Team leader strategies for enabling collaboration technology adaptation: team technology knowledge to improve globally distributed systems development work

Abstract

Active management of team adaptation of collaboration technologies offers an important lever for influencing success rates in distributed project work, particularly in settings characterized by high task interdependence, such as information systems development (ISD). Substantial uncertainty exists as to how a leader might influence such technology adaptation during project work. Prior research indicates that a major leader resource to accomplish technology adaptation in these settings would be team technology knowledge (TTK). This empirical field study develops a five-factor model of strategies regarding awareness of TTK that team leaders take in intervening to affect technology adaptation in distributed ISD projects. The analysis indicates insights into when and why these strategies are effective and how they relate to each other as well as the leader's awareness of TTK. The study provides a way for ISD team leaders to approach improving team collaboration from a socio-technical perspective as well as insights into potential levers for improving team technology adaptation and the efficacy of ISD projects.

Keywords:

• distributed teams
• collaboration technology
• technology adaptation
• leader intervention
• adaptive structuration theory

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Dominic M Thomas

About the authors

Dominic Thomas is Visiting Assistant Professor of Information Systems at Emory University's Goizueta Business School. His research interests focus on improving the design of computer-mediated work and the systems that support it, and his scholarship is informed by professional experience consulting in the areas of international development, communications systems, and education systems.

Robert P Bostrom

Bob Bostrom is the L. Edmund Rast Professor of Business at the University of Georgia. Besides numerous publications in leading academic and practitioner journals, he has extensive consulting and training experience in the areas of MIS management and design, organizational development, leadership, facilitation, business process management, and digital collaboration.