IT Project Manager Decision-Making Authority: An Empirical Examination of Antecedents and Consequences

Successful management of IT projects remains a challenge for many organizations. Given the cross-functional nature of IT projects, one of the primary and most difficult tasks for project managers is coordinating the activities of a diverse group of project stakeholders. Using the pluralist perspective of power as a lens for understanding project conflict, this paper asserts that a key factor in accomplishing this task is project manager decision-making authority. The results of this study provide evidence that an organization’s dependence on information systems to provide strategic value, a project manager’s vertical position within a firm’s hierarchy, and the project organizational structure adopted for IT initiatives are all significant predictors of an IT project manager’s decision-making authority. In turn, decision-making authority has significant positive relationships with the IT project performance variables of budget, schedule, and functionality, as well as the product performance variable of organizational IT satisfaction