Decision Making within Distributed Project Teams: An Exploration of Formalization and Autonomy as Determinants of Success

Abstract

Competitive advantages and access to competencies are among the most frequent motivations for developing various forms of collaborative relationships. While some firms claim to collaborate at a strategic level, as in joint ventures, others pursue collaboration at a micro level, as in projects. Collaborations at the project level involve a network of dispersed team members actively involved in common activities. This creates new challenges for effective decision making in distributed project teams, as processes are often ill adapted for facilitating collaborative work. Many researchers have studied aspects of these organizational problems. However, questions regarding team autonomy and decision-making processes remain largely underinvestigated. After reviewing the literature on key concepts related to organizational decision making, we conducted an empirical study using a quantitative approach that involved an online survey sent to project management professionals. The analysis of the data clearly indicates that success in managing distributed project teams is linked to team autonomy in conducting project activities and to formal decision-making processes. These findings also highlight the fact that a formal decision-making process is even more important for distributed teams that are highly dispersed.

Moderating Effects of Project Management Experience, Project Team Size, Project Duration and Project Value Size on the Relationship between Project Manager’s Leadership Roles and Project Team Effectiveness in Malaysia

“…sharing and team's ability to create and sustain a good working environment (Hoevemeyer, 1993;Bourgault et al, 2008). Despite Cohen and Bailey (1997) had described the three dimensions of team effectiveness and their examples of measurement, there is no questionnaire derived from that study to measure those dimensions.…”

“…From literature reviewed, team effectiveness is defined differently by different scholars. According to Hoevemeyer (1993), Bourgault et al (2008) (Campion et al, 1996); performance outcomes e.g. productivity, quality of work, attitudinal outcomes and behavioral outcomes (Cohen and Bailey, 1997); user interaction effectiveness, efficiency of team operations, quality of work, adherence to budget and schedule, and amount of work the team had produced (Jiang et al, 1997); attitude and team performance (Kuo, 2004); individual wellbeing, team social processes and team productivity (Wageman et al, 2005); team satisfaction and performance (Chen et al, 2008); team member satisfaction, team performance and viability of the team to continue (Kozlowski and Ilgen, 2006); leadership effectiveness, team organization, team learning, team behaviors and team results (Andrews, 2012).…”

Increasing the Productivity of a Construction Project Using Collaborative Pull Planning

“…There are some instances of collaboration among the stakeholders including strategic joint ventures and project level collaboration, however, according to Bourgault et al (2008) project level collaboration is being hampered by disjointed processes of the project teams that are nonaligned. An apparent prerequisite to productivity improvement is a systems perspective or holistic approach to the project.…”

Effects of Reporting Levels on Team Workers in New Business Sectors

“…Th e term team process is used to refer to the psychosocial outcomes of a team work environment, such as the degree of experienced friendliness, support, and ability to cope (Bourgault, Drouin, & Hamel, 2008;Staples & Webster, 2007;Wageman, Hackman, & Lehman, 2005). Literature provides evidence for the importance of many facets of team processes in a team working environment (Bourgault et al, 2008;Staples & Webster, 2007;Wageman et al, 2005). For instance, Bourgault et al (2008) describe the importance of the formalization of decision processes, team autonomy, and creating and sustaining a good team working environment.…”