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The evolution of project leadership styles in organizational settings

Thematic Analysis
Overall Description of this Assignment
This assignment provides an opportunity for students to thematically explore and analyse the various approaches to leadership and teams in the context of projects, and identify different models of leadership that could be better aligned with project realities in the contemporary world.
Despite having long-standing theories of leadership, and despite having myriad leadership models in management and organizational research, scholars in project management still lament over the limitations of our current understanding of the leadership phenomenon in projects. New insights into the areas of people, leadership and teamwork are still very much needed in the context of projects (Clarke 2012). For instance, there are emerging themes such as the variables or factors between leadership and project outcomes, or variable project conditions and what effects that may have on teamwork.
“Project working has moved substantially beyond its early traditional engineering homeland to have now become adopted as a common form of work organisation across industries and business sectors. This has brought new challenges for traditional project management where projects are now operating under far wider ranging contingencies and increasing complexities” (Clarke, 2012, p. 145).
The quotation above is from a special issue editorial by Clarke (2012) who discusses several articles and the extent literature in the context of leadership in projects. This gives students some ideas on what themes might be of interest to explore for this assignment.
Ref: Clarke, N. (2012), "Leadership in projects: what we know from the literature and new insights", Team Performance Management, Vol. 18 No. 3/4, pp. 128148.
https://doi.org/10.1108/13527591211241042.
Beyond this editorial piece, there are other peer-reviewed publications in the extant literature about people, leadership and teamwork in the context of projects.
Topics for your thematic analysis of the literature
The thematic analysis needs to be based on at least one of the topics from the list below. You may combine several topics into one, where appropriate. Other topics must be negotiated with the unit coordinator in advance.
1. The evolution of project leadership styles in organizational settings
2. A comparison of contemporary project teams
3. What constitutes effective leadership under conditions of increasing uncertainty and complexity in projects
4. Leadership styles, behaviours and/or roles and how they differ by project types, project lifecycles or project environments
5. Navigating through highly political or power-driven project environments
6. New capabilities for 21st century project leaders
7. Negative leadership traits and how team members might overcome them
8. Leading and facilitating change through project leadership
Structure of the assignment
The report will be produced as a 3000 word academic paper. The word count excludes References and Appendices. You could either build on the contents from the preworkshop assignment or start a new paper.
The purpose of the Thematic Analysis assignment is to develop your ability to research, organise, sort, summarise, critique and synthesise the literature relevant to the people and leadership models, frameworks and tools from this unit and the extant literature. Your analysis should provide critique and insight into the traits, behaviours, competencies, capabilities in the context of people, teams and leadership within the context of projects. You may want to compare and contrast the themes found through the literature, and point out what is evident or missing in practice in a team project, program or portfolio.
Elements in your final submission are to include:
• Cover page with student details
• Title and Keywords
• Introduction
• Main body structured with themes and sub-themes (or headings and sub-headings) o Include tables, graphics, figures, diagrams and flow charts where relevant.
• Conclusions
• References
• Appendices

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