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Abstract
An extensive body of literature indicates the importance of teamwork to the success of innovative projects. This growing awareness, that "good teamwork" increases the success of innovative projects, raises new questions: What is teamwork, and how can it be measured? Why and how is teamwork related to the success of innovative projects? How strong is the relationship between teamwork and various measures of project success such as performance or team member satisfaction? This article develops a comprehensive concept of the collaboration in teams, called Teamwork Quality (TWQ). The six facets of the TWQ construct, i.e., communication, coordination, balance of member contributions, mutual support, effort, and cohesion, are specified. Hypotheses regarding the relationship between TWQ and project success are tested using data from 575 team members, team leaders, and managers of 145 German software teams. The results of the structural equation models estimated show that TWQ (as rated by team members) is significantly associated with team performance as rated by team members, team leaders, and team-external managers. However, the magnitude of the relationship between TWQ and team performance varies by the perspective of the performance rater, i.e., manager vs. team leader vs. team members. Furthermore, TWQ shows a strong association with team members' personal success (i.e., work satisfaction and learning).
(Teamwork; Innovation; Software Development)
The importance of teams to the success of innovation processes is well documented in the theoretical literature. Popular approaches to new product development (Johne and Snelson 1990, Clark and Fujimoto 1991, Cooper 1993) such as project management (Pinto et al. 1993, Fleming and Koppelman 1996, Gemuenden and Lechler 1997), speed and cycle time management (Gemuenden 1990, Eisenhardt and Tabrizi 1995), as well as total quality management and continuous improvement (Griffin and Hauser 1992, Lawler et al. 1995, Mohrman et al. 1995) consider teamwork as a crucial success factor.
Empirical evidence regarding the influence of teamwork on the success of teams with innovative tasks, however, is lacking in two ways. First, past research has often employed rather crude measures of teamwork, without adequately addressing the multifaceted nature of the functioning of teams (Denison et al. 1996). While many studies demonstrate the link between the mere existence of a teambased organization and innovative performance (Gupta et al. 1987, Hise et al. 1990,...