Leadership, regulatory focus and information systems development project team performance

One primary function of a leader is to motivate followers to achieve project goals. Based on regulatory focus theory, actors may strive to the optional situation (promotion focus) or try to avoid not meeting the minimum requirements (prevention focus). This paper focuses on exploring the effect of leadership styles (transformational and transactional) on the collective regulatory focus of project team (promotion and prevention) and investigate the relationship between regulatory focus and project teamwork outcome. Data collected from 154 IS professionals shows that intelligent stimulation, idealized influence, and inspiration components of transformational leadership lead to promotion focus, and exception management and error-focus components of transactional leadership lead to prevention focus. Promotion focus associates with a higher quality system and less delay. The relationship between regulatory focus and project performance is contingent on the level of uncertainty.