Managerial decision making regarding the allocation of project manager resources to projects: The case of Botswana

Purpose–To empirically demonstrate the nature of current project manager assignment practices and their impact on important performance variables, in the context of Botswana’s multi-project settings. Approach - the research design is composed of country and company layers. This paper reports on Fieldwork 1 of 3 stages, which involved questionnaires and interviews of 53 project managers and 20 project heads from 12 companies in the public and private sector. Findings–the results indicate compelling evidence to conclude that the current practices are informal, not objective, not comprehensive and lack a good match between project managers and projects. Significant correlations were found between the following variables (1) extent of formality and project manager rewards, (2) extent of objectivity and project manager performance, (3) extent of comprehensiveness and project success, (4) Correspondence level between project manager and project and the performance variables - project manager rewards, project manager performance and project success. Contributions - (1) empirical justification for problem existence that gives an indication of the state of practice in Botswana – currently unknown, (2) Data from a “new” country, industries and project types compared to existing empirical studies on this topic, (3) development of a conceptual model that adds to the theory behind matching project managers to projects in a multi-project setting.