The Relative Importance of Temporal Leadership and Initiating Structure for Timely Project Completion

Abstract

We assess the relative usefulness of temporal leadership and initiating structure in predicting timely team project completion. Drawing on the functional approach to team leadership as well as the concept of team performance episodes, we hypothesize that two facets of temporal leadership, temporal planning at project initiation and temporal reminders midway through project execution, will be better predictors of timely project completion than will traditional task-oriented leadership in the form of initiating structure delivered at the same two project stages. Results from 62 application development project teams surveyed across the life of a project showed that the two facets of temporal leadership together accounted for 91.7% of the predicted variance in timely project completion, with temporal planning being more important. Initiating structure accounted for the remaining small and nonsignificant amount of the predicted variance. We conclude that temporal leadership is a new construct that is a highly useful approach to leader behavior in the context of teams working on time-limited projects.