Effect of humble leadership on project success: the mediating role of team engagement and the moderating role of organizational culture

Abstract

Purpose This study aims to determine the effect of humble leadership on project success (PS). According to the authors, such an effect is mediated by team engagement and moderated by organizational culture. The direct and indirect effects of team engagement provided helpful insights. Moreover, organizational culture did not moderate the relationship. The authors’ objective is to contribute to the literature on project management (PM) and leadership of how team engagement plays a significant role in PS. Design/methodology/approach Data were collected from 317 employees working in Pakistan’s telecom sector projects. Five project-related telecom companies were the target population of this study, and the reason behind choosing the telecom sector for investigation is their valuable contribution to the revenue and technology introduction in the country. A time-lagged approach was selected for data collection to avoid the common method bias, which served the purpose. SPSS v23 and AMOS v23 were used for constructing structural equation modeling and path analysis to examine direct and indirect effects. Findings The results revealed that humble leadership is positively related to PS. Furthermore, team engagement mediated the relationship between humble leadership and PS, while there was no interaction effect. Originality/value The impact of team engagement was the primary topic of interest with humble leadership in this study. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, no study has investigated team engagement in the project context. The authors tried to contribute to the PM literature.