The Impact of Project Manager Competence and Team Building on Project Success: The Mediating Role of Organizational Culture in Pakistan’s Public Sector Construction Projects

Abstract

These are typical and commonplace with public sector construction and arise from many and varied sources all too frequently – including delayed construction, construction cost overruns and uncertain results – all of which consume much of the country's development spend. This research will be continued in order to answer the questions asked about how PM competences and team building affect the project success, and how the role of organizational culture in project success is. The survey respondents were 263 individuals from public sector projects in Pakistan, and were measured on following scales: PM competence (fifty items), team building (fifty items), organization culture (fifty items) and project success (forty-eight items) all of which were measured on a five point likert scale. Partial least squares structural equation modelling was used to estimate the hypothesised mediation model, which was tested by resampling 5,000 times the data by bootstrap. The measurement model was good with the Cronbach's alpha ranged between 0.850 and 0.862, composite reliability ranged between 0.889 and 0.897, the average variance extracted (AVE) ranged between 0.537 and 0.592, the all the heterotrait monotrait correlation was below 0.85. 31.4 percent of the variance in organizational culture and 49.5 percent of the variance of project success were explained using the model. Project manager competence (b= 0.203), team building (b= 0.258) and organizational culture (b= 0.417) were all directly positively related to success; the project manager competence and team building had positive effects on culture (b= 0.258, 0.203, respectively). The indirect path (through culture) was considerable for competence (0.164) and team building (0.117); both of these relations were complementary partial mediation. This means that, for public bodies building up projects, the role of competent managers and the construction of one's team is a direct benefit, not only due to the project, but due to the organisational culture that was formed by using the project.

Keywords: project manager competence; team building; organizational culture; project success; mediation; PLS-SEM; public sector construction; Pakistan