Abstract

Leadership is one critical factor of effective teamwork, such as information system (IS) projects. The mission of project leaders is to motivate followers and create an effective working environment that allows project teams to effectively meet the predefined goals. However, based on regulatory focus theory, a team may strive to the optional situation (promotion focus) or try to avoid not meeting the minimum requirements (prevention). The aim of this paper is to explore the effect of leadership styles (transformational and transactional) on the regulatory focus of one team (promotion and prevention), and investigate the relationship between regulatory focus and project team performance. Based on data collected from 154 IS professionals, we found that transformational leadership is associated with promotion focus and transactional leadership leads to prevention focus. Furthermore, while promotion focus orientated teams can perform effectively, prevention focus oriented teams are less efficient. Implications toward academia and practitioners are provided.

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