Roderic Gray PhD thesis

ORGANISATIONAL CLIMATE AND PROJECT SUCCESS ABSTRACT

This research examines the concept of organisational climate from the perspective of the levels of threat experienced by project management professionals. Drawing from a number of disciplines, theoretical constructs are established concerning the attributes of an organisational climate which would be expected to be conducive to successful project outcomes.

Semi-structured interviews are conducted with 44 project managers working on a variety of types of project in 17 different commercial, industrial and administrative organisations. The outcomes of the projects, as reported by the project managers themselves, are qualitatively assessed using a multifactorial model and associations are made between project outcomes and various components of the organisational climate construct.

The findings of the research clearly indicate a negative association between the levels of threat experienced by the informants and successful project outcomes. This is contrary to the widely-held view that some level of threat is a necessary and justifiable inducement to performance. Other behavioural attributes, such as free expression, innovation, questioning, intrinsic satisfactions, and participation in goal definition, collectively designated voluntarism, are shown to be positively associated with project success. Organisational change and conflict are, however, found to be negatively associated with successful project outcomes.

The significance of the present research is that it focuses previous research, scholarly debate and practitioner experience from a wide variety of different areas onto the specific issue of threat in workplace relationships involving a specific professional group. It then goes on to validate the emergent propositions of this process by reference to the workplace experience of representative individuals drawn from that professional group. In doing so, it increases understanding of organisational climate and its relevance to organisational success and provides considerable support for earlier humanistic approaches to management, applied in a contemporary context.