Poor project performance produces substantial cost overruns and lost competitive advantage through failed strategic objectives, which can diminish organizational survival. Project leadership has been shown to increase project performance. However, a thorough review of the literature suggested that project managers may prefer alternatives to the leadership behavior shown to produce the highest levels of project performance and that three situational variables may influence this choice. In this non-experimental quantitative correlational study, a convenience sample of 175 project managers from 39 countries completed a modified version of the Leader Behavior Description Questionnaire over a 6-week period to assess project managers' leadership behavioral style preferences and to examine the possible relationships that certification, gender, and country of employment had with project managers' leadership behavioral style. Differences between leadership behavior scores were identified with a binomial sign test, and the strength of relationships among leadership behavior preference and certification, gender, and country of employment were investigated by analyzing the demographic data with Chi-square tests for independence and Pearson's Contingency Coefficients. Consistent with the literature, initiating structure was preferred to consideration and balance (80 initiating structure, 74 consideration, and 21 balance) and significant, strong relationships were identified between leadership behavior preference and certification (Chi-square score of 91.68; Pearson's association threshold 0.56), gender (Chi-square score of 115.29; Pearson's association threshold 0.62), and country of employment (Chi-square score of 183.05; Pearson's association threshold 0.71). A review of the results added clarity to the project leadership literature. advanced the behavioral leadership literature, and suggested that organizations could modify project manager training programs to create leader behavior awareness, developing competencies based on initiating structure primarily and consideration secondarily, and prepare project managers for certification.
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