Shadow of Your Former Self: Exploring Project Leaders’ Post-Failure Behaviors (Resilience, Self-Esteem and Self-Efficacy) in High-Tech Startup Projects

Umer Zaman, Laura Florez-Perez, Pablo Farías, Saba Abbasi, Muddasar Ghani Khwaja and Tri Indra Wijaksana
Additional contact information
Umer Zaman: Endicott College of International Studies (ECIS), Woosong University, Daejeon 34606, Korea
Laura Florez-Perez: Bartlett School of Sustainable Construction, Faculty of the Built Environment, University College London (UCL), London WC1E 6BT, UK
Pablo Farías: Departamento de Administración, Facultad de Economía y Negocios, Universidad de Chile, Santiago 8330015, Chile
Saba Abbasi: Department of Management Science, National University of Modern Languages (NUML), Islamabad 44000, Pakistan
Muddasar Ghani Khwaja: Departamento Académico de Ciencias de la Gestión-Sección Gestión, Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú, San Miguel, Lima 15088, Peru
Tri Indra Wijaksana: Department of Business Administration, Faculty of Communication and Business, Telkom University, Batu 40257, Indonesia

Sustainability, 2021, vol. 13, issue 22, 1-21

Abstract: Globally, demands for sustainable strategies in the ICT industry have attracted greater momentum as high-tech projects continue to fail in large numbers. Recent studies have underpinned project resilience as a major factor for overcoming these increasing project failures, delays, or termination. However, the complex behaviors of resilient project leaders, especially in post-failure conditions, have been largely overlooked. To address this critical research gap, the present study identifies the direct relationships between three potential behavioral traits of project leaders (i.e., resilience, self-esteem, and self-efficacy) and examines how they move forward beyond project failures. The present study also explored whether self-esteem mediates project leaders’ resilience and self-efficacy. Drawing on data from 232 project leaders in Pakistan’s high-tech start-ups, the new findings suggest that there are significant positive effects of project leaders’ resilience and self-esteem on their self-efficacy, and that project leaders’ resilience and self-efficacy is significantly mediated by their self-esteem. As the project resilience theory gains traction, the present study findings have pinpointed major steps for meeting project challenges ahead of time, allowing leaders and teams to learn from failures, and also for improving organisations’ ability to implement successful and sustainable high-tech projects especially in emerging economies.

Keywords: sustainable high-tech projects; post-failure behavior; project leaders; resilience; self-esteem; self-efficacy; structural equation modeling; Bandura’s self-efficacy theory; Maslow’s need theory (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

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