Antecedents to Team Performance on Student IT Projects

A study was performed to test the impact of factors suggested by social capital and social cognitive theories as important antecedents to team performance on information technology (IT) course projects. Specifically, the impact of personal outcome expectations and social interaction ties on the quality and quantity of knowledge sharing is examined; then, the impact of the quality and quantity of knowledge sharing on team performance is analyzed. The analysis is performed using the partial least squares approach to structural equation modeling. The results indicate that personal outcome expectations significantly impact knowledge sharing while no evidence was found for a relationship between social interaction ties and knowledge sharing. Additionally, both the quantity and quality of knowledge sharing were found to have significant positive effects on team performance

IT Enablers for Task Organization and Innovation Support to drive Team Performance

Teams drive organizational innovation by applying knowledge to solve complex problems. However, many teams underperform and organizations do not sufficiently harvest the benefits they could gain from effective IT support for team processes consisting of creative (exploration) and structurally controlled (exploitation) processes. This paper investigates the impact of knowledge application on support for innovation, task organization, and team performance in a mixed method case study in two medium-sized, knowledge-intensive, information technology-affine organizations. We surveyed 204 employees and found that knowledge application positively affects task organization. Knowledge application and task organization positively affect support for innovation. Both, task organization and support for innovation positively affect team performance. Subsequent focus group interviews with 16 employees provided us with an in-depth understanding of factors that support team performance. Qualitative content analysis resulted in nine IT enablers, which can be adapted by organizations to foster coordination while at the same time promote innovation

Team Knowledge Networks, Task Dependencies and Coordination: Preliminary Findings from Software Teams

Today’s work increasingly involves teams with fluid boundaries, and members working on multiple projects at a time. To understand how work is effectively coordinated in such complex organizations, we focus on the role of a company’s task dependency network. We integrate three research streams – coordination, team knowledge and social networks to conceptualize multiteam work as a large collaboration with members in multiple functional roles and areas of expertise, with complex task dependency relationships, operating as a coherent and well-coordinated knowledge network. Through this integration and empirical test of associated hypotheses with data from a European software company, our study illustrates how to represent multiple relationships in one complex multiplex network. This extends our understanding of how the various knowledge relationships and individual attribute differences influence the effective coordination in collaborative software development work. We address the concepts of awareness and shared familiarity and how they affect coordination, while keeping our focus on illustrating the power of network analytics to gain nuanced insights into the drivers of effective coordination

Relationship between Teamwork and Team Performance: Experiences from an ERPsim Competition

Much interest exists in using Enterprise Resource Planning simulation (ERPsim) games to help students learn complex concepts involved in Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems. However, little research has explored factors that contribute to team performance duringan ERPsim game. The current study investigated teamwork as a contributor to team performance in the context of a competition. The research measured teamwork in five dimensions: contributing to the team’s work, interacting with teammates, keeping the teamon track, expecting quality, and having relevant knowledge, skills, and abilities (KSA). Net income was the measure for team performance. Participants also rated their satisfaction with their team. Data from 62 student teams showedthat all five teamwork dimensions had a positive correlation with net income. Moreover, all correlations were statistically significant except the relationship between keeping the team on track and net income. Teams with relevant KSA were more likely to generate higher net income. Expecting quality was the second most significant dimension, followed by interacting with teammates and contributing to the team’s work. All five teamwork dimensions had a significant positive correlation with team satisfaction.This research suggests that students will likely engage in good teamwork during a game if it is set up as a high-stakes competition. Additionally, good teamwork will likely result in higher team performance and satisfaction. The evidence should encourage more widespread adoption of ERPsim gamesas a means for teaching and assessing teamwork in addition to learning ERP concepts

How Does Time Synchronization Affect Innovation Quality? : Based on Information and Knowledge Acquirement

Peer reviewe

Beyond Being There: The Symbolic Role of Communication and Identification in the Emergence of Perceived Proximity in Geographically Dispersed Work

We develop the concept of perceived proximity, understood as a symbolic representation of one's faraway coworkers. We build on Wilson et al. (2008), present new validated measures of perceived proximity, and compare how perceived proximity and objective distance relate to relationship outcomes between geographically dispersed work colleagues. Our results show strong support for a symbolic view of work relationships. Indeed, it is the symbolic meaning of proximity and not physical proximity itself that affects relationship outcomes. Also, the symbolic meaning of proximity is defined not by physical proximity, but by people's sense of shared identity and by their use of (mostly synchronous) communication media. Furthermore, we find that how the sense of proximity is symbolically constructed mediates the effects of communication and identity on relationship outcomes.Proximity ; distance ; geographically dispersed work ; virtual work ; teams ; relationships

Software Development Process Ambidexterity and Project Performance: A Coordination Cost-Effectiveness View

Software development process ambidexterity (SDPA) is the ability to demonstrate both process alignment and process adaptability simultaneously. Realizing process ambidexterity has recently been suggested as an effective approach to improving the performance of software development (SD) projects. To understand the mechanisms underlying the effects of ambidexterity, we focus in this study on the mediating effects of coordination, one of the most important activity in SD projects. Specifically, we hypothesize a mediating effect of coordination costs and coordination effectiveness on the relationship between SDPA and project performance. We conducted a quantitative study involving 104 SD projects across 10 firms to test the model. The results strongly suggest that the positive relationship between SDPA and project performance is negatively mediated by coordination costs and positively mediated by coordination effectiveness. We validate our research model with a case study in an organization employing several hundred IT professionals and derive several practical implications on this basis

Investigating task coordination in globally dispersed teams:a structural contingency perspective

Task coordination poses significant challenges for globally dispersed teams (GDTs). Although various task coordination mechanisms have been proposed for such teams, there is a lack of systematic examination of the appropriate coordination mechanisms for different teams based on the nature of their task and the context under which they operate. Prior studies on collocated teams suggest matching their levels of task dependence to specific task coordination mechanisms for effective coordination. This research goes beyond the earlier work by also considering additional contextual factors of GDT (i.e., temporal dispersion and time constraints) in deriving their optimal IT-mediated task coordination mechanisms. Adopting the structural contingency theory, we propose optimal IT-mediated task coordination portfolios to fit the different levels of task dependence, temporal dispersion, and perceived time constraint of GDTs. The proposed fit is tested through a survey and profile analysis of 95 globally dispersed software development teams in a large financial organization. We find, as hypothesized, that the extent of fit between the actual IT-mediated task coordination portfolios used by the surveyed teams and their optimal portfolios proposed here is positively related to their task coordination effectiveness that in turn impacts the team's efficiency and effectiveness. The implications for theory and practice are discussed