ADS512

PROJECT MANAGEMENT
(ARTICLE REVIEW)

TITLE:
The role of the project manager in relationship management
PREPARED BY:
NO NAME GROUP STUDENT ID
1 AHMAD MUZHAFARR BIN ABDUL HAMID KBASP8A 2017302317
2 AHMAD FAUZIE BIN SAHAR KBASP8A 2017920709
3 ANWAR HAFDZAN BIN MOHD RADZI KBASP8A 2016145195
4 MOHD FAZLI BIN JANA KBASP8A 2015150241

PREPARED FOR:

MADAM NOORAYUNI BINTI RUSLI

1. INTRODUCTION 3-4

2. LITERATURE REVIEW 4-5

3. RESEARCH METHOD 5-7

4. ANALYSIS OF QUANTITATIVE DATA 7-9

5. ANALYSIS OF QUALITATITVE DATA 10

6. DISCUSSION 11

7. CONCLUSION 12

8. REFERENCES 13

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Article Reviewed:

Meng, X., & Boyd, P. (2017). The role of the project manager in relationship management.

International Journal of Project Management, 35(5), 717–728.

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijproman.2017.03.001

1. Introduction

The article, “The role of the project manager in relationship management”, by Xianhai

Meng, seeks to explore relationship management because it is recognized as a focus of the

next generation of project management. The construction industry as a major sector has

been increasingly embracing the concept of project-based relationship management. This

article briefly explains the contribution of construction project managers to relationship

management through a combination of qualitative and quantitative methodologies. The

author also provides evidence for the change in construction from traditional project

management that concentrates on planning and control to new project management that

highlights the importance of people and working relationships. Many sectors of industry, such

as information technology, management consultancy, and construction, are increasingly

project-based, of which construction is possibly the largest and most complex among them

all. As a result, there has been a great deal of academic work to investigate project

managers.

Project managers fall into five categories which are studies on the

competency/competence of project managers, studies on the selection of project

managers, studies on the leadership of the project, studies on the personality and

emotional intelligence (EI) of project managers and studies on the role of project

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managers. Bourne and Walker (2008), described project-based relationship management,

simply project relationship management, as the way for a project manager and his/her

team to build and maintain relationships with the right stakeholders at the right time.

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Traditionally, relationship management is a business issue at the corporate level, and

meanwhile, project management focuses on planning and control, resulting in the prevalence

of ‘hard’ management approaches in construction. Traditional approaches often lead to

various problems in construction projects, such as adversarial culture and poor performance.

relationship management highlights the importance of people in project management

processes and this is also known as ‘soft management approach’. It can be further divided

into intra-organizational relationship management and inter-organizational relationship

management. Mazur and Pisarski (2015), stated that intra-organizational relationships,

namely internal relationships, include the relationship between a project manager and

his/her team, the relationship between different members in the project team, and the

relationship between the project manager and his/her company. Inter-organizational

relationships, namely external relationships, on the other hand, refer to those between the

project team led by its manager and external project stakeholders. The author also aims

to explore how construction project managers perform in relationship management internally

and externally.

2. Literature Review

In this section, the author categorizes existing studies on project managers in terms of their

competency/competence, selection, leadership, personality, and the role and by far

competency/competence has attracted the most research attention. Clarke (2010), in

general, grouped 24 competence elements selected from the Project Manager

Competency Development Framework of the Project Management Institute into four

competence measures which are communication, teamwork, attentiveness, and

conflict management. Usually, a competency/ competence development framework can be

used to evaluate past performance and predict the future performance of project managers.

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Ahsan et al. (2013), identified communication, technical skills, stakeholder management, cost

management, time management, education background, planning, leadership, team building,

and professional certification as the top ten criteria for project manager selection. The author

believes that If one wants to make a project successful, they must establish appropriate and

systematic criteria for successful project manager selection, which must reflect the project

client's needs and expectations.

There are different styles of project team leadership and it has a very strong linkage with the

successful outcome of the project itself. Project managers themselves need to be optimistic

because the optimism of project managers helps them to overcome difficulties in working

environments no matter whether it is innate or learned. Wang et al. (2016), concluded that

project managers with different personality traits may perceive risks and deal with risks in

different ways. For example, construction project managers have a collection of roles to

play, such as decision-maker, safety coordinator, organizer, team worker, motivator, planner,

process controller, inspector, diplomat, quality coordinator, communication facilitator and

implementer, and what role a construction project manager will actually pay depends on

personal maturity and project nature. Trust and teamwork are two main qualities that a

project manager should have. The author once again stresses these qualities towards

positive team performance and project success.

3. Research Method

This research started with a comprehensive review of relevant literature in both general

and construction. In this research, the questionnaire was pre-tested through a pilot study for

its applicability. An introduction was provided at the beginning of the questionnaire so that

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every respondent could have a good understanding of the survey purpose. Each interview

lasted approximately 1 h. The industrial experts were interviewed face to face or through

telephone. Comments and suggestions provided by a group of researchers and practitioners

contributed to its modification and finalization.

There were two main sources for identifying the role of project managers in relationship

management: one was the review of relevant literature and the other was the interviews with

a group of industrial experts.

In this research, the questionnaire survey was the main instrument for data collection. It was

project-specific, which means that each questionnaire response represented a building

construction or civil engineering project recently completed in the UK.

On the other hand, some useful information about project relationship management within

existing studies on project managers' competency/competence, leadership, and personality.

The interviews with industrial experts who were knowledgeable and experienced in project

relationship management confirmed the role of project managers identified from the literature

review. The semi-structured approach was adopted for the interviews. In-depth information

about project relationship management was also collected from the interviews in qualitative.

A questionnaire survey was used to gather quantitative data about project managers in the

context of relationship management;

Section 1 refers to a respondent's position and experience in project management as well as

project type (new build project or repair/refurbishment project);

Section 2 focuses on the respondent's awareness and knowledge of relationship

management;

Section 3 measures the extent to which the respondent as a project manager made an effort

for overall relationship management, IRM and ERM;

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Section 4 focuses on the impact of IRM and ERM on project performance is rated in terms of

time, cost, quality, and client satisfaction.

Section 5 is designed to identify the role of the respondent as a project manager in IRM and

ERM; and

Section 6 allows the respondent to provide any additional comments on project relationship

management.

Subsequent to the pilot study, the finalized questionnaire was sent to approximately 200

building construction, civil engineering, and project management firms with different sizes

selected across the UK. The E-mail was used to collect questionnaire responses because it

would be quicker and cheaper than postal service and meanwhile easier to get access to

potential respondents.

4. Analysis of Quantitative Data

Awareness and knowledge of relationship management

11 (15.1%) respondents rated their awareness at the medium level; 35 (47.9%)

respondents rated their awareness at the medium-to-high level, and 27 (37.0%) respondents

rated their awareness at the high level. For the knowledge of relationship management, 6

(8.2%) respondents rated their knowledge at the low-to-medium level; 30 (41.1%)

respondents rated their knowledge at the medium level; 26 (35.6%) respondents rated their

knowledge at the medium-to-high level, and 11 (15.1%) respondents rated their knowledge

at the high level. There is no statistical evidence for the knowledge of relationship

management at a low level.

The finding suggests that the majority of project managers today realize the importance of

relationship management and meanwhile they have at least basic knowledge of relationship

management. Although there are no significant differences among the three groups, it is

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possible to observe a general trend: the longer a person works as a project manager the

higher level of awareness and knowledge he/she has.

The effort for relationship management

The analysis of questionnaire responses shows that 10 (13.7%) respondents

dedicated 21–40% of their effort; 20 (27.4%) respondents dedicated 41–60% of their effort;

38 (52.1%) respondents dedicated 61–80% of their effort; and 4 (5.5%) respondents

dedicated 81–100% of their effort for overall relationship management. The finding provides

clear evidence that relationship management is the first and foremost what project managers

usually do in today's construction practice. Managing the relationships between the project

manager's team and other project stakeholders, such as client and suppliers, is the focus of

ERM. It is found that most of the time project managers today pay equal attention to IRM and

ERM and sometimes they pay more attention to IRM.

This is because every respondent made more or less effort for ERM and meanwhile the

effort made by almost all the respondents for ERM accounts for at least 20% of the total

effort.

Impact of relationship management on project performance

The finding demonstrates that relationship management should be a decisive

consideration if project performance is to be improved. It deserves a tremendous effort

internally and externally because of its high level of contribution to the improvement of

project performance in four key areas. Without effective relationship management, there will

be little or no hope for project performance improvement.

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 Instead, the impact on cost performance is the top one in the internal relationship

group, whereas the impact on client satisfaction is the top one in the external relationship

group. If a comparison is made among time, cost, and quality performance, it is found that

relationship management has the greatest impact on cost performance, which is followed by

time performance. On the other hand, the impact of relationship management on quality

performance is the smallest.

The findings illustrate that, compared to time and cost performance, quality performance

attracts attention from relationship management more quickly when projects become larger

and more complex although on the whole relationship management for quality performance

is not as important as that for time and cost performance.

Roles of project managers in IRM and ERM

The results of factor analysis confirm that both IRM and ERM require communication and

trust. Construction project managers have to pay the greatest attention to both intra-

organizational and inter-organizational communication and trust because they provide a

prerequisite for project team building and supply chain collaboration. Although a project is

temporary, inter-organizational communication and trust present a starting point of

developing long-term business relationships between project parties.

From an internal perspective, the second important component is team cohesion and

motivation. On the other hand, collaborative working between project parties is the second

important component from the external perspective. Conflict resolution and equal treatment

form the third component for internal relationships, whereas problem-solving with a similar

meaning to conflict resolution is involved in the second component for external relationships,

which means that effective problem solving is a part of collaborative working between project

parties.

As the leader of a construction team, a project manager has many important things to do

for mutual understanding and objectives. For example, benefit and risk-sharing make it more

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possible for project parties to establish and achieve mutual objectives because it is the core

principle of collaborative working. If a project manager listens carefully and responds actively

to other project parties, it becomes easier to create harmonious environments. As a result,

project parties are more likely to obtain mutual understanding and achieve mutual objectives.

5. Analysis of qualitative data

This study involved mixed-method approaches which were quantitative by questionnaires

and qualitative. The qualitative data involved an interview session with a group of industry

experts such as the project manager, senior manager, or key member in the project team.

The main reason to have both methods is that the questionnaires are standard compared to

the interview and it will give more data needed by the interviewer.

Rather than that, it is compulsory that the respondents must have more than five years’

experience in the construction industry. This is because the make is sure that the interviewee

is not someone new to the job. They must have the experience to provide a clear

understanding of relationship management. The purpose of the interview to confirm the 18

roles of the project manager in internal relationships management (IRM) and 18 roles in

external relationship management (ERM).

From the interview, it is believed that many project managers today practice relationship

management actively. This study successfully provides some important information on

relationship management in construction projects and at the same time data for project

managers in relationship management.

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There are few results obtained from the interview. For example, new working relationships

need more effort because they are new to each other and not familiar with their works. They

did not know each other and never in the same project before so it may take some time to

build the relationships.

Moreover, working relationships especially in construction are dynamic and may change from

time to time. But again, if there are good working relationships among employees, they do

not need ERM or IRM. ERM and IRM only needed once there are no working relationships or

the project is new to every employee. However, if the good relationship does not exist

anymore, broken or problematic, it might need a larger effort to build up again the

relationships.

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 6. Discussion

Relationship management is the future project management (Davis and Pharro, 2003)

and project and project manager would be failed without help from senior management,

project team, and external stakeholder (Godbold, 2003). The duty of project marketing to

make sure project management went smoothly (Cova and Salle, 2005) with the cooperation

between project parties (Yeung et al.,2012) and it is the responsibility of project managers to

manage internal and external stakeholders (Mazur and Pisarki, 2015).

Relationship management has become a center of modern theories of project management.

This study, however, focuses on relationship management from the view of project

managers. Agreed with Walker (2013), whereby the role of project managers must lead or

influence other and project manager’s role to build up relationships in project management

(Sommerville, 2010).

The advantage of this study was using mixed methods consists of questionnaires and

interviews. Therefore, it can identify accurately the role of project managers in relationship

management and provide a useful framework as guidance. Moreover, the literature is richer

and covers both areas of IRM and ERM, unlike previous researches. The result shows that

both IRM and ERM are very important for the project's success.

IRM has a greater impact on project performance in terms of time, cost, and quality but ERM

only has a greater impact on client satisfaction. However, it is not appropriate for managers

to avoid either of them. This is because project management requires system thinking while

relationship management characterized the soft side of project management.

Project managers should consider all aspects of ERM and IRM when making decisions on

relationship management to make sure that they succeed in every project making. Every

aspect in ERM and IRM represent aspect in working relationships and in the relationships

management system. They influence and interact with each other. Therefore in making

decisions for relationship management, all parts should be considered by project managers.

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 7. Conclusion

Construction Project Management has an important role to keep for Internal Relationship

Management (IRM) and External Relationship Management (ERM) because Relationship

management is recognized as a focus of the next generation of project management and

optimize the output of the project. Both of these relationships will reflect the competency of

the Project Manager. From the research, we can conclude that the effort of project managers

for IRM is rarely less than their effort for ERM. This is mainly because IRM has a greater

impact on project performance in terms of time, cost, and quality while ERM is important to

fulfill client satisfaction. So for a better Project Management, Project managers need to pay

attention to both IRM and ERM. They have also to need to pay attention to different aspects

of relationship management represented by different relationship components such as Intra-

organization communication and trust, team cohesion and motivation, conflict resolution and

equal treatment, empowerment and team morale, senior management support, inter-

organizational communication, trust, and long-term business and collaborative working

between project parties. In other words, they have to be versatile with respect to project-

based relationship management.

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References

1. Bourne, L., Walker, D.H.T., 2008. Project relationship management and the

Stakeholder Circle. Int. J. Manag. Proj. Bus. 1 (1), 125–130.

2. Mazur, A.K., Pisarski, A., 2015. Major project managers' internal and external
stakeholder relationships: the development and validation of measurement
scales. Int. J. Proj. Manag. 33 (8), 1680–1691.

3. Clarke, N., 2010. Emotional intelligence and its relationship to transformational

4. Ahsan, K., Ho, M., Khan, S., 2013. Recruiting project managers: a comparative
analysis of competencies and recruitment signals from job advertisements.
Proj. Manag. J. 44 (5), 36–54.

5. Wang, C.M., Xu, B.B., Zhang, S.J., Chen, Y.Q., 2016. Influence of personality
and risk propensity on risk perception of Chinese construction project
managers. Int. J. Proj. Manag. 34 (7), 1294–1304.

6. Davis, T., Pharro, R., 2003. The Relationship Manager: The Next Generation of
Project Management. Gower, Aldershot.

7. Godbold, A., 2003. Managing ethics. In: Turner, J.R. (Ed.), People in Project
Management. Gower, Aldershot, pp. 159–172.

8. Cova, B., Salle, R., 2005. Six key points to merge project marketing into project
management. Int. J. Proj. Manag. 23 (5), 354–359.

9. Sommerville, J., Craig, N., Hendry, J., 2010. The role of the project manager: all
things to all people? Struct. Surv. 28 (2), 132–141.

10. Yeung, J.F.Y., Chan, A.P.C., Chan, D.W.M., 2012. Defining relational contracting
from the Wittgenstein family-resemblance philosophy. Int.J. Proj. Manag. 30
(2), 225–239.

11. Walker, N., 2013. Identifying and building key relationships. In: Lock, D., Scott,
L. (Eds.), Gower Handbook of People in Project Management. Gower,
Aldershot, pp. 231–242.

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