Research On The Impact Of Horizontal Leadership On Team Members’ Project Citizenship Behaviors In Construction Projects

“Talent resource” is one of key elements for the success of the construction project.In addition to the project manager,the role of the project team members cannot be ignored.In particular,when the project managers face complex project management issues,they can appoint a member in the team to temporarily undertake relevant management tasks contributing to the development of the project.In this way,the concept of “horizontal leadership” is identified.Existing horizontal leadership research is limited to exploring its effects on projects and project managers,but ignores the impact on team members.In particular,project citizenship behavior,as a project team member’s extra-role behavior,is also an important way to contribute to the development and innovation of construction projects for them.Therefore,this dissertation takes two types of team members,“horizontal leader” and “remaining team members” of non-horizontal leaders as research objects,to explore the impact of horizontal leadership on project citizenship behavior.The main contents are as follows:(1)Through a qualitative study,this dissertation develops an analytical model of horizontal leadership influencing project citizenship behavior.Using the semistructured interviews with members in construction project teams having implemented horizontal leadership strategy,first-hand information about their perceptions of horizontal leadership and its influences on project citizenship behaviors are obtained,three-level coding method of proceduralised version of Ground Theory is used to analyze the data,and an analytical model covering factors such as horizontal leadership appointment methods,horizontal leadership characteristics,team climate,individual perception,individual characteristics,project citizenship behavior,and their potential relationships among factors is established.(2)From the perspectives of horizontal leaders and the remaining team members,this dissertation explores the impact mechanism of horizontal leadership on their project citizenship behavior,respectively.Taking the analytical model as the research framework and the social information processing theory and social exchange theory as the theoretical support,the underlying logic of each relationship in the analytical model is discussed,and the hypotheses of the relationships between horizontal leadership and team member’s project citizenship behavior are proposed.Survey data is obtained for hypothesis testing.After analyzing 710 valid questionnaires from construction project team members(including 274 horizontal leaders,220 the remaining team members,and 216 team members without horizontal leadership experience),the presence of horizontal leadership,the degree of confirmation of tenure expectations and the horizontal leadership distribution have significant impacts on the project citizenship behavior of the horizontal leader and the remaining team members,and reveals the similarities and differences in the roles of career opportunity perception,status conflict,achievement motivation and responsibility in the two groups.(3)From the whole process of project management perspective,the optimal horizontal leadership appointment approaches in different project scenarios are identified using dynamic simulations.According to the influence mechanism verified in quantitative studies,critical factors related to horizontal leadership,individual characteristics and team climate are determined,and the BP Artificial Neural Network is used to set the behavior rules of project team members.Adopting the Agent-based Modeling,a dynamic simulation model of horizontal leadership influencing project citizenship behavior is established,and the dynamic effects on the project citizenship behavior of team members under different project situations and different horizontal leadership appointment methods is simulated.The results show that there are significant differences in the way of announcement of different horizontal leadership tenures and the way of personnel selection in most cases.This dissertation identifies the influence mechanism of horizontal leadership on project citizenship behavior,and selects the optimal horizontal leadership appointment approaches from the perspective of the whole process of project management.This dissertation has achieved innovations in following aspects:(1)This dissertation discovers the new research objects in horizontal leadership,and identifies critical characteristics and appointment methods of horizontal leadership,and team-level and individual-level influencing factors,supplementing the theoretical system of horizontal leadership from multiple dimensions;(2)This dissertation reveals the effects of horizontal leadership on project citizenship behavior,and provides a new way for project managers to improve project citizenship behavior from the perspective of project management strategy;(3)This dissertation combines BP artificial neural network with Agent-based Modeling to solve the difficulty of setting behavioral rules in the process of organizational behavior simulation,expanding the methodological system of organizational behavior research.The results provide theoretical support for the construction project team to improve the project citizenship behavior of team members and scientifically implement the horizontal leadership strategy.