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This interdisciplinary study is focusing on the relationships among projects’ characteristics, project managers’ personality and projects’ success. Based on Person-Organization Fit theory it was hypothesized that a project with a particular profile needs a project manger (PM) with fitting personality traits in order to achieve better performance. A questionnaire, consisting of three parts: one classifies projects along three dimensions (Novelty, Technology and Complexity - NTC); the second focusing on project managers' personality traits relevant to these project dimensions; and the third assessing the projects' success, was used. Data on 289 projects was collected during 2005-2006 in Israel. The projects were classified into five types using the NTC dimensions. For each project type, an ideal PM profile comprising eight personal traits was portrayed. The distribution of PMs satisfying the desired characteristics was used to calculate the distance between the ideal type and the type of the actual PM. The samples for each project type were divided into two groups; projects in the first group were managed by PMs with personal profiles close to the ideal type, while projects in the second group were managed by PMs with personal profiles apart from the ideal type. Using t-test, the success levels (benefit to the customers and overall success) of the two groups were compared. The results support to the study’s hypothesis. When comparing the benefits to the customers in all five types of projects, significant differences were found between the performance levels of the two groups. In all cases, PMs having personal profiles closer to the ideal type performed better than PMs with a personal profile that does not match the ideal profile. When using an overall success criteria (efficiency, benefit to the customer and creating new opportunities), significant results were found only in project groups exhibiting higher levels of novelty and technology.

Stream: Knowledge and Technology

Paper: Implications of P-O Fit Theory to Project Management, The

Dr. Arik Sadeh earned his Ph.D. degree at Texas A&M University in 1986. He worked for an American-Israeli high tech company in financial and business planning of huge scale projects. He held a research position in the department of statistics and operations research of Agricultural Research Organization ARO. Since 1995, Dr. Sadeh is a senior member in the academic staff of Management of Technology Department at Holon Institute of Technology. He conducts research projects in the disciplines of project management, operations management, economics, finance and decision-making.

Prof. Dov Dvir is the Head of the Management Department at the Ben-Gurion University in Beer Sheba, Israel. Previously he was the head of the Management of Technology (MOT) department at the Holon Center for Technological Education. He holds a B.Sc. in electrical engineering from the Technion - Israel Institute of Technology, M.Sc. in operations research and an MBA from Tel Aviv University; and Ph.D. in management (specialization in MOT) from Tel Aviv University. Prof. Dvir has accumulated over 25 years in management of large-scale projects and consulting in the government and private sectors. He has published more than 70 papers in the areas of project management, technology management and technological entrepreneurship, in refereed journals and scientific conferences.

Professor Ayala Malach-Pines, PhD is a clinical, social and organizational psychologist and Head of the Department of Business Administration at the Ben-Gurion University School of Management in Israel. Professor Pines is one of the pioneers in the study of burnout and has published extensively on the subject including numerous research articles, book chapters and a book entitled “Career Burnout: Causes and Cures” coauthored with Elliot Aronson. She published ten books, twenty book chapters and well over eighty research articles. Among her books: “Experiencing Social Psychology” coauthored with Christina Maslach," Couple Burnout: Causes and Cures," “Working Women: Problems and Solutions” and "The Psychology of gender" (the last two were published in Hebrew). "Romantic Jealousy” and “Falling in Love." Her books were translated into many languages including Hebrew, French, German, Spanish, Hungarian, Greek, Turkish, Chinese, Japanese and Korean.