Abstracts

"Team and leadership factors of project team creative performance: the project managers' perspective"

by Beatričė Kažukauskaitė

Project team creative performance is the never-ending topic that is relevant to every organization which seeks to sustain the competitive advantage in any market. The tech organizations where the creative inputs and outputs are the daily part of their job, are very aware of its importance to achieve the strategic goals of the company. As the creativity is not possessed by the individual but rather by the entire team, it becomes imperative for the project managers to understand what project team factors influence their creative performance and what kind of leadership methods the project managers need to apply to facilitate the team creativity. This understanding gains a significant importance in the times of the Covid-19 pandemic with its unique set of problems in which the teams work for a prolonged and uninterrupted period remotely where the standard practices and techniques to encourage creativity that work at face-to-face environment might not work in a remote work anymore. 4 Aim and Objectives: The goal of this research paper is to explore team and leadership factors of project team creative performance looking at it through the project managers’ perspective. In terms of the research objectives, the paper seeks to analyze theoretical approaches of the team creative performance and the creative leadership by determining team creative performance and its role and benefits for the whole project. Later it seeks to analyze team factors that are important for the team creative performance, followed by the analysis of the leadership methods and competencies that influence the team creative performance. The research paper also seeks to determine the remote work factors that influence the team creative performance. Research Methodology: The qualitative research took place to accomplish the aforementioned study aim and objectives and was done with the help of the empirical study to understand the project managers’ perspective how the team creative performance and creative leadership is facilitated in the company to encourage and sustain the team creativity. The research took place in the tech organization which specializes in the creation of sports betting products and services, and due to the pandemic has been remotely working for over than 18 months. The semi-structured interviews were conducted with 8 projects managers across the various departments who have been working in this organization during the Covid-19 period. Results and Conclusions: This research confirms that three out of four team creative performance factors (RodríguezSánchez, Devloo, et al., 2017; Chae, 2016) are present in this tech organization and the combined two creative leadership models (Rickards & Moguer, 2000; Epitopaki, Mainemelis, & Kark, 2015) are almost fully present in this organization, expect several creative leadership factors. The research confirms how the project managers should pay attention to three out of four team creative performance factors that were analyzed in this paper and follow the creative leadership behaviors and…