The impact of cognitive complexity on project leadership performance

Abstract In today's complex development environments, the ability to integrate project components has been found to be a key responsibility for project leaders. This paper reports results of a preliminary experiment examining the importance of cognitive differentiation and integration (i.e. cognitive complexity) to project leadership performance. Results from this preliminary study show the importance of cognitive complexity to success in project leadership. Surprisingly, results suggest that leaders with lower levels of cognitive differentiation abilities (less information fragmentation) perform better on project definition tasks. Results also suggest that higher levels of cognitive integrative ability are associated with higher performance in project definition tasks. To this end, we suggest ways to improve complex thinking in project leaders. This study is important to IS managers responsible for identifying and training project leaders, and researchers seeking to understand factors important to successful project leadership.

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