The Effect of Leading Behavior and Style of Project Manager on the Retention of Skillful ICT Project Workers

Sammanfattning: Talent turnover is a threat to different industries, and ICT industry is one industry sector that suffers the highest turnover rate of its skillful ICT project workers. Even though practitioners and researchers from strategic human resource management has taken the issue into great deal of concerns, yet the turnover rate in the industry is still high. Due to that, many ICT project failures was related to such high turnover rate that the industry inherited. This study attempted to address the question of how to better retain skillful ICT project workers, and explored how leading behavior (i.e. task-oriented behaviors, relation-oriented behavior and change-oriented) and leading style (i.e. autocratic, democratic, and laissez-faire) of project managers affect turnover intention of project workers, while considering the two most significant tendencies to turnover intentions; motivation and job satisfaction. Explorative qualitative research method was used, and due to the nature of the study, inductive and deductive reasoning was adopted. Both primary and secondary data was collected. Primary data was collected from 10 skillful ICT project workers, through skype-based interview and web-based qualitative survey. Through this exploratory research, the study found that not only leadership of project managers plays major role in retention of skillful ICT project workers through right leading behavior and style at the right situation, but also certain leading behavior and styles can contribute to turnover intention of skillful ICT project workers. More specifically, the study found that low relation with low task concern leading behavior, and high task with low relation concern behavior results in project workers demotivation and job dissatisfaction, and ultimately lead to their turnover intention. Furthermore, autocratic leadership style is found to contribute to demotivation and job dissatisfaction of high competent and high committed project workers, where ineffective application of laissez-faire, and democratic leadership style also results in demotivation and work dissatisfaction of project workers, and ultimately lead to turnover intentions. On the contrary, some skillful project workers perceived mix leading styles, such as delegative, participative and supportive fit in their needs, and expressed their desire to stay with the organization if they work under project manager with such blending leading style. Keywords: Leadership, retention, turnover project manager, project workers, , project management, ICT industry, Indonesia, motivation, job satisfaction