Many studies have been published on the relationship between project management styles and project performance. In recent researches, it is argued that project management styles should be different based on project characteristics and these project characteristics may have an effect on the relationship between project management styles and project performance. However, there are few empirical studies covering these issues. In this study, we examined the effect of project characteristics (i.e., degree of newness) on the relationship between project management styles (i.e., team autonomy, internal and external communication, individualism orientation) and project performance. The empirical results using 78 government sponsored R&D projects showed that team autonomy has a stronger positive effect on project performance as project newness becomes higher. In addition, as project newness becomes higher, internal communication showed a stronger positive effect on project performance, while external communication had a stronger negative effect.