Project case

For managing the operations and process of events and organizational functions the project management tools and techniques are used.  These tools and techniques help to maintain the smooth flow of activities and support to keep the quality according to the required standards. Project management is an important process used for managing small and big projects by using the elements like initiation, planning, implementation, monitoring, and closing. The project manager considers and applies different project management tools and techniques for managing the project as per the needs and required standards of the client.  It is the responsibility of the project manager to collect the requirements, analyze them and plan the activities by considering the availability of resources. The approach of manager and their team members have a significant impact on the processing of operation and implementation of a plan to achieve the goals and objectives. Moreover, the knowledge and skill level of project manager plays a critical role in arrangement and utilization of resources as well as the effective distribution of tasks according to capabilities of team members. This kind of process has a significant impact on efficiency and proper management of operations to meet the goals.

The current study will focus on the annual event of Imperial College, London.  The college management has organized the Alumni Weekend at Imperial Festival on 6th and 7th May 2017. The timing of the event was 10:00-17:00 at Imperial College, London, South Kingston Campus Exhibition Road, London. The type of event was festival and the entry ticket was available at the college campus. The main event activities were involved the best science, engineering, entrepreneurship and creativity. The attraction for guest requires demonstration of new science and engineering products and services interactive talks and exhibition, workshops and performance by the students (About Imperial College event, 2017). The management expected to invite 500 guests from their student and academic community. This was a free event for all age people. Moreover, the registration fee for the adult was £5 per head. There was no entry fee for children under 16 years. Now, it was the responsibility of project manager to maintain the process of this event and manage the activities according to the required standards of Imperial College. The proper collection of data and analysis of requirement was beneficial for the manager to lead the team and meet the objectives more professional manner.              

Aims and objectives

Aim:

The aim of the study is to analyze the role of leadership in managing the project in the case of Imperial College annual event.

Objectives:

•    To critically analyze the importance of leadership regarding the project of Imperial College

• To determine various leadership styles for managing the project of Imperial college event appropriately.

•   To evaluate the factors affecting leadership of the project manager and the project of Imperial college.

•    To assess the strategies which support the project manager for leading the project of imperial college efficiently

1. What are the major roles of the leader of the project of Imperial College?
2. What are the issues faced by the project manager in managing the project of Imperial College?
3. What are the strategies for managing the project of an event in Imperial College?

The study will analyze approach of managing event by the project team leader at Imperial College. The event of Imperial College was held for two days and college management has developed a plan for organizing the activities related to the event. It was the responsibility of the project manager to plan the activities and maintain the flow of operations to conduct the two days event in efficient manner. However, the project manager has faced some issues like lack of managing human resources, miscommunication of requirement and arrangement of resources for maintaining the standards of the event. These issues have affected the operational and functional actions of the project and lead to a delay in the delivery of services. The study will focus on these issues and analyse the best ways to meet the objectives of the event by using the proper leadership functions for a project manager. The project manager has to be good in communication and distribution of resources to meet the objectives of the project. The research will also focus on issues and styles that are required to be considered for managing the project activities as well as ensure effective utilization of resources.    

Review of literature is about collecting the data and information from the past researches and studies by having concern over the selected topic. It is an important part of research that helps out researcher to gather the information regarding the different aspects of study and help in building the strong theoretical background for research. For the current study, this chapter will carry out the analysis of different approaches, theories and styles of leadership and project management techniques using the secondary sources. The researcher will collect information from secondary sources like books, journals, online articles and past research that are similar to the topic.  The major areas that are reviewed by the researcher for current study involve the importance of leadership for managing project, leadership styles that are useful for managing project activities of an event and issues that could affect the approach of the project manager to maintain the project standards.       

Research questions

According to Ciulla (2017), leadership is the process through which the individual motivate people to achieve objectives of the task and leads the organization in the organized and successful manner. It is the manner in which the individual persuade a group or team member in order to achieve the desired common goals. Leadership is a skill of handling and motivating the team to work as per capabilities. It has been found that leader motivates the workers or team members for maintaining a high level of contribution in operations and functions of the project and makes them work to meet the requirements of a project specifically. Leadership is a widespread concept, which includes various aspects and theories used for carrying out the activities in an efficient manner. Acquiring the leadership qualities help an individual to set direction and vision for the entire group and individual person working towards a specific goal or project.

Kerzner and Kerzner, (2017) had stated that leadership plays an important role in managing the project and making the activities more fruitful and successful. Leadership helps in maximizing the effectiveness and efficiencies of the group or individuals to reach the desired goals successfully. It helps in making plans and decision in the critical situation and takes action to resolve the issues faced throughout the project. Moreover, leadership influences the team members to maintain a flow of activities or work assigned to them and make sure to accomplish the same within the given time period. While managing the project, it is essential to meet the requirements and criteria provided by the client and ensure to fulfil needs successfully.

It is important for the leader to acquire enhanced knowledge and understanding about the leadership tactics and theories to lead the team appropriately. Leadership is characterized as an interpersonal process, which drives a manager or leader into guiding and influencing the co-workers and motivates them to make their best efforts towards the achievement of desired goals. It signifies to acquire the qualities like maturity, responsible, intelligence and personality in a person. In the opinion of Darling (2017), leadership is also considered as a group process, which includes two or more individuals communicating with each other. 

Leadership includes specific elements such as leader, followers, communication and situation analysis. These elements could affect the action as well as the management of the project specifically (Northouse, 2018).  There are various leadership theories that have been utilized by the leader in managing the project or carrying out their leadership activities. The major theories include Trait, situational contingency theories, Behaviroal, participative, transactional and transformational leadership theories.  These theories have been used for managing leadership tactics and the choice of leader in the particular situation of the project. Leadership provides a potential or capacity to an individual to influence the behaviour of people towards a specific goal and lead them accordingly. It is important for the leader to develop the vision and encourage the group of individuals to move towards the attainment of targets and make their best efforts towards it (Ford and Harding, 2018). These tactics also helps strengthen the vision and mission of any specific project and enhances the probabilities of achieving success out of it.

Rationale of study

As per Ahmed and Anantatmula, (2017) the term leadership refers to motivating, directing and organizing a group or individuals with the purpose to perform the given tasks proficiently. It is important to acquire the quality of leading people or team towards the right direction in a productive manner. Leadership in managing project plays an important role to accomplish the tasks and reach towards the final goals.  Every individual leader acquires its own leadership style and these styles differ from each individual to individual depending upon their philosophies, experiences, and personalities. In other words, leadership styles are the behaviour of leaders towards their team or group they are leading.

A leader is good in moulding, improving and shaping the behaviour of the team members towards the achievement of set aims and objectives of any project specifically. However, it has been observed that there is no specific style of leadership as every action is dependent upon the manner of tackling the real-time situation. As per Anderson and Sun (2017), each different style lays a different effect on the results produced by the team and the environment of the workplace. There are various types of leadership styles which could be used such as autocratic, democratic, transformational, transactional and situational as well as laissez-faire leadership styles. These styles are been used by leaders in different project management.

As per Zhang and et al., (2018) the autocratic leadership style mainly focuses on both the control of the followers and the command by the leader. According to this style, the decision is developing by the leader itself and the manager. The leader makes the decision itself and do not involve their subordinates in any situation. The working environment of an autocratic leadership style normally acquires less or no flexibility and is rarely supporting. The democratic style involves the subordinates, but the final decision made with the leader only. Transactional leadership style involves an exchange process where both the followers and leaders are involved. The transformational leadership is highly concerned with the initiation of the change in any organizations, groups, oneself and others (Romager and et al., 2017). This style tends to have more committed and satisfied followers. Moreover, the laissez-faire style provides the employees with authority to make decisions.

In order to meet the requirement of the current project, the leader could make use of transformational leadership style. This is one of the most effective styles of leadership. Moreover, it has been found that the leader with transformational leadership style is tending to be more emotionally intelligent, passionate and energetic. They are mostly committed to achieve the set goals and assist the group members of the team successfully. This style allows in formulating the vision and plans quickly, promotes enthusiasm and inspires people to enhance motivation among them and make them work accordingly (Ford and Harding, 2018). On the contrary to this, the leader from this leadership style could face serious detail challenges, might overlook reality and truth, bad decisions and failure.

Literature review

In accordance with Hollenbeck and et al, (2018) managing the project requires immense efforts, planning, and lead the group of people to work towards the set goals. In spite of that, numerous factors could affect the leadership of managers while managing a project. Working with the team of people from diversified areas makes the situation’s complex for the leader and influence to implement an effective leadership tactic into it. Some of the most common factors that affect leadership in managing the project are change resistance, diversified skill sets, lack of responsibility, skills and knowledge, unclear goals, poor communication, lack of coordination, guiding change and lack of motivation (Carnall, 2018). There are several cases when the team members or the group of people resists accepting the change and thus creates challenges for the leader to lead them towards a set goal. It is very essential for a team to move in a similar direction and make the best efforts a common goal.

Kerzner and Kerzner, (2017)  had discussed that leadership helps the project manager in initiating action, motivating and guiding people, developing confidence, building work environment, coordination among the team and enhance work morale at the workplace.  It has been found that leadership is an effective process, which highly contributes in achieving determined targets or goals in appropriate and efficient manner.  Moreover, a leader must possess strong leadership qualities to manage a project and develop strategies to build competitive advantage. Accomplishing a project includes efficient planning and leadership, which leads the entire team towards specific activities and meet the requirements of the event successfully. It is essential for the manager to manage an event and make appropriate plans and strategies to complete it as per the given deadline and budget.

The manager has to make efforts to lead the people from diversified background enabling them to communicate and coordinate with each other. It is important to develop trust and accountability among the team members so that to make them work as per the set requirements. There could be issues in communicating with the team members having less interest in accepting change and getting involved in the same.  Leadership is the quality, which directs and motivates the people towards a set target and encourage people to work with better initiatives. There are also some issues while establishing healthy communication and cooperation among the team members and making them move towards the common goal. In the opinion of Bartlett and Beamish, (2018) the leader come across the situation of disagreements among team members over any situation which might lead towards serious conflicts at the workplace.

In addition to this, the issues of leadership in managing the project also depict the poor communication among the team members that restrict the potentialities of individuals along with their efforts towards the set objectives specifically.  Leadership influences the team members to maintain a flow of activities or work assigned to them and make sure to accomplish the same within the given time period. It is necessary to meet the requirements and criteria of the project and ensure to fulfil the same successfully.

Sparrow (2017) had discussed that effective leadership plays a significant role in accomplishing the project successfully. It is very important for the leader to understand the project requirements and develop the plans accordingly. Leading people efficiently towards the achievement of set goal highly contributes to ensuring the success of the project. It is very important for the leader to acquire adequate knowledge about the qualities and strategies of leadership so that to make better use of it. In order to achieve success out of the project, it is essential for the leader to establish strong communication within the team so that could converse each and every small information and command among them (Novo and et al., 2017). Sharing a clear vision helps in making the team members understand the goal and motivate them to visualize the project easily. The leader must define the set vision, plan and goal to the team so that to make them understand the requirements and attain the objective effectively.

While initiating the project, it is very essential to develop and execute effective leadership styles so that to lead the teams in a productive way and extract fruitful results out of it. Leadership in project management acquires a crucial role in developing plans and making actions towards it. It is very important for the project manager to have specified planning and goals so that to achieve the desired outcome successfully (Bolman and Deal, 2017). Communication is also an important aspect of leadership, which combines the team members and enhances the level of coordination among the team members. Moreover, for the leader it is essential to acquire sufficient knowledge and understanding about the leadership styles and manners so that to apply in real time situations.

Creating visibility and empowering the project stakeholders would help the leader specify the targets and making the individual clear about the thoughts. Additionally, setting milestones also helps the leader to establish motivation among the team members and making them feel more confident towards their skills and knowledge. The initiative enhances the levels of interest and accountability among the team members and ensures leading towards the success of the project eventually. Buchholz and Sandler (2017) had stated that team management is also an important aspect, as only leading teams would not work. Good leadership includes directing and coordinating members of the team or group by delegating tasks, evaluating progress, resolving conflicts, promoting teamwork and setting short-term milestones to maintain the motivation levels extensively.

However, it has been observed that the project requires efficient planning and leadership which leads the entire team towards specific activities and meet the requirements of the event successfully. The leader must possess enhanced qualities of leadership and must be able to establish suitable strategies to lead the project towards success and achieve the goals effectively (Northouse, 2018). Furthermore, it is the responsibility of the project manager to collect the requirements, analyze them and plan the activities by considering the availability of resources. The approach of manager and its team members have a significant impact on the processing of operation and implementation of a plan to achieve the goals and objectives. The knowledge and skill level of project manager plays a critical role in arrangement and utilization of resources as well as the effective distribution of tasks. This has a significant impact on efficiency proper management of operations to meet the goals.

Research methodology is one of the important parts of research that helps the researcher to maintain the systematic approach in solving the research problem. In addition to this research, the methodology is also helpful for readers to understand the manner in which the study has been undertaken. For the current study, the research methodology is framed to analyse the role of leadership in managing project, the case of Imperial College annual event. The major elements of research methodology include the research philosophy, approach, sampling, data collection, analysis and ethical consideration.   

The research philosophy provides a platform for handling the range of directions of study. The research philosophy is categorized into three sections such as interpretive, positivism and mix of both that is called realism philosophy. The positivism philosophy is considered an objective nature. On the other hand, the interpretive research philosophy is subjective nature (Bryman and Bell, 2014). The realism philosophy is the mix of both that used when the research has both quantitative and qualitative analysis.

For the current research, the researcher will consider the realism philosophy because the researcher will use the data that has been collected from the past researches and to improve the outcome of the research it will collect the primary data. The interpretive research philosophy will help to analyze the key factors of leadership and positivism philosophy will support to identify the limitations in the approach of managing project.

There majorly two types of research approaches that are been used such as inductive and deductive. The selection of an appropriate research approach is beneficial for research outcome. The inductive approach is used for building the theories based on observation while the deductive approach is used for confirming the theories based on data collected by the researcher (Isaacs, 2014).

Now to analyze the factors that have the significant impact on leadership for managing project, the researcher will select the deductive approach. This will help to identify factors that have direct influence over leadership of project manager to manage the annual event of Imperial College.

  The determination of the right type of research there are three areas that would be considered such as segmentation, needs and drivers and barriers in the study. The major types of researches are conducted such as Qualitative, Quantitative and Mixed. For the current research, the researcher will select the mixed research methods to incorporate the Quantitative and qualitative research types (Kuada, 2014).

Epistemology in context to the business research deals with the source of knowledge. Possibilities, nature, sources, and restriction of knowledge are the major concern of the epistemology. The four studies included in the research epistemology are Intuitive knowledge, Authoritarian knowledge, logical knowledge and empirical knowledge. Investigator will collect data from the previous studies, website, journals and many more and for this positivism approach is most suitable. By paying attention to the causality and law-like generalisations and decreasing the phenomena to the easiest basics, the investigator can use positivism research philosophy effectively (Dang and Pheng, 2015).

The process of developing the blueprint of the complete research is called as research design. The set of methods and approaches are used by the researcher in the research design for collecting the relevant data and evaluating it effectively. With the help of appropriate research design, a scholar can accomplish the research objectives. There are different types of research designs which an author could use as per the need and demand of the study. Correlation research design is not effective as it is sufficient for measuring two or more variable which is not present in the study. With respect to the current study, the scholar will use descriptive research design as it consists of details including the characteristics of the population and aware scholar about the actual conditions in proper ways. In addition to this, the research type of the present study is mixed, i.e. both qualitative and quantitative so, descriptive research design is most suitable for it (Wiek and Lang, 2016). 

The process of gathering informationvia various sources is called as collection of data method. There are two kinds of data collection method: Primary data collection and Secondary data collection. The process used for collecting original information from the various primary instruments like face to face interview, survey, questionnaire and many more is called primary data collection. On the other hand, the process used for gathering the previously used information from the sources such as website, journal, previous researches, business magazines, articles and many more iscalled as secondary data collection. The current study is of a mixed nature, so the researcher will use both the data collection methods. In the primary data collection, the investigator will use questionnaire for knowing the perceptions of the participants. The questionnaire will include a list of questions relevant to the subject of the research (Vaioleti, 2016).

Apart from this, the researcher will use secondary data collection method for identifying the role of leadership in managing projects. With respect to this, the author will collect data from the website, previous studies, business magazines, articles and many more (Ledford and Gast, 2018).

The process used for conducting statistical analysis by taking a predetermined number of observations from a large population is called as sampling. There are various types of sampling methods which consist of simple random sampling, stratified sampling, cluster sampling, systematic sampling and multistage sampling. Each sampling type possesses own importance and usage criteria. With respect to the current investigation, the scholar will use simple random sampling method for analysing the collected data from the participants. The reason behind using the simple random number sampling is to provide equal chances to the participants for representing their views and perceptions in context to the role of leadership in managing projects (Vaioleti, 2016).

Apart from this, the scholar will use a sample size of 30 for collecting the data from the participants. This size is enough for gathering relevant data from the team members of the event management project. For conducting the statistical analysis, the author will collect data from the respondents for identifying the appropriate answer of the research questions of the present investigation (Lewis, 2015).

The process of analysing and evaluating the collected data is called as data analysis. There are various types of data analysis methods which investigators can use for accomplishing the objectives of their researches. With respect to the present study, the scholar will use thematic and statistical data analysis method. The nature of the investigation is qualitative and quantitative, so thematic and statistical data analysis is most appropriate. Thematic analysis is suitable for the qualitative researches because it includes analysis of the collected data in the form of themes. The scholar will develop a list of themes in the analysis relevant to the questions of questionnaire. On the other hand, mathematical calculations will be conducted by the author for evaluating the results properly. Thus, both thematic and statistical data analysis methods are right for the present study (Mackey and Gass, 2015).

The scholar will follow all the necessary ethics and morale for conducting the present study effectively. In the context of the ethical considerations, the investigator will use proper in-texting for avoiding the problem of plagiarism. Along with this, no information will be manipulated or misused by the author in order to complete the research.  Apart from this, all the data collected from the participants will be kept private by the scholar. Both personal and professional information of the respondents will be kept confidential by the author for conducting the present investigation in an ethical manner (Taylor, Bogdan and DeVault, 2015).

Table 1: Timeline

Activities/ Time	Week 1	Week 2	Week 3	Week 4	Week 5	Week 6	Week 7	Week 8	Week 9
Research proposal requirements
Approval
Introduction
Literature review
Methodology
Data collection
Data analysis
Finding
Conclusion and recommendation
Submission

The investigator will try to finish the study as per the estimated time and professional manner. The estimated time for completing research is 9 weeks.

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Online

About Imperial College event, 2017 [Accessed through] < https://www3.imperial.ac.uk/newsandeventspggrp/imperialcollege/alumni/internationalambassadorevents/event_13-1-2017-15-34-2> [Accessed on 26 July 2016]