Leadership characteristics and developers’ motivation in open source software development

Open Source Software (OSS) is generally developed by interested professionals who have decided to participate in the process. The presence of effective leaders who both steer the development and motivate the developers is crucial to ensure a successful product. Using path-goal theory and built on leadership and motivation theories, we proposed and tested a model that can be used to assess the relationship between an OSS project leader's leadership style and a developer's motivation to contribute to the software development. We specifically decomposed the leadership and motivation construct to understand the hidden mechanisms by which leadership impacts motivation. A set of survey data collected from 118 OSS developers on Sourceforge.net was used to test our hypotheses. Our results indicate that leaders’ transformational leadership is positively related to developers’ intrinsic motivation and that leaders’ active management style is positively related to the developers’ extrinsic motivation.     

拥有领导机制的改进粒子群算法

为了提高粒子群算法的全局收敛能力和收敛速度,在以往文献的基础上提出一种改进粒子群算法.受生物学研究成果的启发,引入领导机制,将粒子群搜索过程分为领导粒子带领下的探索性搜索和所有粒子共同参与的开发性搜索两部分.通过"变异"机制来增强群体多样性,采用5个标准函数对算法性能进行分析,应用Bonferroni多重比较法,将改进算法与两种经典算法进行基本性能对比.实验结果表明,所提出的改进算法探索速度快,全局搜索能力优.     

Mediators between coordination and IS project performance

Successful IS projects result from coordination among team members and stakeholders. We examined the effects of horizontal and vertical coordination on project performance. A total of 169 responses from IS project managers listed in the Project Management Institute of the USA were solicited, obtained, and analyzed. The results indicated that horizontal coordination can enhance the level of leadership empowerment and knowledge transfer, and help to clarify the mission and objectives among team members, while vertical coordination can enhance knowledge transfer. The results further suggested that project performance was improved by empowering team members, promoting knowledge transfer among team members and specifying clear mission and project objectives.     

Relation of CIO background,IT infrastructure,and economic performance

The literature of the past three decades has not provided a consistent picture of payback for IT investment. Firm strategies and infrastructure play a part in determining return on investment and, in recent years, chief information officer (CIO) characteristics have been cited as essential factors in ensuring economic returns for IT investment. In our study we related CIO background and attitude toward IT investment to the objective measures of a firm's performance. The financial measures tended to be higher when the CIO was from IT rather than general management, however, an IT manager in a firm that had a strategic orientation to IT rather than a utilitarian one was more likely to have higher financial performance. Thus, although a CIO should have a technological background, the CIO who has a strategic rather than utilitarian orientation is more likely to help in forming a highly profitable company.     

Developing Construction Professionals of the 21st Century: Renewed Vision for Leadership

The construction industry faces several technical, social, financial, political, and cultural challenges. Developments such as the growing volume of activity, increasing number of active stakeholders, advancement in technology, more intense global competition, and demand for fast-track completion, have created many distinct challenges for construction professionals. Consequently, there is a need to equip the professionals with hard (technical) as well as soft (management and leadership) skills. Construction professionals invariably work in teams and often assume leadership roles as the design manager, construction manager, procurement manager, contracts manager, or project manager. They deal with various project stakeholders and often get involved in sensitive decision making and dispute resolution processes. There is a broad sentiment in the industry that today’s new graduates are not adequately trained to deal with the soft issues on complex construction projects. In particular, academic programs do not prepare professionals with an appropriate blend of hard and soft skills. In this paper, it is argued that in order to develop competent professionals who have strong leadership skills, the universities, the construction industry, professional organizations, and the government need to form a broad collaboration. A conceptual model of this potential collaborative relationship is presented, and specific roles for the universities, the industry, professional bodies, and government in the lifelong professional development of the industry’s human resources are discussed.     

蓝顶实践 一个城郊艺术聚落的前世今生和未来

文章通过对一个正在生长中的城郊艺术聚落的历史梳理、现状调研、当下实践、未来构想和问题展现,探讨在当今各种矛盾交织的现实境况下,如何实现创新型、可持续、资源节约、环境友好、城乡共享、经济社会同步发展的新途径,并探讨规划与建筑在这一实践中的介入和作用。     

The development of constructs of program context and program success: A qualitative study

Growth in the use of programs to achieve organizational strategy has led to a requirement to understand the leadership competences of effective program managers. This paper presents the results of the first stage of a larger study on the influence of leadership on program results. A qualitative, inductive interview-based approach was used with 15 program managers from a range of industries in China, Sweden, The Netherlands and the UK. The purpose of this qualitative study is: a) to develop the constructs for program context and program success in the research model in order to design a questionnaire for the subsequent quantitative study; b) to collect data from program managers on the magnitude and mix of leadership competences needed for successful program management. In addition to the development of measurement dimensions for program context and program success, the results also show that program managers' leadership competences are a key success factor in program management and program managers' leadership styles are contingent on program context.     

Factors affecting virtual team performance in telecommunication support environment

Over the past two decades, many organizations have been taking advantage of globalization, outsourcing, and communication technology advances to enter new markets and compete wherever and whenever possible (Copeland, 2006). Telecommunication companies are among those companies that strive most to expand their customer base globally. Telecommunication industry is expected to grow on a worldwide basis to $2.7 trillion in 2017 (RCR Wireless, 2012). This global growth necessitates comparable expansion of support teams to service an expanded and distributed global customer base. Support function in the telecommunication industry has unique provisions and complex activities associated with troubleshooting customers’ networks. According to Williamson et al. (2004), troubleshooting customers’ networks involves complex activities such as making real-time traffic affecting decisions. Hence, identifying challenges that may face leaders in such complex and fast growing industry and factors that may influence the performance of support teams is critical. In addition, understanding the role and influence of leaders in virtual settings can help organizations in allocating resources and sorting teams’ priorities. In this study, we investigated factors that affect virtual team performance; factors considered include communication tools, cohesion and collaboration, leadership, trust, the location of team members and team size. One-hundred-twenty professionals in high-technology telecommunication industry participated in a survey to reveal the importance of how factors affecting virtual team performance. The findings indicated that support professionals perceived reliable communication tools and cohesion among team members as more significant performance factors than leadership.     

Patterns of empowerment and leadership style in project environment

The current study explores the relationship of empowerment, leadership style and customer service as a measure of effective project management in projects with varying degree of virtuality. The study makes comparisons of empowerment climate in less and more virtual projects. Moreover, the study examines moderating effects of degree of virtuality on the relationship between empowerment and leadership style. We test our hypotheses with data collected from project management professionals working in five countries using linear regression and moderated regression analysis to analyze the proposed hypotheses.