Prelims

Half Title Page

Team Work Quality

Title Page

Team Work Quality

Why it Matters in Enhancing the Creativity of Software Organizations

by

Rajalakshmi Subramaniam

Talaash Research Consultants Private Limited, India

Senthilkumar Nakkeeran

Anna University, India

And

Sanjay Mohapatra

Xavier Institute of Management, India

United Kingdom – North America – Japan – India Malaysia – China

Copyright Page

Emerald Publishing Limited

Howard House, Wagon Lane, Bingley BD16 1WA, UK

First edition 2021

© 2021 Rajalakshmi Subramaniam, Senthilkumar Nakkeeran and Sanjay Mohapatra

Published under exclusive licence by Emerald Publishing Limited

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British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

ISBN: 978-1-80117-263-9 (Print)

ISBN: 978-1-80117-262-2 (Online)

ISBN: 978-1-80117-264-6 (Epub)

List of Abbreviations

About the Authors

Dr Rajalakshmi Subramaniam is a Computer Engineering gold medallist. She secured her master's degree and doctoral degree in the area of Technology Management from Anna University, Department of Management Studies, Guindy. She is the Chief Academic Consultant and Founder of Talaash Research Consultants Private Limited, Chennai. She has overall 14 years’ work experience altogether: 3 years as a software developer and 11 years as an academician and entrepreneur. She is an award-winning woman entrepreneur and has won prestigious awards like Homepreneur of the Year 2018, a state-level award under the education category of Tamilnadu, and Consultant of the year 2019, a national-level award by Business Connect magazine, New Delhi. She is the owner of a social media page named Research Methodology Tutor which teaches the basic concepts of research methodology to researchers for free of cost. It has more than 25,000 followers from all over the world. She is also a Visiting Professor at School of Management, Hindustan Institute of Technology and Science, Chennai. She is an active social science researcher and has so many national and international publications to her credit. She has presented her research work in international conferences held at various parts of the Middle East, such as Dubai and Sultanate of Oman. In addition to that, she has also published a patent on design and development of a collaborative E-learning environment. Her areas of research include entrepreneurship, work culture at software organizations, creativity and innovation, agile project management, team work quality and emotional intelligence. Her ORCID ID is https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5997-4163, and Scopus Author ID is 57194588635. Her Linkedin Profile could be accessed through the uniform resource locator (URL) https://in.linkedin.com/in/dr-rajalakshmi-subramaniam-61050018

Dr Senthilkumar Nakkeeran pursued his Mechanical Engineering degree from Madurai Kamaraj (MK) University and MBA from Alagappa University and Doctorate in Management from Bharathidasan University. He has more than 18 years of teaching experience. He is currently working as a Professor at Department of Management Studies, Anna University, CEG Campus, Chennai, India. He has numerous international and national publications to his credit in several reputed and high-ranked journals. His areas of interest include operations and marketing management. His ORCID ID is https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4043-7664 and Scopus Author ID is 57194010324. His contact details could be accessed from the link https://annauniv.irins.org/profile/117906

Dr Sanjay Mohapatra has obtained his BE from NIT Rourkela, MBA from XIMB, MTech from IIT Madras, India, and PhD from Utkal University. Dr Mohapatra has more than 34 years of combined industry and academic experience. He was vice president (VP) in three organizations (Polaris Lab, iSOFT Plc, JB Soft Inc.) and was heading Asia Pacific, Europe and United States. He also has played different roles in Infosys, PWC, Ernst & Young and HAL. As part of academia, he has consulted many organizations in different domains such as utilities, banking, insurance and healthcare sectors. His teaching interests are in information technology (IT) strategy and management information systems and in the area of IT-enabled processes. He has authored/co-authored 27 books, more than 78 papers in national and international refereed journals besides publications in different conferences. His contact details and list of publications can be found at http://ximb.academia.edu/sanjaymohapatra. His Scopus Author ID is 26427741300, Researcher ID is B-5438-2012 and ORCID ID is http://orcid.org/0000-0001-9514-862X

Preface

Information technology (IT) sector has witnessed a dramatic growth in the past three decades and has turned into one of the major contributors of the nation's economy. Software organizations have emerged in India in large numbers in the recent years since India stands as one of the major destinations for foreign investors across the globe who intends to invest in the IT industry.

This book entitled Team Work Quality – Why it Matters in Enhancing the Creativity of Software Organizations is an attempt to identify how two important management strategies, namely ‘Team Work Quality’ and ‘Creativity’ are related with each other and how the characteristics of a software team impact their relationship with specific reference to Indian software organizations.

The authors of the book have carried out a real-time investigation through application of appropriate research methodologies and collected data from team leaders, subjected them to statistical analysis in order to infer how team work quality contributes towards enhancement of creativity with respect to software organizations in India, thereby ensuring the authenticity of the views presented by them in the forthcoming chapters.

Team Work Quality, a very recent terminology that has come up in the last decade and is being widely applied in software organizations across the world these days, has been measured in this book using Weimar (2013)'s model of Team Work Quality. Likewise, in this book, organizational creativity has been measured based on Woodman et al. (1993)'s Interactionist model of Organizational Creativity. A quantitative analysis has been conducted in order to identify the relationship between the above two variables. In addition to that, the moderating relationship of five team characteristics, namely team size, team age, team ethnicity, team role and tenure of the team leader, on the relationship between ‘Team Work Quality’ and ‘Creativity’, has also been identified in this book.

This book presents the results of analysis of quantitative data collected from 474 team leaders working at software organizations located in Chennai and Bengaluru, India, and those have been identified to have qualified the CMMI DEV V1.3 Maturity Level 5 assessment, conducted by the Software Engineering Institute, in the year 2015. The results reveal that team work quality and organizational creativity are interrelated with each other and their relationship is moderated by four out of the five characteristics identified by the authors.

In addition to that, this book also offers strategies to the software organizations for improving their levels of organizational creativity, through enhancement of team work quality, thereby helping its readers in creating a better work environment.