Week 7_Langer et al (2014)_Jung Kwan Kim

Langer, Slaughter, and Mukhopadhyay (2014) examine the impact of practical intelligence (PI) on project performance and the moderating effects of project complexity and familiarity. While the prior studies tend to specify formalized and widely-recognized management skills, knowledge, and experience of project managers, the authors bring up more subtle but dynamic capability, linking to the outcome of project.

Based on the in-depth data analysis on project progress and results in a leading software outsourcing vendor in India, the field study supports the following arguments:

1. PM’s PI is positively associated with the increase in both cost performance and client satisfaction.
2. The interaction of complexity with PI is significantly positive on the two types of project performance. In other words, when complexity of a project is higher, the impact of PI becomes stronger, leading to better performance.
3. The interaction of familiarity with PI is significantly negative on the two types of project performance. That is, a project with low familiarity can harvest more benefits when a PM with high PI manage it.

Indeed, the supported arguments are intuitive and straightforward when we ponder upon the role of PI in a project management. The software outsourcing projects inevitably suffer from various factors that cause uncertainty and potential failure: requirement ambiguity, stakeholder conflicts, cultural misunderstanding, to name a few. PI basically helps a project manager resolve the critical, situational, and contextual problems, a capability that cannot be easily found or trained. A PM with high PI may be able to address the difficult problems, eventually bringing a higher chance of successful project results.

In conclusion, I think this study contributes much to the literature by finding the significant impact, the decent data source, and the parsimonious measure of PI.