ASSESSING THE INFLUENCE OF PROJECT LEADERSHIP ON CONSTRUCTION PROJECT COST PERFORMANCE

Effective leadership is crucial for longstanding project success. For that reason, the success of aproject is hinged on leadership as it deals with the motivation of people as its principal objective.Thus, influencing others to understand what needs to be done and how it can be done is whatproject leadership is all about. However, The Nigerian construction industry is faced with a lot ofchallenges which makes it difficult to achieve projects cost performance successfully due to thelack of purposeful leadership and the unfitting choice of leadership style. This paper aimed atassessing the influence of the leadership styles on project cost performance in the constructionindustry in Nigeria with the objectives of identifying the leadership styles that influence projectcost performance and establishing the influence of these leadership styles on each aspect of projectcost performance. A quantitative research approach using a questionnaire survey was adopted.The target population of this study are registered construction professionals. They are: Architect,quantity surveyors, civil engineers and builders. 88 questionnaires that were completed andreturned being 73.33% of the total sample size were analysedusing Partial Least SquaresStructural Equation Modelling (PLS-SEM). It was established that in order to improve projectcost performance in the light of constructing buildings with low maintenance cost and,constructing building at the cheapest cost, a combination delegating and directing leadershipstyles should be employed. Therefore, it is recommended that, to achieve a building with lowmaintenance cost and to have a building constructed at the cheapest cost both delegating anddirecting leadership styles should be used by the construction professionals. While, constructingbuilding as estimated seems far-fetched, it is important to note that achieving a successful projectcost performance in the construction industry in Nigeria entails the utilisation of both delegatingand directing leadership styles by the construction professionals.