Linking Leadership Styles and Relationship Quality to Construction Project Performance: A Systematic Review

Construction projects are temporary, fragmented, and multi-organizational settings, performance in which rests not only upon technical and managerial systems but also on the behavior of individuals and their interactions. Yet construction management literature remains splintered, with leadership and relationship concepts being treated separately. As a result, the joint effect of leadership styles and relationship quality on project performance remains poorly understood. This study critically reviews and integrates previous studies to better clarify the leadership–relationship–performance interface in construction projects. It identifies, reviews, and synthesizes studies via major academic databases and some additional reference tracking to derive themes. The review finds that transformational leadership emerges as the principal style explored, although transactional, directive, participative, empowering, and sustainable approaches are also central under certain project conditions. For the nature of the relationships, trust, communication, collaboration, and knowledge sharing serve as key relational mechanisms through which leadership influences performance outcomes. Project performance appears to extend beyond the narrow triad of time, cost and quality to safety outcomes, effectiveness, preferences of the workforce, innovations and sustainability outcomes. The study concludes that understanding the performance of construction projects calls for an integrative view in which both leadership style and relationship quality interact synergistically across contexts.