University of Jordan

 Student Personal Information

Name: Reham “Mohammad Abul Aziz” Al-Sharef

University ID#: 8121189

Major: Master of Business Administration / Quality Management.

Faculty: Faculty of Business.

Class year: Class of 2012

Supervisor: Dr. Rateb Swies.

 Thesis Title

- In thesis Language (English):

“Acknowledgment of Talent and its Relation to Project Team Member’s Effectiveness”

- In Arabic:

“ ‫”االعتراف بالموهبة وعالقتها بفعالية عضو فريق المشروع‬.

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 Research Problem

Due to the rapid nature of change and high level of competitiveness in the modern

business environment, organizations are forced to find ways to remain adaptable to their

dynamic environment and sustain their competitive advantage, therefore, only organizations

with distinctive competences will survive in this war of rivalry. Recently, the power of human

resources becomes dominant, forcing the organization to utilize this treasure effectively and

efficiently. In order to assure organizational success, leaders believe that using the right

subordinates in the right position at the right conditions becomes a key factor for

accomplishing this goal (Ingham et al., 2006). Nowadays, talent becomes well recognized by

businesses as primer key to achieving organizational goals (Scullion and Collings, 2012) and

providing an opportunity for employees to occupy higher positions aligned to their potentials

(Tansley, 2011). However, it is not an easy task to define talent, and to decide if it is divine

gift or developed (Ross, 2013). As definitions of talent will be discussed thoroughly in

literature review section and states its historical evolvement, the vital issue here that this talent

need to be appreciated and recognized (Pruis, 2011). The essence of this recognition is the

consideration of talent as strength and should be nurtured in a professional environment (Ross,

2013). On the other hand, nowadays, there is a trend in studying organizational project teams

formulated with the talented members in order to overcome industrial challenges with superior

resilience (Pina et al., 2008). The aim of teamwork is to assemble superior competencies and

skills (DeOrtentiis, 2013) cooperating effectively to fulfill assigned goals (Hamlyn-Harris et

al., 2006).

Therefore, the purpose of this study is to investigate the nature of the relationship between

senior management acknowledgment of team member’s talent from his/her point of view and

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his/her effectiveness toward achieving project goals. Thus, this study attempts to answer the

following question:

Is there a relationship between acknowledgment of talent by senior management and project

team member’s effectiveness?

Research Importance

Talent has became extremely important in recent years, and it is considered an essential

factor for organizational success, but unfortunately senior management underestimates the

value of this resource, also some employees feel that they are not acknowledged and being

able to utilize their talents for better performance of their tasks. This study is a behavioral

investigation that sheds some light on a critical issue “Talent”, where previous studies focused

on how to manage and develop this talent. This study investigates the acknowledgment of

talent by senior management and its relation to project member’s effectiveness.

 Research Objectives

 Identify talented project team member.

 Measure whether there is talent acknowledgment by senior management according to

team member point of view.

 Measure the effectiveness of project team member toward achieving specific goals.

 Verify the relationship between acknowledgment of project team member’s talent and

his/her effectiveness.

These objectives will be investigated in the building construction industry in Jordan.

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 Literature Review

This section summarizes some of previous studies that reviewed topics related to the

subject of this study.

Some employees are more talented than others. This is the starting point for any Human

Resources manager and even senior management. Talent by definition is ambiguous where

there is not one aspect that fits all people, so it becomes a difficult task to give one clear

definition but through centuries and civilizations, talent has gone through definition-

development process, originally it was “a unit, either of weight or currency”, and by the

thirteenth century it was related to an inclination or a disposition, up to nineteenth century

talent was related to person’s ability. Also different approaches were developed to identify

talent, such as competency based approach which identifies the right competencies for the

right tasks, also nine box grid approach which is a matrix based on identifying person’s

potentials and performance defined by achieving goals using high level of skills and

knowledge (Ross, 2013).

Nowadays, organizations derive their own conceptualization about talent, and their definition

shall be flexible so to overcome business challenges and external competitive environment

(Ashton and Morton, 2005) and also based on the corporate strategy (Zhang and Bright, 2012).

The most popular definition model of talent is that “Talented individuals are those who can

make the greatest difference to organizational performance, either through their immediate

contribution or in the longer term by demonstrating the highest levels of potential” (Tansley,

2011). Commonly, high potentials employees are the ones who have the ability, aspiration and

engagement characteristics. Focusing on high potential employees based on their impact on

organizational competitive advantage and positive influence on performance. While high

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performers are the ones who able to achieve specific goals with high level of experience and

leadership skills (Kotlyar and Karakowsky, 2014).

In order to utilize this talent in achieving superior performance, acknowledgment by senior

management is essential. Acknowledgment is derived from recognition, where it is a

behavioral attitude concerned with norms and principles, and classified into two perspectives;

internal (self acknowledgment) and external acknowledgment depending on identification role

(Ikäheimo and Laitinen, 2003).

Project as a combination of interrelated activities executed in a temporary manner to achieve

specific goal which its size can range from setting up strategies up to launching new business.

It requires high level of resources and capabilities (Webster, 1999), which are gathered in

cross functional teams composed of various member from multiple functional areas (Daspit et

al., 2013). A team is “a collection of individuals who are interdependent in their tasks, who

share responsibility for outcomes, who see themselves and who are seen by others as an intact

social entity embedded in one or more larger social systems”. There are different types of

teams; work team, parallel team, project team and management team, the focus of this study is

project team which is temporary based team who produces one-time outputs (Bailey and

Cohen, 1997). Benefit of teamwork that it enhances the decentralization approach of decision

making thus empowered members becomes more motivated to overcome obstacles and reach

to better solutions to problems (Esquivel and Kleiner, 1997). While there are several factors

influencing team work such as project duration, team member past experience relevant to

current project’s scope, communication among the team, complexity of project tasks (Miles

and Mangold, 2002). The project performance depends on the team effectiveness where the

performance of individuals summed up to be one team outcomes (Pina, 2008).

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Several researchers investigated the problem; what determines and evaluate if a certain

outcome is effective or not, Cacioppe and Stace (2009) considered that effectiveness is about

accomplished tasks, achieved goals, satisfied objectives, while DeOrtentiis et al., (2013)

emphasized effectiveness as “coordination, sharing responsibilities and participative decision”,

also they viewed the effectiveness from social perspective being unique and possessing skills

and abilities to accomplish the derive behind building a team. Team effectiveness affects

project output variables, which is considered to be a function of communication among team

and member’s satisfaction (Drouin and Bourgault, 2013). Project functioning can be predicted

by the effectiveness of teamwork which mainly contribute in problem solving and project

success (DeOrtentiis et al., 2013). It is the role of project senior management to pass through

the team the importance of their effort toward superior outcomes and sophisticated

achievements, as it is hard to maintain the same level of performance throughout project life

cycle (Edward F. and McDonough III, 2000).

Several models of team effectiveness have been developed, which can be classified into two

categories; unidimensional based on team performance and the second is multidimensional

which goes beyond the performance (Pina, 2008). The main contribution on multidimensional

model of teamwork effectiveness is by (Bailey and Cohen, 1997) who proposed generalized

model consists of internal and external factors affecting team effectiveness and also

categorized effectiveness in three major dimension; performance effectiveness (productivity

and efficiency), member attitudes (such as satisfaction, commitment and trust in management,

behavioral outcomes (such as absenteeism and turnover) (See figure “1”). While Loh et al.

(2010) said that attitudinal outcomes are related to satisfaction with supervision, safety,

frequency of promotions. (Edward F. and McDonough III, 2000) suggested that internal

factors influencing effectiveness is team environment, team effort and interrelations behaviors
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among the team. Team performance includes productivity, meeting product or services

requirements as function of quality and meeting delivery time (Doorewaard, 2002), while this

will be facilitated through the role of project management to provide and support team

members though different communication channels and styles which will lead to achieve the

desired goals (Otter and Emmitt, 2007).

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 Framework Model

Independent Variable Dependent Variable

Attitude toward Team member

acknowledgment of effectiveness
talent

Ability
Team Performance
Aspiration
Team Satisfaction
Engagement
Team Communication

Source: Designed by the researcher

The model shows the relationship between the team member’s talent and his/her

effectiveness. The talent will be measured throughout its dimensions listed in the

model; ability, aspiration and engagement. Ability is the combination of the innate

characteristics and learned skills used to carry out day-to-day work. Aspiration is the

extent to which and employee desires prestige and recognition from the organization

and engagement us the emotional commitment where the employee believe in his/her

organization (Ross, 2013) and (Igor and Leonard, 2014).

While team member effectiveness will be measured throughout team performance,

team satisfaction and team communication based intensive study of literature review

related to this subject which basically focused on these three dimensions and Bailey

and Cohen (1997) model.

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 Research Hypotheses

There is one main hypothesis for this model:

Ho: There is no statistically significant relationship between the attitudes of team

member toward acknowledgment of talent and his/her effectiveness.

Sub hypothesis derived from the main hypothesis:

Ho1: There is no statistically significant relationship between the ability and project

team member performance.

Ho2: There is no statistically significant relationship between the ability and project

team member satisfaction.

Ho3: There is no statistically significant relationship between the ability and project

team member communication.

Ho4: There is no statistically significant relationship between the aspiration and project

team member performance.

Ho5: There is no statistically significant relationship between the aspiration and project

team member satisfaction.

Ho6: There is no statistically significant relationship between the aspiration and project

team member communication.

Ho7: There is no statistically significant relationship between the engagement and

project team member performance.

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 Ho8: There is no statistically significant relationship between the engagement and

project team member satisfaction.

Ho9: There is no statistically significant relationship between the engagement and

project team member communication.

 Methodology

 Population and Sample

The population of this study entailed is registered contracting companies for buildings

construction located in Amman-Jordan. The number of those contracting companies is

1433 according to the manual of Jordanian Construction Contractors issued by the

Jordanian Construction Contractors Association. This study focuses on contracting

companies executing large budget building construction projects. Only registered

contractors with ranking “A” according to requirements of contractors classification

specified by the Jordanian Construction Contractors Association can conduct this kind

of projects in Jordan. The number of class “A” registered contractors according to the

Jordanian Government Tenders Department is 82. Therefore, the sample of this study

is 82 class “A” registered contractors, the sample type is census and the sample unit is

project team member.

 Data collection

This study will employ two sources of data; primary data based on structured

questionnaire investigating the relationship between acknowledgment of talent by

senior management and project team member’s effectiveness, the questionnaire mainly

divided into two sections; the section measuring talent was adapted from literature
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 review of (Ross, 2013) and (Igor and Leonard, 2014), while the section measuring

effectiveness was developed based on intensive search of related literature review and

(Bailey and Cohen, 1997) model (attached in appendix A). Also secondary data source

covering the theoretical part of this study based on literature review of studies and

published journal articles.

 Analysis Methods

The statistical analysis will be conducted using SPSS software, using correlation and

regression tests to obtain the results that will lead to the acceptance or rejection of the

hypotheses.

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 Appendix A

Questionnaire

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