Impact of project managers' person-environment fit

The purpose of this research was to study the level of appreciation executive and senior managers have towards the contribution person-environment (P-E) fit attributes, in particular the person-organisation (P-O) fit and person-job (P-J) fit attributes, have in describing the competency of a project manager from the perspective of executives and senior managers who, within their respective organisations, are responsible for the workplace management team that directly manages short and long-term projects. The executives and senior managers are responsible for developing the strategic program and project goals and monitoring program and project performance.<br><br>The thirty-six executive and senior business manager participants came from a broad range of industry sectors including; banking and finance, construction, education (Universities), ICT consulting services, legal and law enforcement, logistics & transport, state and local Government, and telecommunications.<br><br>Research into project success across a variety of industries indicates that projects have very high challenge and failure rates, with research and reports showing that approximately 30% of projects can be truly considered successful which translates to some 70% of projects going out of control to some degree and fail at some level to deliver their business strategy and expected business benefits. Whist there is considerable research concerning the various project management practices and how those practices can be optimised to reduce the opportunity for a project to go out of control, there is little information available regarding other potential influencing factors such as the fit of the project manager to the sponsoring organisational culture (person-organisation) and their alignment to the project itself (person-job).<br><br>The project management industry and academia have spent untold hours of effort investigating, researching, and fine tuning the project management practices which on the surface seems to have been counterproductive as the high challenge and failure rates have remained reasonably constant. This represents a paradoxical situation from which it seems the project management industry and academia cannot escape. The high project challenge and failure rate results in significant loss of productivity and profitability while simultaneously causing morale and interpersonal issues amongst all those engaged in the project.<br><br>The analysis of the semi-structured interviews demonstrated that the participants held a very strong appreciation for the person-job (P-J) fit of a project manager, principally due to the manner in which project managers are recruited. Almost exclusively the participants held a very poor appreciation of the importance and business value of a good person-organisation (P-O) fit that a project manager can bring to the management of the project.  <br><br>The participants strongly indicated that project managers demonstrated low levels of business acumen and that the commercial imperatives of the project were secondary to the execution of the project methodology. This perception by the participants may be a result of the project managers typically placing a high value on the activities of a project to the detriment of building a strong relationship with the participants.  This focus on project activities was interrupted by the participants as the project manager having poor interpersonal skills, namely low self and social awareness, and poor empathy for others along with low organisational awareness. This disconnect between the project manager and the participants has a negative impact on the effectiveness on the quality of the project as seen by the participants. <br> <br>The findings from this research have implications for project management theory and practice.  In particular, the importance of the person-organisation attributes of a project manager to complement the person-job attributes in describing a competent project manager. The final conceptual model presented provides a mechanism for improving the probability of project success by interrogating a project manager¿s person-organisation (P-O) fit and person-job (P-J) fit attributes in relation to a proposed project environment. The outcome of this research contributes to our improved understanding of how and why projects have such a high challenged and failure rate by focusing a spotlight on the importance of taking person-organisation attributes into consideration when describing a competent project manager.