research-article

Investigating Task Coordination in Globally Dispersed Teams: A Structural Contingency Perspective

Authors:

Juliana Sutanto,

Atreyi Kankanhalli,

Bernard Cheng Yian TanAuthors Info & Claims

ACM Transactions on Management Information Systems (TMIS), Volume 6, Issue 2

Article No.: 5, Pages 1 - 31

https://doi.org/10.1145/2688489

Published: 19 May 2015 Publication History

Abstract

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.

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Index Terms

Investigating Task Coordination in Globally Dispersed Teams: A Structural Contingency Perspective
1. Applied computing
  1. Law, social and behavioral sciences
2. Information systems
  1. World Wide Web
    1. Web applications
      1. Internet communications tools

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cover image ACM Transactions on Management Information Systems

ACM Transactions on Management Information Systems Volume 6, Issue 2

July 2015

109 pages

ISSN:2158-656X

EISSN:2158-6578

DOI:10.1145/2780401

Editor:
Alexander Tuzhilin
New York University, USA

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Publication History

Published: 19 May 2015

Accepted: 01 November 2014

Revised: 01 September 2014

Received: 01 March 2014

Published in TMIS Volume 6, Issue 2

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