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Abstract

Although most organizational projects have many interested parties or stakeholders, the executive with the fiscal authority, political clout, and personal commitment to see a project through is the project sponsor. Certainly, there are project sponsor tasks associated with the successful completion of a project. Yet, very little research exists that attempts to identify and validate a set of executive sponsor behaviors necessary for successful project implementation. Using a previously established database of project risk avoidance and mitigation strategies that was supplemented by an updated literature search, we examine and classify behaviors associated with the role of a project sponsor. The scope of this exploratory research includes: (1) identifying project sponsor-related behaviors; (2) validating and prioritizing the sponsor behaviors utilizing an established procedure; (3) empirically validating the behaviors; and (4) empirically testing the association of the project sponsor behaviors with various dimensions of project success (project outcomes).

Keywords

project sponsor project success sponsorship

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An Empirical Investigation of the Sponsor's Role in Project Initiation

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