Examining the Relationships between Leadership, Team Communication, Project culture, and Project Success Factors in the UAE: A Structural Equation Modeling Perspective.

Abstract

Many international studies have linked project success to specific factors, such as leadership member exchange relationship theory (LMX), project culture and team communication. This study expands our efforts to empirically examine team communication as a mediator in regard to project success factors. A total of 186 responses were collected from different private and public organizations that represent different international nationalities in Abu Dhabi emirate in the UAE. The study uses a series of confirmatory factor analyses to test the measurement models and structural equation modeling to test project success factors’ model relations, hypotheses and team communication’s mediating impact. A self-administered e-mail questionnaire was used to collect data from respondents. The sample represented different types of organization ownership: government, semi-government, private and public. Confirmatory factor analyses were used to assess the scale of measurement and structure of the scale applied to LMX, project culture, team communication and project success. SEM was used to assess the mediating effect of team communication on the indirect relationship to the independent variable (LMX and project culture) and direct relationship to the project success factors. The study explores different aspects that contribute to the success of projects and articulates issues that are essential for the implementation of the study’s findings in this region. The literature review of this study aims to contribute to the understanding of project management best applicable international practices. First, the study addresses an existing gap in the relationships between project success, LMX and project culture. The study also investigates the degree of mediating impact that team communication has on both elements in relation to their influence on project success. Moreover, the findings reveal to what degree project success factors depend on team communication, project leadership and organizational culture empirically. In the future, organizations and project leaders responsible for projects will be able to apply the study outcomes to reduce project failure.