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The historical approach of researching leadership without considering its negative aspects could mean the concept of leadership itself is not fully understood. This multi-method qualitative study explores challenging behaviour in project leaders, and how followers cope. It identifies what followers perceive to be challenging leader behaviour, explores how this impacts on followers and how they cope. The study identifies challenging project leader behaviours relating to teams, performance, relationships and change. Impacts of the behaviour on the follower are categorised as psychological, work and personal impacts. Coping strategies used by followers include approach/avoidance and problem-focused/emotion-focused categories. This research could support organisations in identifying leaders who display challenging behaviours, enabling them to design interventions to mitigate the impact on followers. It recommends that organisations take responsibility for providing easy access to support mechanisms, and also suggests future studies measuring the effectiveness of coping strategies.

Projects are inherently risky, since they involve some level of uncertainty, doing something new in the target environment, but the percentage of projects seen as a success is still disappointingly low, especially for IT projects. The ‘Iron Triangle’ of time/cost/quality suggests that all three aspects are equal, but with quantitative methods for monitoring project performance, the focus is primarily on managing cost and time. This book seeks to redress the balance, explaining the rationale and benefits of focusing more on quality (fitness for purpose and conformance to requirements) before detailing a range of tools and techniques to support rebalancing the management of projects, programmes and portfolios. It shows how managing project quality actively can reduce costs through minimising wastage, and reduce delays through avoiding rework, leading to improved project success rates and customer satisfaction.

Organizational functioning depends on the behaviour and attitude of people within a given society; organizational behaviour is extremely influenced by the socio-cultural environment within which the organization operates. The construction industry in North Cyprus is a very young industry and application of advanced project management methods and adaptation to the changing environment is a challenging process for this sector. The trauma caused by the political conflict on the island is presented as a serious challenge for this industry. The future of North Cyprus's construction industry is embedded in its past, this has given it certain social, political and historical characteristics. The on-going political unrest in North Cyprus escalates and diminishes at certain intervals. These fluctuations can sometimes be absorbed by the industry, however the frequency is such that the industry struggles to adapt and sometimes even to absorb the shocks. This paper analyses the socio-political environment of North Cyprus's construction industry. Although the organization of SMEs in the construction sector in North Cyprus are very simple, the inter-relationships between the companies, the fragmentation of the industry and the participation of families in the businesses make this a socially complex system. In this environment, the decision making processes of the managers are not based on structured management disciplines but on abrupt decisions that emphasize the family interest of the owner manager under severe uncertainties. Therefore, the unpredictable environment within this sector creates a complex environment to manage regardless of the industry's size.

Critical Chain Project Management (CCPM) is a project scheduling technique which has been developed to overcome some of the deficiencies of traditional methods and where, in a single project environment, the critical chain is the longest chain of activities in a project network, taking into account both activity precedence and resource dependencies. In multi-project environments, the constraint is the resource which impedes projects’ earlier completion. CCPM relies on buffers to protect the critical chain and monitor/control the project. The literature review conducted by this study reveals that the research on CCPM principles in multi-project environments is still extremely scarce. The review also suggests that outright elimination of multitasking (i.e. switching back and forth among two or more concurrent tasks) by imposing a relay race mentality (i.e. starting a task as soon as it becomes available and finishing it as soon as possible), as one of the main features of CCPM, might worsen the resource constraints of CCPM portfolios and cause creation of over-protective buffers. It further implies that there is also a good level of multitasking that can benefit such environments by improving resource availability and requiring shorter protective buffers. This research aims to bridge the gap by investigating the impact of level of multitasking on resource availability issues and project and feeding buffer sizing in CCPM portfolios with different resource capacities. This is pursued through adopting a deductive approach and developing five research hypotheses, considering ten different levels of resource capacity, testing the hypotheses by conducting Monte Carlo simulations of randomly generated project data and comparing the results with deterministic duration values of the same portfolios with 30%, 40% and 50% feeding and project buffer sizes. In total, ten portfolios with similar size, variability and complexity levels, each containing four projects, were simulated. It was concluded that: firstly, some limited levels of multitasking, determined in relation to the level of resource capacity, can be beneficial to time performance of CCPM portfolios; secondly, shorter buffer sizes can be accounted for by abolishing the ban on multitasking while maintaining a lower rate of resource capacity; finally, the element of relay race work ethic that completely bans multitasking should not be implemented as it proved to be counterproductive in terms of resource availability. Seven recommendations and a buffer sizing framework are provided as complementary guidelines to practitioners’ own experience, knowledge and judgment, in addition to an explanation of theoretical and practical contributions and suggestions for future research.

Critical Chain Project Management (CCPM) is a relatively new method of scheduling. Whilst it has a number of advantages over traditional scheduling methods, it is still far from perfect. A literature review of the CCPM method, its shortcomings and suggestions for improvement is presented in this thesis. The review reveals that, in addition to other issues addressed, most researchers concentrate on the question of project and feeding buffer size. Issues concerning the resource buffer are ignored in the literature. This is a crucial gap in research, as resources are needed to perform tasks, and resource buffers protect the critical activities from the unavailability of resources. Although the original CCPM method treats resource buffers only as a notice or a ‘wake-up call’, the research in this thesis proposes to include resource buffers as time buffers with the assigned resources and cost. The research in this thesis provides a simulation methodology to answer the problem of resource buffer allocation and sizing. The simulation is performed on 3 projects, generated by RanGen software, each with the same characteristics of network order strength, resource strength and resource use. Three different buffer sizes and three different uncertainty levels are applied to the schedules. The analysis of simulation results demonstrates that no optimum resource buffer can be obtained for all projects in general. Each project, even with the same characteristics, behaves differently. Therefore the simulation methodology, developed and presented in the thesis, has to be applied to decide on the size of resource buffer in a specific project. The research outcomes demonstrate that resource buffers cannot be neglected and should be simulated using CCPM schedules, as they help to reduce the total project duration during execution. The decision whether to apply the resource buffer should also be based on financial analysis of the cost and benefits of inclusion.

This thesis aims to understand how owner-managers of SMEs in a developing country manage their organizations in a turbulent environment, and how they seek to create resilience in their organizations in this context. Specifically, this thesis investigates the major factors influencing the management strategies of infrastructure construction sector SMEs in North Cyprus. The primary data for the research was collected from owner-managers of infrastructure construction SMEs in North Cyprus that held a Class-1 classification in the sector, allowing them to participate in infrastructure projects in North Cyprus. Twelve SMEs with Class-1 classification are identified in the Building Construction Association of North Cyprus (CT-BCA), of which nine out of twelve consented to participate in the research. A qualitative research approach was adopted, with primary data gathered through face-to-face semi-structured interviews with these owner-managers; the collected data was then subjected to thematic analysis. The research found that the most influential factors influencing the management strategies of SMEs in North Cyprus were the macro characteristics of the socio-political environment, the individual characteristics of the owner-managers, and the characteristics of the infrastructure construction sector itself. These factors, which are linked in deep and nuanced ways, were discovered to impact the perceptions of the owner-managers and to affect their approaches towards the management of their SMEs. By evaluating the interaction between these factors, this research identified that infrastructure construction SMEs in North Cyprus operate in a complex system, where the approach to their management is identified as dissipative. Overall, the findings indicate that SMEs in North Cyprus take a reactive approach to management within this complex system, an approach that is itself related to ever-changing relationships between the key individual and environmental factors mitigating owner-managers’ personal, sectorial and wider country circumstances. In this complex context, these SMEs cannot follow a systematic approach to management. Therefore, the resilience of these SMEs is found to lie in the adaptation of management strategies of SME owner-managers in the presence of disturbances, by experimenting and adjusting themselves in the existence of disturbances throughout their history.

Companies and organizations in different industries around the world make use ofdifferent technologies for many reasons and purposes, such as to improve performanceand to stay competitive. This raises some questions and concerns about the use, benefit,risk and the investment decision-making process for the selected technology. A reviewof the available literature shows that the decision-making processes related toinvestments in general are difficult and complex. As a result of this, many organizationsthat have invested in technology have not achieved the required benefits; this leads tounsuccessful investment decisions and loss of opportunities. This can occur whendecision makers and planners do not pay enough attention to some critical factor thatmay affect the investment, or they may just not have planned sufficiently carefully for it.This research aims to examine and investigate the gaps and factors behind technologyinvestment decisions, with a focus on several of the more important factors and elementsthat may have a huge impact on these decisions. These include investment justificationtechniques, technology selection, organizational readiness, technology alignment, andbenefits realization. The unique aspect of this research is that these five elements havenot previously been linked in research publications or reports, particularly within thepetrochemical industry. Thus, the research focuses on these five elements to identify thecritical factors and difficulties to support decision makers in order to achieve successfultechnology investment in the petrochemical industry. To address the research aims, theissues affecting investment decision-making within a number of the biggestpetrochemical companies in Saudi Arabia were investigated. Companies and organizations in different industries around the world make use ofdifferent technologies for many reasons and purposes, such as to improve performanceand to stay competitive. This raises some questions and concerns about the use, benefit,risk and the investment decision-making process for the selected technology. A reviewof the available literature shows that the decision-making processes related toinvestments in general are difficult and complex. As a result of this, many organizationsthat have invested in technology have not achieved the required benefits; this leads tounsuccessful investment decisions and loss of opportunities. This can occur whendecision makers and planners do not pay enough attention to some critical factor thatmay affect the investment, or they may just not have planned sufficiently carefully for it.This research aims to examine and investigate the gaps and factors behind technologyinvestment decisions, with a focus on several of the more important factors and elementsthat may have a huge impact on these decisions. These include investment justificationtechniques, technology selection, organizational readiness, technology alignment, andbenefits realization. The unique aspect of this research is that these five elements havenot previously been linked in research publications or reports, particularly within thepetrochemical industry. Thus, the research focuses on these five elements to identify thecritical factors and difficulties to support decision makers in order to achieve successfultechnology investment in the petrochemical industry. To address the research aims, theissues affecting investment decision-making within a number of the biggestpetrochemical companies in Saudi Arabia were investigated.