The Influence of Conflict Type and Source of Project Managers on Project Performance: The Field Case Study of a Financial Holding Company

• Main Authors: Chia-Lin Chen, 陳家怜
• Other Authors: Kai Wang
• Format: Others
• Language: zh-TW
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/6f7xrg

碩士 === 銘傳大學 === 資訊管理學系碩士在職專班 === 96 === With the establishment of financial holding companies in Taiwan since 2001, the growing scale of organizations and complicated division of labor makes the management of both employees and IT systems more challenging. Project management mechanisms are therefore introduced in the hope to improve the management of IS development processes. One common phenomenon in IS projects is the conflict among project members due to the need of intensive communication with each other. Conflicts may affect project performances in various aspects. To ensure the smooth and reliable operation of IS projects, the case financial holding company in this research established a dedicated department in charge of project management tasks. As project managers may be either assigned by the PM department or recommended from within the IS department, the impacts and management of conflicts therefore differ and form the issue that this research intends to address. This research reviewed the types, management, and responses of conflict from past literature. Further, a field case study was conducted in this financial holding company. The aim of this research was to investigate the role source of project managers plays in influencing the relationship between conflict and project performance. Through the field case study, several findings were available from this research. First, different types of conflict were shown to cause both positive and negative impacts on project performance. Further, when project managers come from the dedicated project management department, task conflict occurs less often because the project managers’ proficiency at project management. On the other hand, relationship conflict due to less daily contact leads to negative impacts on consensus formation, system performance, and clarification of system structure. Further, when process conflicts occur, project managers, with the professional background of PMP, are capable of better allocating manpower to satisfy user requirements which further lead to better user satisfaction. Clarification of system structure, however, tends to be negatively affected because project managers are unable to grasp internal details of the systems. Besides, consensus formation is also negatively impacted because project managers do not know the specialty of each member very well. However, with the PMP background, project managers usually can make project on schedule. In contrast, if project managers are recommended from within the IS department, task conflict, which tend to happen more frequently, helps clarifying system structure and system performance. On the other hand, as project managers are usually familiar with the team members, relationship conflict positively contributes to consensus formation, system performance, and clarification of system structure. For process conflict, lack of PMP training for project managers causes unfair division of labor that affects project schedule and user satisfaction tend to be affected, but system performance can be assured because members’ specialty is the only criterion for task allocation. The results of this research further provide practical implications by indicating the importance of enhancing project management capabilities if project managers come from the same department as project members and strengthening the technical skills to help improving the project performance if project managers are assigned by the dedicated PM department.