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Abstract
This study looked at six popular project management leadership styles across three industries to discover if there is a commonality in each industry as well as if the preferred methodology differs from industry to industry. The leadership styles researched were coaching, strategic, laissez-faire, bureaucratic, autocratic, and democratic. The three industries surveyed were healthcare, finance, and pharmaceuticals. Participants were made up of 61 employees (9 managers, 8 team leaders, and 44 team members) from the three industries. An electronic survey generated by Key Survey and using the Likert scale from one to five was sent to participants to complete within 48 hours. Data from the survey showed that all three industries best identify with strategic and democratic leadership styles. The healthcare industry preferred strategic and coaching best, finance industry preferred strategic and democratic, and pharmaceuticals preferred strategic, coaching, and democratic styles almost equally. Bureaucratic leadership was proven to be the least preferred style across all three industries. This study also showed that there was a leadership style preference when broken down by gender. Males favored democratic while females favored strategic, showing alignment with the overall preferred styles across industries. Our study confirms that there are leadership style preferences across industries and that this preference can vary only slightly by industry and by gender.
Keywords: leadership style, coaching, strategic, laissez-faire, bureaucratic, autocratic, democratic, healthcare, finance, pharmaceuticals
Introduction
There are a variety of leadership methods in today's project management field, however, this study will focus on six of the most popular styles: bureaucratic, laissez-faire, democratic, autocratic, coaching, and strategic. Leadership style is the driver in a project manager's rate of success or failure. Motivating team members and building relationships are paramount in ensuring a successful project. The leadership style used by a manager directly influences the team members' execution and performance, as well as motivates the team to reach the organization's goal(s) (Ojokuku et al., 2012).
Project management occurs across every level in all businesses. The purpose of this study was to discover if there is a commonality in leadership preference within an industry and if the preferred methodology differs across industries. The authors chose to survey employees routinely working in a project management environment at their place of employment, which are a hospital, and pharmaceutical...