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1 – 10 of over 50000Florence Yaa Akyaa Ellis, Samuel Amos-Abanyie, Titus Ebenezer Kwofie, Kofi Amponsah-Kwatiah, Isaac Afranie and Clinton Ohis Aigbavboa
Though affective commitment has been thought to be critical in team selection, it is yet to be integrated into current models on team selection primarily due to lack of…
Abstract
Purpose
Though affective commitment has been thought to be critical in team selection, it is yet to be integrated into current models on team selection primarily due to lack of understanding of its contribution to teamwork effectiveness and performance. This study tests the contribution of complementary person team-fit (CF), supplementary person team-fit (SF) and affective commitment (AC) to teamwork effectiveness in construction project teams. By this examination, a theoretical case is made for the inclusion of affective commitment in team selection and deployment in construction project delivery.
Design/methodology/approach
By using a deductive questionnaire survey on project team participants and experienced human resource managers in recruitment and team selection in project organizations, structural equation model (SEM) was used to test the contribution of CF, SF and AC parameters to teamwork effectiveness from a total of 105 responses gathered from project team participants in project delivery.
Findings
The SEM revealed that, CF, SF and AC together account for about 81% predictive effect to teamwork effectiveness which is higher than joint effect of CF and SF in existing models in team selection and deployment. By this, it can be affirmed that, in considering CF, SF and AC in an integrated manner in team selection and deployment, higher team effectiveness can be achieved that can stimulate high performing teams and effectiveness in project delivery.
Originality/value
The findings give theoretical assertiveness to extending consideration of competence and values in team selection to embrace affections and commitment to engender effectiveness in teamwork, cohesion, collaboration and performance. This present novel attempts to include affective commitment in teamwork toward higher team effectiveness.
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Ahmed Bilal, Ahmad Siddiquei, Muhammad Ali Asadullah, Hayat Muhammad Awan and Fahad Asmi
Servant leadership is a new follower-centric style of leadership. The purpose of this paper is to examine the impact of the project leaders’ servant leadership style on project…
Abstract
Purpose
Servant leadership is a new follower-centric style of leadership. The purpose of this paper is to examine the impact of the project leaders’ servant leadership style on project team effectiveness via team goal clarity and team process clarity within the project-based organizational context.
Design/methodology/approach
A total of 58 teams working in 3 project-based organizations participated in the survey study. Team members rated their project leaders’ servant leadership style, team goal clarity and team process clarity in the project, while leaders evaluated team effectiveness. Hypotheses were tested using multi-level structural equation modeling.
Findings
Results suggested that servant leadership had a positive and significant impact on project team effectiveness via team goal clarity and team process clarity.
Originality/value
The study examined the influence of servant leadership as a team leadership approach within a project context. As a multi-level design, the study also identified the team-specific mechanisms (team goal clarity and team process clarity), which could help accomplish team effectiveness.
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Hélène Sicotte, Andrée De Serres, Hélène Delerue and Virginie Ménard
The purpose of this paper is to further explore the relationship between new product development project teams and their workspace regarding the impact of the physical (space…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to further explore the relationship between new product development project teams and their workspace regarding the impact of the physical (space variety, indoor environmental quality, large meeting room, workstation) and sociotechnical environments (project commitment, IT environment) on their creativity and effectiveness.
Design/methodology/approach
The authors gathered data on an enterprise’s ten multidisciplinary teams operating in diverse workspaces by four means: over 40 interviews and four months of observation, secondary data and a survey with 645 responses.
Findings
For teams co-located on site and abroad, employees express that proximity in open space is paramount even considering the augmented density. The relationship between team effectiveness and team creativity is strong and bidirectional (correlationβ = 0.40****), but the patterns of relationship between these two variables and certain dimensions of the physical and sociotechnical environment are different. There is a positive and direct impact on team effectiveness, but to a lesser degree on creativity which, in turn, positively influences team effectiveness. Moreover, creativity intervenes (mediator variable) between project commitment, satisfaction with large meeting rooms and the IT environment on their relationship with team effectiveness. When the authors added a direct link between the variables and team effectiveness, the model explains 47.1 per cent of the variance.
Research limitations/implications
The scope of the data is somewhat limited by the time that the company and its teams could allocate to this paper.
Practical implications
The arrangement of space reinforces employees’ sense of belonging to their team as measured by project commitment which along with satisfaction with the large meeting rooms and IT environment influence both team effectiveness and creativity. Managers could consider these three elements as levers for action. Space variety (or balanced layout) is also a way to support team creativity.
Originality/value
Even if open spaces are frequently used, the literature on creative spaces is dedicated mainly to an individual. This paper delivers some results and evidence on the concrete and simultaneous impacts of the workspaces on creativity and effectiveness of multidisciplinary new product development (NPD) team.
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Abstract
Purpose
This paper aims to investigate the impact of relationship quality among team members in the project team on knowledge transfer effectiveness and analyze the role of organizational structure in the influencing process.
Design/methodology/approach
The hypotheses are verified by the Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) analysis using Smart PLS 3 software with the data collected from 236 questionnaire samples in Chinese construction industry.
Findings
The results indicate that relationship quality has a direct impact on knowledge transfer in project teams and centralization has a negative impact on relationship quality. Moreover, relationship quality plays a mediating role between centralization and knowledge transfer effectiveness and formalization plays a negative moderating role in the effect of relationship quality on knowledge transfer effectiveness.
Originality/value
This paper studies intra-project knowledge transfer from the perspective of relationship quality of project teams and explores the antecedent and moderating role of organizational structure in the influence of relationship quality on knowledge transfer.
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Jeffrey Boon Hui Yap, Wen Jie Leong and Martin Skitmore
Teamwork in the construction industry has attracted much attention from both academic and industrial circles. Most importantly, improving team effectiveness will increase the…
Abstract
Purpose
Teamwork in the construction industry has attracted much attention from both academic and industrial circles. Most importantly, improving team effectiveness will increase the likelihood of successful project delivery. Recognising the factors influencing team dynamics is important for enhanced team performance.
Design/methodology/approach
Based on a detailed literature review, a survey questionnaire containing 10 aspects and 25 attributes of teamwork relevant to construction is used to collect feedback from Malaysian construction practitioners from client, consultant and contractor organisations to prioritise these hypothesised variables. The data are then subjected to reliability analysis, descriptive statistics (means, standard deviations, and frequencies), a one-sample t-test, the Kruskal–Wallis ANOVA and exploratory factor analysis.
Findings
The significance of these aspects and attributes is then presented. The three most crucial aspects are “project performance”, “decision-making capability” and “problem-solving ability”. The most influential attributes are “effective communication between project team members”, “efficient team leadership”, “well-defined team responsibilities and roles”, “clear team goals and objectives” and “good collaboration between all project leaders”. The Kruskal–Wallis ANOVA reveals five attributes having statistically significant differences with respect to company size, namely “clear team goals and objectives”, “commitment to the project”, “adequate resources”, “team or task processes” and “creativity and innovation”. Six underlying dimensions are found, comprising (1) participative engagement and task commitment; (2) team responsibility structure and accountability; (3) culture of trust and respect; (4) leader's skills and abilities; (5) top management support; and (6) synergic working environment.
Practical implications
The identification of these dimensions for team effectiveness provides rigorous basis for formulating useful team-building strategies for integrating a collaborative environment among project stakeholders and consequently improving project performance.
Originality/value
This paper bridges the identified knowledge gap concerning the dimensionality of teamwork attributes in construction-based setting and adds to existing knowledge of how team effectiveness can be leveraged to improve project performance in the construction management literature.
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M. Reza Hosseini, Petra Bosch-Sijtsema, Mehrdad Arashpour, Nicholas Chileshe and Christoph Merschbrock
The “virtuality” of a team collaborative interaction is the extent to which it is accomplished in the same place, in fully distributed virtual teams, or in a hybrid combination of…
Abstract
Purpose
The “virtuality” of a team collaborative interaction is the extent to which it is accomplished in the same place, in fully distributed virtual teams, or in a hybrid combination of the two. However, existence, strength and process of potential association between virtuality and effectiveness in construction project teams have remained elusive. This paper aims to address this gap in the literature.
Design/methodology/approach
In this study, a conceptual model demonstrating the association between virtuality and effectiveness of teams was developed through integrating the input-process-output (IPO) model and the “Big Five” theory. This conceptual model was contextualised for the construction industry drawing upon conducting 17 semi-structured interviews with hybrid team experts.
Findings
The findings provide the first model mapping the associations between virtuality and dimensions of team effectiveness for the construction context.
Practical implications
The discovered patterns of associations between virtuality and dimensions of effectiveness for hybrid construction project teams (HCPTs) will assist managers in designing and running more effective teams. In addition, the findings help construction practitioners better understand how virtuality influence the performance and satisfaction of team members in HCPTs. The present study concludes with outlining a set of recommendations based on the findings of the study.
Originality/value
As the first study in its kind, the present study offers a new insight into the concept and impacts of virtuality for construction teams and provides instructions and guidelines for designing and maintaining the effectiveness of such teams on construction projects.
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Kasim Randeree and Mathews Ninan
The purpose of this paper is to examine the effectiveness of leadership and team processes in information technology (IT) projects in business environments. The paper…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to examine the effectiveness of leadership and team processes in information technology (IT) projects in business environments. The paper contextualizes the study in the United Arab Emirates (UAE).
Design/methodology/approach
The paper addresses two central questions: what is the level of IT project team effectiveness in the UAE context? What is the maturity level of leadership in IT project management in the UAE? A tailored instrument, based on Cohen and Bailey's team effectiveness evaluation model, was used in this study of 42 project teams in the UAE across various sectors.
Findings
The findings demonstrate that IT projects in the UAE demonstrate a maturity level that is transactional, with task‐focused teams and people‐oriented leadership styles.
Research limitations/implications
The implications of the paper can facilitate broader contextualized research on leadership and IT project team effectiveness, with particular emphasis on developing economies. This is important in addressing the issue of high failure rates in IT projects in general.
Practical implications
Understanding the role of leadership and its responsibility in facilitating teams in technical and high failure environments can impact on productivity and success rates in future projects.
Originality/value
This paper is unique in providing collated opinion about constructs within IT project team processes and leadership effectiveness in the context of businesses in developing economies. The use of a maturity structure addressing leadership, trust, teams and cohesion is distinctive.
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Yetti Lutiyan Suprapto, Amin Wibowo and Harsono Harsono
The purpose of this paper is to examine the negative effect of intra-firm causal ambiguity on the project team’s performance—efficiency and effectiveness, and also examine the…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to examine the negative effect of intra-firm causal ambiguity on the project team’s performance—efficiency and effectiveness, and also examine the moderating role of openness and the integrative capabilities.
Design/methodology/approach
The population in this study is teams that come from a variety of companies which work with cross-functional teams or matrices, such as advertising agencies, recreational or amusement parks, television companies, production houses, radio stations, private education providers, manufacturing enterprises and IT companies. The sample population was chosen based on their tendency to form creative teams to respond to environmental/market dynamics by involving employees from different backgrounds and levels in the planning and implementation of projects.
Findings
As hypothesized, intra-firm causal ambiguity negatively influenced the project team’s efficiency and effectiveness, while openness moderated the effect of intra-firm causal ambiguity to efficiency, but not to effectiveness, and the team’s integrative capabilities did not moderate the above relationship.
Research limitations/implications
First, the sample in this study only focused on teams with creativity doing a project. Any future research is expected to focus more on the selection of sample types which also have a tendency to apply openness, and focus their activities on improving their integrative capabilities. Second, there are no data about the background experience of the members of the teams in working together on previous projects, so future studies need to discover whether that experience also affects the variables included in this study. Third, the category of the time horizon samples for the project’s implementation, which were between one month and two years, is still too wide. It may have contributed to the overlapping of the moderating effect, so future studies need the sample project’s categories to have a much narrower range (one to three months, four to six months, or one year). Fourth, the regression results for the moderating variables are partially not supported. This may relate to the characteristics of the respondents. To obtain the data and a more complete knowledge, further research can be done into creative on-going team types, such as an interior design team, a company’s production performance team and others.
Practical implications
A practical implication based on the research that has been done is that, when the condition of intra-firm causal ambiguity occurs, strategies to reduce the condition are needed. First, before a project starts, all the team members must understand the systemic process of the project’s resources related to the environment and the objectives. Systemic understanding of the resources system can help the team to effectively manage any causal ambiguity in the resources system. Second, referring that the higher the intra-firm causal ambiguity is, the efforts to codify the resources and the systemic process of the project should also be higher as well. So the second strategy is to codify/create tools that guide the project, in order to make it easily understandable, accessible and always up to date, over the lifespan of the project.
Originality/value
The results of research into the impacts of intra-firm causal ambiguity on the organizational performance are still inconsistent. Some researchers claim that intra-firm causal ambiguity has a negative effect on performance, but there are also studies that show the opposite result. This research accommodates these inconsistencies by examining the effects of a moderating variable on the impact of intra-firm causal ambiguity on a cross-functional team’s performance, in its contextual and internal aspects. The contextual aspect is represented by the openness of the team, while the team’s ability to integrate the diversity of knowledge, i.e. its integrative capability, is represented as the internal aspect.
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Seyoon Lee, Jun-Gi Park and Jungwoo Lee
Owing to their complex and knowledge-intensive nature, information systems development (ISD) projects require effective collaboration between business and technology experts. In…
Abstract
Purpose
Owing to their complex and knowledge-intensive nature, information systems development (ISD) projects require effective collaboration between business and technology experts. In this regard, social capital theory may provide a valuable framework and insight into explaining knowledge sharing behavior in an ISD context. The purpose of this paper is to expand the theory of knowledge sharing as developed thus far in the ISD project context using the full-blown team social capital theory.
Design/methodology/approach
The expertise and communication effectiveness of business and technology professionals were posited as antecedents of team social capital and knowledge sharing. The research model for this study integrates expertise, communication, knowledge sharing, social capital, and team performance into a structural equation modeling. The research model was empirically tested with a data set from business and technology professional pairs collected from 115 ISD project teams.
Findings
The results indicated that team social capital and knowledge sharing have significant influences on team performance. Team social capital appears to have a stronger influence on knowledge sharing than business and technology expertise. Communication effectiveness and technology expertise are important antecedents to raise team social capital.
Originality/value
In this study, the social capital theory is applied toward enhancing the theory of knowledge sharing in ISD project teams. General social capital construct and measures are adopted and modified into the team social capital measures and validated empirically.
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Qianwen Zhou, Shou Chen, Xiaopeng Deng and Amin Mahmoudi
This paper aims to explore the key factors affecting knowledge transfer within cross-cultural teams in international construction projects from three levels: individual factors…
Abstract
Purpose
This paper aims to explore the key factors affecting knowledge transfer within cross-cultural teams in international construction projects from three levels: individual factors, team factors and knowledge characteristics. It also provides a comprehensive framework to examine how trust, cultural distance, team identification, knowledge tacitness and complexity and members' transfer willingness impact knowledge transfer effectiveness within cross-cultural teams.
Design/methodology/approach
A conceptual model and 16 hypotheses were put forward through the literature review and pilot investigation. This study used structural equation modeling to examine how factors affect the effectiveness of knowledge transfer within cross-cultural teams based on the questionnaire data of samples from Chinese international construction projects.
Findings
The findings show that affect-based trust and team identification positively affect the willingness to contribute knowledge. Conversely, knowledge tacitness, knowledge complexity and cultural distance negatively influence contribute willingness. Moreover, affect-based trust, cognition-based trust and team identity positively affect receive willingness, while cultural distance negatively impacts receive willingness. Additionally, affect-based and cognition-based trust, knowledge tacitness and complexity affect transfer effectiveness through the full mediation of transfer willingness, while cultural distance and team identity affect transfer effectiveness through the partial mediation of transfer willingness.
Research limitations/implications
On the one hand, this research provides a holistic framework for factors affecting knowledge transfer within cross-cultural teams from three levels: individual factors, team factors and knowledge characteristics. On the other hand, the paper gives other researchers in international project management the enlightenment of focusing on members' cultural structure and the cross-cultural training of the team.
Practical implications
This study offers the direction for cross-cultural team managers to formulate helpful approaches for knowledge transfer and assist corporate leaders in taking integral control measures to enhance knowledge transfer effectiveness within the team.
Originality/value
This study provides other researchers with a comprehensive understanding of the key factors affecting knowledge transfer within cross-cultural teams in international construction projects and insight for further research on project management and knowledge management.
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