Abstract
For ICT system integration projects to be successful, it is essential that CEOs exercise strong leadership at the strategic planning stage and that project leaders carry out their roles effectively at the goal-oriented performance stage. Drawing evidence from five actual computer system integration cases, this paper shows that the performance of project leaders is a key factor in taking projects to successful conclusions. Project leaders who understand the vision and the strategy of the organization, as determined by their CEOs, have to set up “Ba”, which is either a real or a virtual space where collaborative work with project members on project execution is carried out in order to deal with various incidents by means of an SECI process. SECI comprises four inter-exchanges of explicit knowledge and tacit knowledge transformation modes: socialization, externalization, combination, and internalization. Given today’s fickle and complex business environment, a project leader in an SI firm needs to play the role of program manager, supervising the overall program, in addition to managing a particular project.
