Project managers' breadth of experience, project complexity, and project performance

Research has found that a project manager's experience is driver of performance. However, whether specialist or generalist managers are more effective remains an open question to date. In this paper, we examine how managers' breadth influences completion time under different levels complexity. Using longitudinal data from 9,765 enterprise resource planning (ERP) system projects executed by software services organization, find U-shaped impact on time. We also while can identify optimal level minimizes the U-curve, becomes lower (the U-curve shifts left) as complexity increases. As decreases, flattens and tends become monotonically decreasing, signifying diseconomies less apparent in simpler projects. From practical standpoint, these findings suggest critical performance should be key consideration selection lead knowledge work, especially for complex