Leadership Substitutes and Personality Impact on Time and Quality in Virtual New Product Development Projects

Abstract

Leadership, personality, and organizational factors were analyzed to measure their combined effect on virtual-based product development time and scope-quality performance. Over 1,000 team members were surveyed. MANCOVA was used to test if leadership, personality project, and/or organizational factors impacted performance. All realistic factors were included to detect leadership substitutes moderation, mediation, and prediction. Bias was reduced by not surveying leaders, by using reverse item coding, and by checking social desirability. Experimental control and common method variance were managed by including multilevel and multisource data. Performance was objectively computed from organizational data. The findings were that transactional leadership (not transformational) and some personality attributes (leader substitutes) were significant factors, increasing project scope quality and time performance.

Keywords

virtual product development transformational transactional leadership leadership substitutes personality;competencies time performance scope quality

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