Understanding the Antecedents of Team Performance: The Importance of a Expertise-Centered Coordination
Mei-Hsiang Wang, Shih-Che Lin, Tarng-Yao Yang · Asia Pacific Management Review · 2013
Information Systems Development (ISD) is a labor- and knowledge-intensive task, and coordination in ISD has long been acknowledged as an important ingredient for the successful performance of software projects. In order to understand the antecedents of team performance, this research investigates the relationship between coordination mechanisms and expertise coordination in ISD teams and team performance. Further, this study explores how ISD team members' expertise coordination of IS development, along with the level of problem solving self-efficiency and skills, is related to the ultimate performance of the project. Survey data collected from 41 ISD teams were examined using structural equation modeling in order to verify the proposed theoretical model. The results found that coordination mechanisms had a significant impact on expertise coordination, and developer expertise coordination had a significant impact on ISD team performance. Problem solving is shown to moderate the process by which expertise coordination influences project performance. Coordination mechanisms are shown to indirectly influence project performance through a key mediating link: expertise coordination. We conclude that the more coordination and problem solving interaction there is, the more successful the project's performance will be. The research results further illuminate the factors that explain and predict the performance of ISD teams. The implications of the findings are discussed and suggestions for future research are presented.