Human Side of Project Leadership

CHAPTER 10

Research Design

The Data

Once the framework of spirit was built, our research goal was to test the spirit-building blocks and expression components in real projects and assess their impact on the project outcome. We used an initial database of 200 cases, out of which we selected four cases in different industries, each with completely different goals (Eisenhardt 1989; Yin 2003). The cases were created using multiple sources of evidence: archival data (the written documentation accompanying the project was studied), manuals, interviews with various project personnel (program director, project manager, team members), and direct observation. The interviews lasted between 60 and 90 minutes. Our primary objective in this section was to ...