MARCELA SOUTO CASTRO

Prof. Dr. MARCELA SOUTO CASTRO

ESCE - Escola Superior de Ciências Sociais, Instituto Politecnico de Setubal, Setúbal, Portugal

Research Focus & Metrics

Academic Career Length

8Years (2019-Present)

(Calculated once Scilit publication data is synced: current year − year of first publication + 1)

Representative Publications

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20 June 2023 in Sustainability
Verified
Journal Article
Open access
PDF file
GBGisele Blak Bernat
Gisele Blak Bernat
Eduardo Linhares QualhariniEduardo Linhares Qualharini
Eduardo Linhares Qualharini
MCMARCELA SOUTO CASTRO
MARCELA SOUTO CASTRO
ABANDRE BAPTISTA BARCAUI
ANDRE BAPTISTA BARCAUI
Raquel SoaresRaquel Soares
Raquel Soares
Project success is crucial for businesses, but the impact of virtual teams on it is still not fully understood. The global outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 has led to the widespread adoption of virtual environment solutions to support geographically dispersed project teams. The growth in the use of virtual or hybrid teams in projects is expected to continue, as it presents an irreversible trend. Furthermore, there has been a significant increase in interest in sustainability in project management in recent years, emphasizing the long-term perspective for project success. To address this gap and contribute to the project success theory, a quantitative study was conducted to examine the impact of stakeholder engagement, knowledge management, and sustainable practices in project management on project success in virtual work environments using structural equation modeling. Experienced Portuguese-speaking project management professionals were surveyed. No evidence was found to support the moderating role of virtual teams, concluding that the virtual nature of a team does not diminish stakeholder engagement, knowledge-sharing, or sustainability in project management and its influence on project success. This study provides valuable insights for enhancing project success in virtual work environments, as it is the first of its kind to quantitatively address the sustainable long-term approach of project success in virtual environments.

18 October 2022 in Administrative Sciences
Verified
Journal Article
Open access
PDF file
MCMARCELA SOUTO CASTRO
MARCELA SOUTO CASTRO
ABANDRE BAPTISTA BARCAUI
ANDRE BAPTISTA BARCAUI
BBBouchaib Bahli
Bouchaib Bahli
Ronnie FigueiredoRonnie Figueiredo
Ronnie Figueiredo
Recent warnings have been raised about the project success rate in organizations. Among many reasons of disappointing results, research on project management reveals a gap in examining project success. Traditionally, project success has been widely studied from the rational view but rarely from the behavioral view. Today’s businesses are facing multiple challenges and opportunities in a volatile market environment that require constant changes within organizations and leaders’ behavior. The role of project managers is no longer the same. This study attempts to update the discussion of project managers soft skills by examining two major behavioral factors: project manager’s emotional intelligence and trustworthiness and their impact on job satisfaction and project success. This research compiles a quantitative survey. Data were collected from 101 project team professionals. The results reveal that project managers’ emotional intelligence and their team members’ trust in them impact project success significantly. The findings provide organizations with a necessary complementary behavioral view of project management. Organizations can take project manager trustworthiness and emotional intelligence into account when recruiting and training project managers and throughout the project planning and execution life span.

21 September 2023 in Behavioral Sciences
Verified
Journal Article
Open access
PDF file
MCMARCELA SOUTO CASTRO
MARCELA SOUTO CASTRO
BBBouchaib Bahli
Bouchaib Bahli
João FerreiraJoão Ferreira
João Ferreira
Ronnie FigueiredoRonnie Figueiredo
Ronnie Figueiredo
The purpose of this research is to provide researchers and leaders with a reliable and up-to-date comparison between a single-item and a multi-item trust scale, enabling effective assessment of team members’ trust in their leaders. The aim of the study is to investigate whether a single-question scale is as reliable as a multi-item questionnaire in measuring trust. An additional goal is to provide researchers with insights and conditions for effectively using single or multiple measures to assess trust in leaders, considering factors like reliability and effectiveness. After conducting a comprehensive literature review, data were collected from 101 project members in Brazil using a survey methodology. The respondents were asked to provide feedback regarding their leaders, specifically project managers, and factor analysis was then employed to test the single-item and multi-item measures of trust. The advantages and disadvantages of each approach are discussed. The findings of our study demonstrate that both single-item and multi-item scales of trust should be utilized to gain a more comprehensive understanding of the trust construct. Single-item questionnaires can reduce survey length, improve respondent friendliness, and increase participant willingness. On the other hand, multi-item questionnaires enable researchers to analyze latent variables that contribute to an overall variable, but they cannot isolate data for each of those constructs. The results show that both measures are reliable, providing researchers and professionals with insights into the benefits and drawbacks associated with each method. Consequently, this research equips researchers and project professionals with valuable information for selecting the appropriate measurement tool.

2 October 2020 in International Journal of Managing Projects in Business
Verified
Journal Article
Closed access
MCMARCELA SOUTO CASTRO
MARCELA SOUTO CASTRO
BBBouchaib Bahli
Bouchaib Bahli
ABAndre Barcaui
Andre Barcaui
RFRonnie Figueiredo
Ronnie Figueiredo
Purpose: The purpose of this research is to identify and accumulate knowledge on the existing developments on project success measures. The authors aim to contribute to this debate by providing both researchers and project management professionals with reliable contemporary project success criteria that permit generalization for a proper assessment regardless of the type and context of the project.Design/methodology/approach: Data were collected from 264 Brazilian project managers from a range of industries, sectors of activities and business areas with different levels of experience. Data analysis was performed using the R software package.Findings: In this research, the authors propose a general performance measure of project success where different projects can grade differently using the same scale. The data analysis validated five constructs of the developed model in the Brazilian setting.Originality/value: Most of the actual project success measures used in project management literature have been tested in a specific industry or sector. Combinations of the type of project, industry, sector, project nature, stakeholders and other variables make each project unique. Thus, any effort to find a context-specific tool of measure will be an endless endeavor. To fill this gap, more general project success criteria need to be explored to offer a common point of comparison between projects. This is the motivation of the present study.

9 March 2023 in Sustainability
Verified
Journal Article
Open access
PDF file
GBGisele Blak Bernat
Gisele Blak Bernat
Eduardo Linhares QualhariniEduardo Linhares Qualharini
Eduardo Linhares Qualharini
MCMARCELA SOUTO CASTRO
MARCELA SOUTO CASTRO
This research investigated the crucial correlation between stakeholder engagement and knowledge management, and their role in enhancing sustainability in project management, with a specific focus on the virtual environment. With the shift towards virtual solutions due to the COVID-19 pandemic, as well as the rise of remote work, it has become increasingly important to understand how these constructs interact in this new context. Through a web-based survey questionnaire and Structural Equation Modeling analysis, we found that both stakeholder engagement and knowledge management have a significant positive effect on sustainability practices in project management. Even more interestingly, these relationships remain consistent regardless of whether the project is conducted in a virtual or traditional environment. These findings have important implications for organizations across industries, as they can use these insights to improve sustainability practices in project management by focusing on the integration of stakeholder engagement and knowledge management in the virtual or presential environment. This study is the first of its kind to quantitatively investigate this connection, making it a valuable contribution to the field.

7 March 2019 in Brazilian Journal of Operations & Production Management
Verified
Journal Article
Open access
PDF file
MCMARCELA SOUTO CASTRO
MARCELA SOUTO CASTRO
BBBouchaib Bahli
Bouchaib Bahli
JFJosé Rodrigues Farias Filho
José Rodrigues Farias Filho
ABANDRE BAPTISTA BARCAUI
ANDRE BAPTISTA BARCAUI
Goal: The objective of this research is to provide researchers and project management professionals with a contemporary view of the measurement of project success. Design/Methodology/Approach: After a dense literature review, a research-based study analyzes the project success criteria perspectives of 264 Brazilian project managers and provides a ranking of the most widely used measures in practice in Brazilian organizations. Results: The study analyzes contemporary literature on project success criteria and discusses overlaps and trends. One of the important findings of this research is the identification of mismatches between academic perspectives and those of project managers in regard to project success as well as real success criteria used in organizations. Limitations of the investigation: As the sample covered was comprised exclusively of Brazilian project managers, cross-cultural success criteria research is, therefore, encouraged. Practical implications: The proposed performance criteria can be used in future research and for professional proposes in success criteria assessment. Originality/Value: Given the diversity of success criteria measures, authors can have difficulty in finding the one that better fits their needs; alternatively, they can create their own scale. The reliability of several studies can be questioned due to their subjectivity and, in some cases, weakly defined measures. The present study can therefore provide project professionals with guidelines for success assessment that make measuring and comparing different projects possible.