Rating defence major project success: The role of personal attributes and stakeholder relationships

• A theoretical model of attributes relating to project success has been developed.
• Emotional intelligence, cognitive flexibility and systems thinking were examined.
• Major project manager attributes were found to impact stakeholder relationships.
• Major project manager attributes were found to impact project success.
• Internal and external stakeholder relationships were found to operate as mediators.

In this paper we develop and test a model of the associations between major project managers' personal attributes and project success in the context of the Australian Defence industry. In our model, emotional intelligence, cognitive flexibility and systemic thinking were hypothesised to relate to project success, mediated by internal and external stakeholder relationships. The model was tested in an online survey with 373 major project managers. Emotional intelligence and cognitive flexibility were found to be related to the development, quality and effectiveness of major project managers' relationships with both internal and external stakeholders; and these in turn were associated with their ratings of project success. Systemic thinking, however, had no relationship with either stakeholder relationships or project success. Additional research is needed to examine the contribution of a wider range of personal attributes to stakeholder relationships and project success, and to assess whether this model is applicable in other industries and types of projects.