Project team leader’s roles and team performance

This study has empirically examined the relationship between the role of R&D project leaders and their team performance using data from 87 project teams in 6 R&D organizations. The results reveal that: (1) R&D project leaders play five different roles for performing their jobs-strategic planner, team builder, gatekeeper, expert and champion; (2) all but the champion role of leaders are positively associated with project team performance unless they have too short team tenure to materialize their role efforts; (3) however, the relationship between the role of leaders and project team performance varies according to characteristics of their team and project tasks. More specifically, it becomes more important for leaders to focus on gatekeeping and championing roles as their team gets older. Team building role of leaders is more important for higher performance of relatively certain R&D projects, while for uncertain R&D projects gatekeeping role appears to be more important. Based on these results, this study discusses several managerial and theoretical issues concerned with the roles of leaders in R&D project teams. [In Korean.]