Study On The Influence Of Project Management Leadership On Project Members Acquiescent Silence Behavior

In recent years, project management has drawn more attention from both academia and businesses, focusing on how to make the project a success with the constraints of quality, progress and cost. Project manager's leadership style and working behavior have a direct impact on the work efficiency and effects of project team, the behavior expression of team members during the process of project which would be more important to the success of project. It's crucial to choose one attitude that whether to give an advice or to keep silent when project members facing the troubles. Acquiescent silence is one type of silence behaviors which means workers keep silent due to worrying that they are incapable and negative to the current situation. Then for the project manager, how to break the worker acquiescent silent behavior and collect their views and suggestions about the troubles and problems of the project is very important to the operation and success of the project. Therefore, this paper attempts to analyze different styles of project manager's leadership and project members'felt trust, in order to study the influence of project manager leadership style on acquiescent silence behavior of project members.First, the researcher read a large quantity of studies on project leadership, trust and felt trust and acquiescent silence. Second, the researcher chooses felt trust as the mediating variable after reviewing the literature and deducing from the theory to study the relationship between three different styles of project manager's leadership and the project members' acquiescent silence behavior. Third, this paper modifies three scales based on former study, and collects the data from 224 project members by on-line questionnaires, e-mails and paper questionnaires, using SmartPLS 2.0 Software to complete the empirical analysis.By analyzing and discussing, this paper got four main conclusions, including:first, transformational project manager and transaction project manager both have positive and significant influence on project members'felt trust, and laissez-faire project manager has opposite and significant influence on project members'felt trust. Second, project members' felt trust has opposite and significant influence on their acquiescent silence behavior. Third, transformational project manager and transaction project manager both have opposite and significant influence on project members'acquiescent silence behavior, and laissez-faire project manager has positive and significant influence on project members'acquiescent silence behavior. Fourth, the relationship between three different styles of project manager's leadership and project members' acquiescent silence behavior is partially mediated by project members' felt trust. Finally, this paper put forward some management advice for the project managers on how to break their members' acquiescent silence behavior based on the analysis above.