A Study of the Impact of Project Managers’ Power and Influence on their Organisation’s Project Management Maturity

¹ Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering, Cape Peninsula University of Technology, P.O. Box 1906, Bellville, South Africa
² Department of Management and Project Management, Cape Peninsula University of Technology, P.O. Box 1906, Bellville, South Africa

^* Corresponding author: ngondas@cput.ac.za

Abstract

Project managers are determinants of their organisations’ project management maturity as their competence is one of the factors that affect their organisations’ capability of an organisation to successfully execute projects. This capability of an organisation is reflected in its project management maturity. The study reported in this conference paper sought to investigate whether there is a correlation between South African project managers’ power and influence on their organisation’s project management maturity. This was done to determine if project managers have sufficient power to influence their organisation’s project management maturity. The paper reports on a nation-wide survey that collected data from self-identified project managers. It received three hundred and six valid responses which were edited, coded, and analysed descriptively and inferentially. The study found weak positive correlations between project managers’ power, project managers’ technical expertise and their organisations’ project management maturity. Thus, as project managers’ power and technical expertise increase, it is likely that their organisation’s project management maturity also increases. However, causation could not be established as it was not possible to establish the temporal order amongst the variables. The established correlations were too weak to be used for prediction.