Unpacking Team Familiarity: The Effects of Geographic Location and Hierarchical Role

Examination of team productivity finds that team familiarity, i.e., individuals' prior shared work experience, can positively impact the efficiency and quality of team output. Despite the attention given to team familiarity and its contingencies, prior work has focused on whether team members have worked together, not on which team members have worked together, and under what conditions. In this paper, I parse overall team familiarity to consider effects of geographic location and the hierarchical roles of team members. Using data on all software‐development projects completed over 3 years at a large Indian firm in the global outsourced software services industry, I find that team familiarity gained when team members work together in the same location has a significantly more positive effect on team performance compared with team familiarity gained while members were collaborating in different locations. Additionally, I find that hierarchical team familiarity (a manager's experience with front‐line team members) and horizontal team familiarity (front‐line team members' experience gained with one another) have differential effects on project team performance. These findings provide insight into the relationship between team experience and team performance.     

Fostering Risk Taking in Research and Development: The Importance of a Project's Terminal Value

Large firms face a conflict in managing a portfolio of high-risk projects. When an ongoing project is thought to have a low likelihood of success, project team members take risks to improve its chances of success. However, upper-level managers who allocate resources tend to withhold resources from a project with a low likelihood of success in favor of others in the portfolio that look more promising. Because this paucity of resources influences project team members to avoid risk, the total effect of success likelihood on risk taking is conflicted. The influence on risk taking of a project's terminal value—defined as the value that remains in the firm in the event of project failure—is unequivocally positive, because both senior management resource allocation and project team risk-taking propensity are encouraged by terminal value. Thus, firms can override the ambivalent effect of likelihood of success on project decision making by focusing attention on a project's terminal value.     

Team Dispersion,Information Technology,and Project Performance

The impact of information technology (IT) on the performance of distributed projects is not well understood. Although prior research has documented that dispersion among project teams has an adverse effect on project performance, the role of IT as an enabler of communication to bridge the spatial distance among team members in distributed networks has not been empirically studied. We focus on the role of IT as a moderator of the relationship between team dispersion and project performance using projects as the unit of analysis. We find that IT mitigates the negative effect of team dispersion on project performance, especially in high information volume projects. Our central contribution is the development of an empirically tested model to improve the understanding of the operational impact of IT as a vehicle to bridge spatial dispersion among distributed teams that are engaged in knowledge‐intensive work.     

The Impact of Nonagility on Service Level and Project Duration*

“Why projects are late” is a fundamental issue in theory and in practice. One well‐established explanation is that a project's network structure can be a significant factor—the “fatter” or more parallel the project, the later the project completion. Herein we show that a lack of agility, which may frequently arise in projects when there are external resources, can also be a significant factor in project delays—both in more serial‐like projects as well as more parallel ones. Specifically, this article formally characterizes the concept of agility in projects, shows how a lack of agility can have a significant impact on a project, and gives some general properties on agility with respect to a project's structure.     

How Provider Selection and Management Contribute to Successful Innovation Outsourcing: An Empirical Study at Siemens

It is becoming increasingly common to involve external technology providers in developing new technologies and new products. Two important phases involved in working with technology vendors are vendor selection and vendor management. Because for both steps theory development of key decision guidelines is still immature, we use detailed case studies of 31 innovation outsourcing projects at Siemens to develop grounded theory on provider selection criteria and on project management success drivers. A selection criterion often associated with successful outsourcing is the provider's “track record” or previous experience. Our cases suggest that there is no standard “track record” for success but that a “match” between the client firm's outsourcing motivation and the provider's strengths appears to be a necessary condition for a successful outsourcing collaboration. As to the second phase—managing the vendor—we identify a number of operational project success drivers. There seems to be no universal checklist, but the most important drivers seem to be contingent on the type of vendor chosen and on the maturity of the technology. We compare five provider types—universities, competitors, customers, start‐up companies, and component suppliers—and find that some success drivers are common to all providers, while others are relevant only for certain types of provider. Moreover, drivers in the case of a mature technology are more focused on successful transfer to manufacturing than on development itself. Our findings offer guidelines for innovation managers on how to select innovation providers and how to manage them during the project.     

It's Only Temporary: Time Frame and the Dynamics of Creative Project Teams

The success of many knowledge‐intensive industries depends on creative projects that lie at the heart of their logic of production. The temporality of such projects, however, is an issue that is insufficiently understood. To address this, we study the perceived time frame of teams that work on creative projects and its effects on project dynamics. An experiment with 267 managers assigned to creative project teams with varying time frames demonstrates that, compared to creative project teams with a relatively longer time frame, project teams with a shorter time frame focus more on the immediate present, are less immersed in their task and utilize a more heuristic mode of information processing. Furthermore, we find that time frame moderates the negative effect of team conflict on team cohesion. These results are consistent with our theory that the temporary nature of creative projects shapes different time frames among project participants, and that it is this time frame that is an important predictor of task and team processes.     

Managing Cost Salience and Procrastination in Projects: Compensation and Team Composition

The rising trend of projects with high‐skilled and autonomous contributors increasingly exposes managers to the risk of idiosyncratic individual behaviors. In this article, we examine the effects of an important behavioral factor, an individual's cost salience. Cost salience leads individuals to perceive the cost of immediate effort to be larger than the cost of future effort. This leads to procrastination in early stages and back‐loaded effort over the course of the project. We model the problem confronting the manager of a project whose quality is adversely impacted by such distortion of individual effort over time. Complementary to prior works focused on the planning and scheduling tasks of project management in the absence of human behavior, we find that managers should reward contributions made in earlier stages of a project. Our analysis also yields interesting insights on the project team performance: teams with diverse levels of cost salience will perform better than homogeneous teams. We also address another important facet of team composition, namely, the choice between stable and fluid teams, and find that the practice of creating fluid teams might have previously unrecognized benefits when behavioral aspects of projects are considered. We conclude with insights and organizational implications for project managers.     

The double-edge sword effect of interorganizational trust on involvement in interorganizational networks: The mediator role of affective commitment

Some organizations collaborate with other partner organizations to reach common goals, establishing interorganizational networks. The governance of the network is often enacted by an interorganizational governing team composed of the directors or top managers of the partner firms. This team plans, manages, and supervises the advancement of the network’s common goals. The success of the network depends, to a large extent, on the involvement of the members of the governing team. In this study, we tested a multilevel model of the antecedents of the involvement of governing team members in the management activities of interorganizational networks. We examined whether the relationship between team interorganizational trust, as a team level construct, and individual involvement in management activities is partially mediated by individual affective commitment. Using a sample of 101 respondents belonging to 28 interorganizational governing teams, we tested a multilevel mediation model. Results showed, as expected, a positive indirect effect of team interorganizational trust on individual involvement through individual affective commitment. However, unexpectedly, team interorganizational trust also showed a negative direct relationship with individual involvement. Based on our findings, we highlight the need to also consider the “dark side” of interorganizational trust, and we propose potential mediators to explain the unexpected negative relationship.     

Managing Outsourced Software Projects: An Analysis of Project Performance and Customer Satisfaction

We examine the drivers of project performance and customer satisfaction in outsourced software projects using a proprietary panel dataset. The data cover 822 customer observations related to 182 unique projects executed by an India‐based software services vendor. Adopting a multidisciplinary perspective, we investigate how project planning, team stability, and communication effectiveness impact project performance and customer satisfaction. We delineate the direct and interactive influences of the antecedent variables. We also examine how these influences are moderated by two important project contexts: (a) the nature of software work (maintenance and development vs. testing projects) and (b) project maturity (new vs. mature projects). Among other results, we demonstrate that, when project planning capabilities are high, the positive impact of team stability and communication effectiveness on project performance is even higher. In addition, our results suggest that the impact of communication on project performance is muted when team stability is high. Finally, we also demonstrate that the impact of the antecedent variables on project performance varies with the nature of software work. Our findings offer specific and actionable insights to managers that can help them manage outsourced projects better, and open up new research perspectives in the context of outsourced project management.     

Task Design,Team Context,and Psychological Safety: An Empirical Analysis of R&D Projects in High Technology Organizations

High technology organizations need to develop new products or processes that address the dual goals of exploration and exploitation. The competing viewpoints and the asymmetric nature of market returns associated with these goals in R&D projects can heighten stress levels among project team members and reduce their psychological safety. While current research calls for greater focus on task design for improving psychological safety, we know little about how team contextual factors affect this relationship. This study develops and tests a conceptual framework that examines the moderating role of R&D team contextual factors, namely, relative exploration and project‐organization metric alignment on the relationship between a key task design variable, namely, team autonomy, and psychological safety. Relative exploration captures the extent to which exploration goals are emphasized over exploitation goals in an R&D project, while project‐organization metric alignment measures the extent to which project metrics are aligned with broader organizational metrics. Furthermore, we examine the performance consequences of psychological safety in R&D projects. The empirical analysis is conducted using primary data collected from multiple informants across 110 R&D projects in 34 high technology business units. Our results indicate that relative exploration and project‐organization metric alignment have contrasting moderating effects. Furthermore, the effect of psychological safety on project performance is found to be indirect and mediated through team turnover. Implications of the study findings, limitations, and directions for future research are discussed.     

Shared leadership across cultures: Do traditionalism and virtuality matter?

Shared leadership, in which the role of the leader is shared across team members, has great potential, yet little is known about the conditions under which it may be more or less effective across cultures. We examine traditionalism and the extent of virtuality as features which may change the relationship between shared leadership and team effectiveness, among 211 individuals working in 56 teams in a multinational aerospace design collaboration. We find a 3-way interaction between traditionalism, virtuality, and shared leadership in predicting team effectiveness. When traditionalism was high, virtuality was essential for shared leadership and team effectiveness. The theoretical contributions and relevance for managers in utilizing shared leadership are discussed.     

Team‐Level Antecedents of Individuals' Knowledge Networks*

Individuals' knowledge networks are widely considered to contribute substantially to the effectiveness and efficiency of organizations. While the positive effects of knowledge networks as a primary driver of social capital have recently received considerable research attention, potential determinants of individuals' network building have not yet been adequately addressed. In this study, we investigate how certain team‐level properties affect team members' development of knowledge networks through the course of a team project. Using data from 430 team leaders and team members pertaining to 145 software development projects, we test cross‐level hypotheses using hierarchical linear modeling (HLM). The results indicate that the team's perception of the organizational knowledge‐sharing climate, the team's networking preference, and the team's perceived importance of networking for project success positively affect individuals' network building. Furthermore, a team's perception of the adequacy of its technical competency and a team's perception of the adequacy of its material resources inhibit team members' individual network development. Theoretical and managerial implications are discussed.     

Team‐specific Human Capital and Performance

In this paper we explore the effects of team‐specific human capital (TSHC) on performance. We do so by delineating between two dimensions of TSHC, relating to team members and the team manager, and then exploring how the two dimensions may interact in shaping performance. Employing a 10‐year panel of football teams from the English Premier League we find that team members’ TSHC has a positive and significant effect on team performance, which is positively moderated by managers’ TSHC. Our results attest to the importance of considering both the team member and team manager dimensions of TSHC, and how the performance effects of team members’ TSHC are shaped by managers’ TSHC. Our results stand in stark contrast to the dramatic reduction in managerial tenure that has characterized the English Premier League in recent years.     

Managing Cross-Functional Cooperation for New Product Development Success

This article focuses on conditions that make cross-functional cooperation in new product development projects more or less productive. We investigate 40 NPD projects in the consumer electronics and pharmaceuticals industries in which R&D and marketing played key roles. We find that the contributions of cross-functional cooperation to NPD success are contingent on the type of market and technology opportunities being pursued. More specifically, our results suggest that when a project team pursues an opportunity characterized by high levels of technological and market risks, investments in high levels of cross-functional cooperation are warranted to increase NPD success. We do not find evidence that cross-functional cooperation moderates the relationship between the openness of an NPD project towards external information and knowledge and its performance. This suggests that less integrated project teams could achieve similar results as more integrated teams in terms of processing large quantities of information and knowledge without incurring the costs that may stem from high levels of cross-functional cooperation.     

家长式领导对高管团队有效性的影响机制研究:以团队凝聚力为中介变量

本文通过对108家中国企业的高管团队问卷调查所获得的数据的分析,探讨了CEO的家长式领导对高管团队有效性的影响机制,结果表明:仁慈领导和德行领导对团队有效性有显著的积极影响,威权领导对团队有效性有显著的消极影响;团队凝聚力起到了部分中介的作用,威权领导通过降低团队凝聚力对团队有效性产生负面影响.     

An investigation of project complexity's influence on team communication using Monte Carlo simulation

Research using empirical methods has established a curvilinear relationship between team communication and performance. We conduct virtual experiments to examine team communication and performance when teams work under varying types and levels of project complexity. Data samples, generated using Monte Carlo simulation, are based on the statistical characteristics of empirical data collected from 60 cross-functional project teams that communicated over multiple media (email, phone, and face-to-face) and were completing projects of varying complexity. Regression analysis indicates that project complexity influences the communication-performance relationship. Optimization shows that the communication frequencies at which teams maximize or minimize their performance are dependent upon media used.     

The Roles of Worker Expertise,Information Sharing Quality,and Psychological Safety in Manufacturing Process Innovation: An Intellectual Capital Perspective

This paper examines the roles of three elements of intellectual capital in implementing process innovations. Building upon prior literature, we develop a model describing how worker expertise, information sharing quality, and psychological safety work together as elements of the human, structural, and social dimensions of intellectual capital to influence the technical success of manufacturing process innovation (MPI) projects. Results of an analysis of data describing 179 MPI projects in US firms strongly support a multidimensional, process‐oriented view of intellectual capital's effects on MPI project technical performance. We also find that the incrementalness of an MPI project plays a moderating role over the relationship between worker expertise and MPI performance. Our study provides insights on how intellectual capital can be more effectively accumulated in a project environment.     

项目团队成员怠工行为修正的理论模型

项目团队并不总能实现预期目标,项目团队中存在的某些问题属于怠工行为的表现,项目团队中怠工行为修正亟待研究。采用定性研究方法,按照行为修正分析模式,以行为修正理论、态度改变理论、态度与行为理论、认知平衡理论等为理论基础,经理论与文献研究提出:项目团队成员怠工行为与项目团队绩效的关系、工作态度在工作情境认知与怠工行为之间中介作用关系、团队文化认知在工作情境认知与工作态度之间调节作用关系,从而构建起项目团队成员怠工行为修正的理论模型。     

Team flexibility's relationship to staffing and performance in complex projects: An empirical analysis

We examine the role of flexibility in project team effectiveness. Specifically, we hypothesize that (1) it will mediate the relationship between staffing quality and effectiveness and (2) its relationship with team effectiveness will be moderated by project complexity, where more flexibility will be required when projects are complex. Hypotheses are tested using data collected from 60 cross-functional project teams. The results indicated that flexibility mediates the relationship between staffing quality and team performance (goal achievement and cohesion, but not project efficiency). Additionally, we find that two-dimensions of project complexity moderate the flexibility–performance relationship. Specifically, the more alternatives a team must consider, the stronger the negative relationship between flexibility and project efficiency is. The flexibility–cohesion relationship also was moderated, such that the relationship is more positive when the project is more ambiguous and more negative when the project team faces many alternatives. Implications for research and practice are discussed.     

Collaborative Product Development: The Effect of Project Complexity on the Use of Information Technology Tools and New Product Development Practices

Collaboration is an essential element of new product development (NPD). This research examines the associations between four types of information technology (IT) tools and NPD collaboration. The relationships between NPD practices and NPD collaboration are also examined. Drawing on organizational information processing theory, we propose that the relationships between IT tools and NPD collaboration will be moderated differently by three project complexity dimensions, namely, product size, project novelty, and task interdependence, due to the differing nature of information processing necessitated by each project complexity dimension. Likewise, the moderation effects of the project complexity dimensions on the relationship between NPD practices and NPD collaboration will also be different. We test our hypotheses using data from a sample of NPD projects in three manufacturing industries. We find that IT tools are associated with collaboration to a greater extent when product size is relatively large. In contrast, IT tools exhibit a smaller association with collaboration when project novelty or task interdependence is relatively high. NPD practices are found to be more significantly associated with NPD collaboration under the contingency of high project novelty or high task interdependence. The findings provide insights about circumstances where several popular IT tools are more likely to facilitate collaboration, thus informing an NPD team's IT adoption and use decisions.