High-Performance Project Teams: Analysis from the Stoic Approach

Abstract

Nowadays, any consideration regarding project management implies an all-encompassing approach constituted by three perspectives: organizational, human, and engineering. In this sense, it is necessary for the project manager to reflect on various issues, such as ethics, the understanding of the environment, leadership, teamwork, achieving results, change in management, the adoption of new technologies, and knowledge management, among many others, all this with the intention of ensuring success through value creation, consistent and aligned with the expectations of the different stakeholders. Because of the adoption of a comprehensive vision of project management, disciplines such as philosophy have become logical within the reasoning of organizational management. Classic postulates such as those of the Stoic school have become references for modern leader-managers because of their approach associated with personal development, self-discipline, self-control, logic, balance with the environment, and the creation of social value. The research analyzed how the postulates of the Stoic philosophy can determine the high performance of project teams. To achieve this, 70 project managers from different small and medium enterprises (SMEs) located in Bogotá, Colombia, were surveyed about the seven main thoughts of Stoicism and the possible relationship with the performance of their project teams. Based on their answers, a correlational model of structural equations was applied to obtain the conclusions of this study. The results obtained in this investigation are intended to contribute significantly to the maturity and modernization of the project management discipline.