THE EFFECT OF LEADERSHIP STYLE ON PROJECT PERFORMANCE: CASE OF ETHIOPIAN ROAD AUTHORITY (ERA)

Abstract

The main purpose of this studyis to examine the effect of leadership style on project performance. The study adopted explanatory research design along withquantitative research approach to address the research questions.As the population size is limited, the researcher has employed census survey. Self-administer questionnaire were used to gather data. The collected data were analyzed by using SPSS-Version 20. Both descriptive and inferential statistics were used for the data analysis. The descriptive statistics such as frequency, percent, mean and standard deviation were used for describing the demographic characteristics of respondents and the whole perception of respondents on relationship of dependent and independent variables. The inferential statistics like Pearson correlation and simple linear regression were used to show the relationship between independent and dependent variables and to determine the effect of independent variables (LS) on the dependent variable (PP). The findings of the study indicated that, transformational and leizes-faire leader ship styles positively and significantly affect the performance of Mojo-Hawassa Road project. The result of Pearson correlation coefficient also indicated that, leadership styles were positively correlated with project performance but leader ship skills, leader ship experience & transactional leader ship styles were not significantly affect project performance. Finally, the study recommended that Project leaders should use transformational and leizes-faire leader-ship styles since it involves the employees want to part of the decision making process,Peoples are always competent and if given a task will do good,employees in decision making with the leader providing supportive communication as well, workers prefer little input from their leaders and the leaders should give subordinate complete freedom to solve problems in their work; these all enhances effective project completion.