The effect of transformational leadership on international Development program success: the mediating role of team-building practice

While leadership in projects, programs, and portfolios has received increasing attention, empirical evidence on how transformational leadership influences the success of government-implemented international development (ID) programs remains limited. This mixed-methods study combining CB-SEM with qualitative inquiry in a convergent parallel design examines the effect of transformational leadership on international development program success, with team-building practice as a mediator. Drawing on 228 surveys and 21 interviews from Ethiopia’s Urban Institutional and Infrastructure Development Program (UIIDP) implemented amid civil conflict, COVID-19, and economic inflation, results confirm four significant associations: transformational leadership with program success (β = 0.370, p < 0.001); transformational leadership with team-building practice (β = 0.662, p < 0.001); team-building practice with program success (β = 0.359, p < 0.001); and partial mediation through team-building (indirect β = 0.180), accounting for 50.1% of the total effect. Extending from NGO projects to government-implemented programs, the study advances three theoretically distinct propositions: program success is reconceptualized as institutional capacity building and strategic benefits realization; bureaucratic attenuation, a post hoc interpretive proposition, suggests government structures may dampen leadership’s translation into program outcomes; cultural and compound crisis conditions extend cross-cultural and crisis leadership theory to program contexts. Qualitative evidence is consistent with psychological ownership as a plausible compensatory mechanism where extrinsic rewards are constrained. Contributions include multilevel theorization that distinguishes program from project leadership, four team-building mediation pathways proposed for future testing, and a validated blended program success measure that integrates academic and practitioner indicators.