A Qualitative Case Study Impact of Project Manager’s Leadership Style as Related to the Success or Failure of a Manufacturing Project

A Qualitative Case Study Impact of Project Manager’s Leadership Style as Related to the Success or Failure of a Manufacturing Project

Case study approach

The topic selected for the study was the qualitative study of the impact of project manager’s leadership style as related to the success or failure of a manufacturing project. The approach to the study was a case study research design. Case study research of the leadership styles of the project managers of General Motors Inc. and Ford Corporation will allow the exploration and understanding of the success or failure of the respective manufacturing projects. It can be taken into account as a research method, especially when a holistic, in-depth is required. One of the reasons for the acknowledgment of the case study as a research method is that scholars have started becoming more worried about the limitations of quantitative methods in offering holistic and in-depth illuminations of the success or failure of a manufacturing project. Through the case study methods, it will be easy to go past the qualitative statistical outcomes and grasp the behavioral conditions via the perspective of the actor. By including the qualitative data, the case study will assist me in clarifying the process and results of the phenomenon, reconstruction, and assessment of the leadership styles of the project managers of General Motors Inc. and Ford Corporation.  The project manager’s leadership style of General Motors Inc. and Ford Corporation led to the failure and success of a manufacturing project..

During the early days of automobile production, the automobiles were typically costly for a product to be affordable by the daily consumers. Ford, under the founder Henry Ford, developed the model that flipped the previous behaviors by providing an affordable technique of transportation. The leadership style of Ford contributed to the success of the manufacturing project of Ford Model T. Credited with the lean manufacturing process and assembly line production model, and the leader attained this achievement, which was to be emulated and preceded by other automobile manufacturers even today. The initial Model T that the leader provided was much less affordable than competitor products. As a result of the lean manufacturing process and application of an assembly line, Ford was able to execute the vision of providing quality cars at a cost-effective process. Ford leveraged automation in its assembly line, whereas using the low-skilled laborers during the process. The leader achieved this because his corporation had a vision of offering quality cars to the consumers. Ford carried on to leverage the strategy of an assembly line with automation with immense success. Most of the early Model T cars were developed from a cautiously implemented repetitive process that were not yet observed in the industry. Over a period of time, the leader continuously pursued to change the manufacturing process to guarantee that it remained competitive in the industry. Currently, the corporation is still relevant in the industry, although its earlier competitors have slowed down. The firm has been committed to excellence in offering quality cars at cost-effective prices. Ford has not compromised on the quality and has remained compounded on a lean manufacturing process that integrated the use of an assembly line. The leader laid the foundation for the model to be emulated by other car consumers.

Antifreeze is one of the failures in the manufacturing projects of General Motors Inc. The corporation filled its vehicles with Dex-Cool. The latter was bright orange, tasty-looking coolant that allegedly had a long life for up to five years. Unfortunately, over a period of time, Antifreeze goes south, converting itself into a rusty brown sludge that blocks radiators and inhibits cooling. It began to attack the various parts of the engine. The owners of General Motors vehicles after 1996 complain that it is prudent to flush the cooling system annually each year to sidestep the financial crisis. After only ten years since General Motors started using Dex-Cool as an antifreeze in the majority of its cars, the owners have complained that the coolant corrodes and clogs the radiators, water pumps, radiator hoses, causes too much overheating, and leaky engine gaskets. However, General Motors is rapid to explain its confidence in the antifreeze by articulated that the manual recommended a 150,000-mile service interval of the owner is not a warrant. The Corporation cautions the owners of the vehicles to seek guidelines from the manual that can be downloaded on its website. Although the Chief Executive Officer, Mary Barra, has applied the supportive and achievement-oriented leadership, participative leadership, to path-goal and transformational leadership, she has not been successful. The leadership style of General Motors is difficult to understand. It enjoys an autocratic structure though it behaves on the negative side where the organization is decentralized that neglects the operations and presumes the work is executed. Barra has broken the old culture that led to workers not arising their views, and then committees disregarding concerns on whey they did emanate, leading to negative repercussions.

Manufacturing activities are very crucial for the advancement of a nation’s economy. Therefore, all the countries and manufacturing organizations should lay focus on recruiting a pool of adequately skilled and well-informed project managers to ensure that the manufacturing projects succeed at the end (Killen & Hunt, 2010). With appropriate managerial skills, proper leadership skills are likely to be instituted hence culminating into a healthy and motivated workforce to drive the agenda of the organizations (Davis, 2016). Such moves will not only encourage many investors to venture into the manufacturing sector but also help in putting many people into work, therefore, reducing the surging unemployment rates.

However, more promising strides towards ensuring that all manufacturing projects succeed have not been realized so far. According to research, nearly three-quarters of the manufacturing projects launched annually fail even though more than half of the manufacturing companies report to have recruited adequately qualified project managers (Chandrasekaran, Linderman& Schroeder, 2015). A problem seems to exist with the management, for example, a disconnection between the managerial skills and the appropriate leadership skills that are likely to achieve project success. As such, this research aims at studying the correlation between a project manager’s skills, the leadership styles instituted, and their impact on the success or failure of the manufacturing project (Aga, Noorderhaven, & Vallejo, 2016). The results of the study will pair certain leadership qualities and the leadership styles that managers with such skills prefer, and a further prediction of the success or failure of the manufacturing project (Anantatmula, 2010). These results will not only support the existing body of knowledge available concerning the topic but also help in the training of managers to align their skills with appropriate leadership styles that guarantee the success of their projects. Therefore, project managers will be free to select various leadership styles from the available alternatives to help them achieve the desired results for their projects.

The research methods were used in literature. The research study will entirely apply qualitative methods. Qualitative methods are preferred to quantitative methods since they provide better ways of evaluating personal skills and the ability to make proper leadership decisions. Further, the timeframe allowed for this research study is limited, making the qualitative methods suitable for the timely achievement study objectives. The key variables of the study are the leadership skills of the project managers, the influence of such skills in the selection of the appropriate leadership styles to apply based on the prevailing situations, and the impact of the applied leadership styles on the success or failure of the manufacturing project in question. (Camilleri, 2016). Such a set of objectives can only best be attained using combinations of various qualitative methods, as will be outlined. Therefore, the research will be focused on understanding what project managers think or perceive and their influence on managerial decisions that they make. The use of qualitative methods can only explain these aspects of social and behavioral sciences since they are descriptive and inference-based (Binder, 2016).

Methodology

The design of the study aims at providing ways of examining the behavior and perceptions of the project managers in the manufacturing field concerning the leadership skills they choose for various projects (Lock, 2017). Inferences will be further made on the chances of success or failure based on the leadership skills applied. To obtain the data for analysis purposes in this research, a combination of qualitative methods will be applied. Two main data collection methods that will be applied are case studies and in-depth examination of other secondary written literature and online sources related to the subject.

To begin with, for case studies, a large collection of documents about real contemporary issues in the field of modern manufacturing project management and leadership will be identified for examination. Such material must be seen to be touching on aspects within the scope of this research, such as leadership skills, management styles, and their influence on the project performance. Further, the cases should demonstrate the views of various stakeholders, such as experienced project managers and junior workers in the field of manufacturing. Such a move will give a wider view of basing the inferences since managerial actions affect all the other stakeholders.

For the analysis stage that aims at making meaning of the collected data, several methods will be applied. First, framework analysis will be applied in the selection of appropriate data from the research materials. The steps involved will include familiarization with the data, identification of thematic frameworks involved in the various case studies and study materials, and codding of the information into charts and maps among other data exploratory techniques. Second, the key takeaways from the literature materials and the selected case studies will be subjected to content analysis through further classification, summary, and tabulation aligned to the goals of the study, that is, touching on managerial project management successes and the managerial skills and styles.  Lastly, a single case study will be selected and subjected to grounded theory to examine their agreement. Such theories can include the general proposition that managers’ leadership skills affect the leadership styles that they employ, and hence the performance of the manufacturing projects that they oversee.All the other case studies and the literature findings will then be subjected to similar theories to see their validity so that the final decision can be arrived at. As a result, certain sets of managerial skills and the resulting leadership styles will be linked to the success or failure of the manufacturing projects. Such accomplishments will not only add to the available knowledge base but also enable predictability of the project progress based on the project manager’s leadership style as informed by his or her skills.

Having identified the study topic and the sector that will be involved in the research study, the next step will be to select the relevant case studies and other related written literature and online articles. The information contained in such material must cover all the aspects tackled in the study and bring in the modern practices in the manufacturing sector about the leadership skills and managerial styles (Cakmakci, 2019). A greater confidence level is required in the data collection and analysis will be upheld to guarantee the accuracy of the results. The seeking of necessary study certifications such as the Institutional Review Boards (IRB) will not be a requirement for this study since direct dealings with individual private data are not involved. However, seeking author permission in the application of some literature in special ways is required. Duration, say one month, will be set aside for data collection through the analysis of the samples’ case studies and literature. Finally, after the elapse of the set interlude, data will be analyzed, results produced, and report written.

The case study will focus on the use of qualitative methods. The major method that will be applied is the use of case studies; hence use of textbooks, articles, newspapers, and writing materials such as pens and exercise books will be used. Other electronic devices, such as personal computers and smartphones, may be handy in the recording and storage of the collected data (Badiru, 2017). These electronic devices can also be handy in performing internet research for articles on the topic, hence the need for good internet connectivity during the duration of the study.

The research study will focus on the manufacturing sector and make use of the documented case studies regarding managerial skills, leadership styles applied by the various characters, and their impacts influence on the project performance (Cakmakci, 2019). Most qualitative data collection methods only guarantee the use of a smaller sample size. In a bid to increase the coverage, this research proposes the application of and other available written and online secondary data alongside the case studies. The sampling of the case studies and other secondary sources will be based on their relevance to the topic of study and the authenticity of their authors and publishers. In such a way, the overall reliability and validity of the drawn conclusions and results will be enhanced.

For a successful and effective research case study on General Motors and Ford Company, it is important to pay attention to the ethical elements. There is a diversity of ethical considerations which should be considered by the case study entailing guaranteeing that the data that is collected from the participants are not leaked to the outsiders. Another ethical issue is based on the privacy and confidentiality of the respondent. This would ensure that the respondents give their view on the impact of leadership style on the success or failure on manufacturing projects in General Motors and Ford Company.

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