Employer Toxic Leadership and Implications for Managing Risk and Stakeholder Management: a Road Improvement Project in Nepal

Abstract

This is a research paper that is focused on assessing the impacts of Employer Toxic Leadership in terms of Risk and Stakeholders Management of an 81Km road construction project in Nepal. An interpretive methodology was utilised in order to help understand implicitly the management leadership’s impact on the project. The scope for this research was the on-site supervisory team. The targeted population of interest was made up of 15 engineers located at on-site offices in the early construction phase of a road construction project. The research outcomes consisted of six (6) main themes with corresponding nineteen (19) sub-themes.

The paper addresses raised issues of toxic leadership impacts within risk and stakeholder management and establishes outcomes and implications for the continuing project construction management. The paper also indicates that the Employer conducts inadequate risk management especially in relation to a variety of stakeholders and thus faces serious project performance issues leading to project failure.

The Employer road construction management is considered to be a very weak risk management environment due to institutional toxic leadership style, orientation and lack of professional engagement of project management with stakeholders. The Employer (government department - DoR) has purposely and negatively altered the project quality and delivery expectations resulting in serious questions over its operational governance stance and financial efficacy.