanding of knowledge of the industry on the part of social scientists and a lack of understanding of the social sciences by those in the industry.

3. Unique challenges of a unique industry

The uniqueness of the construction industry is probably the most often mentioned feature in books and journals. This uniqueness also makes construction project management a distinct discipline as it poses considerable challenges in various contexts. Toor and Ofori [16] present the taxonomy of construction industry challenges which comprises industry specific challenges, general business challenges, and operating environment challenges (socio-cultural, economic, technological, legal and regulatory, and ethical). Industry specific challenges include poor social image of the construction industry, fluctuating construction activity, greater private-sector participation in infrastructure projects, globalization of the construction industry leading to increased foreign participation in domestic industries, growing size of projects, the need to integrate an increasingly large number of construction processes, multi-project environments, widening application of franchising in the industry, increasing vertical integration in the packaging of projects, and increasing trend of strategic alliances such as mergers, acquisitions, and partnering relationships. Other researchers note challenges such as the gap between research and practice and the need to attain the highest client value as well as its creation, capturing, and distribution. The construction industry faces major leadership challenges such as those relating to the workforce including lack of quality people owing to difficulty in attracting talent, ageing workforce, dealing with issues such as change or transition, teamwork and communication, and training and education. One major challenge of traditional construction paradigm is the emergent human resource strategies despite the fact that industry is badly suffering from scarce human resources. Toor and Ofori [16] note that the socio-cultural challenges facing the industry include spreading wave of terrorism and political upheavals and cross cultural issues. Economic challenges include funding difficulties, uncertain economic conditions, threats of high inflation, and rapidly fluctuating stock values and exchange rates. Technological challenges include increased use of information and communication technology (ICT) such as in e-procurement, technological gap between the industries in developed and developing countries and matters of technology transfer, and growing need for innovation to gain competitive edge. Legal and regulatory challenges include different legal systems, litigation procedures, and arbitration methods within and across countries. Ethical challenges comprise corruption in both developing and industrialized countries and fraudulent and unethical professional practices [16]. These challenges, together with rapid changes in the business culture have led to a widespread adoption of flattened organizational structures and empowerment strategies. To improve the operational flexibility of organizations, several new structures have emerged such as networks, collaborations, federalist structures, the shamrock structure, and virtual organizations. Pries et al. [17] note that the mainstream paradigm of construction industry leaders is conventional in nature and remains technology- and project-oriented. He argues that industry leaders must take appropriate initiatives to change the old paradigms and make the construction industry more flexible to adapt to the modern business environment. There lies a task ahead and construction leaders need to develop necessary capabilities to accomplish the future challenges. Fig. 1 summarizes the above discussion and shows the traditional construction project manager who is surrounded by a set of forces from all sides. There are passive and active forces, contemporary leadership challenges, and emerging leadership demands of the projects. The passive forces comprise traditional education and training, passive organizational and industry culture, and traditional performance expectations. These forces compel the project manager to remain conventional, conform to situational demands, and accept the existing circumstances. Contemporary leadership challenges include those which are specific to the industry, and those which are in its environment. These challenges have been discussed above. To face the future business challenges, the project managers need to develop as leaders who are not only good at human and social capital but they also have positive psychological capacities which Luthans et al. [18] refer to as confidence, optimism, hope, self-efficacy, and resilience. They need to develop as authentic project leaders to be able to achieve veritable performance by creating a positive environment in their organizations.