Computers in Human Behavior 27 (2011) 811822

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Computers in Human Behavior

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What affects information systems development team performance? An exploratory study from the perspective of combined socio-technical theory and coordination theory
Yaobin Lu a,1, Chunjie Xiang a,, Bin Wang b,2, Xiaopeng Wang c
a b c

School of Management, Huazhong University of Science and Technology, Wuhan 430074, China College of Business Administration, University of Texas-Pan American, Edinburg, TX 78539, USA IBM Systems and Technology Group, Essex Junction, VT 05402, USA

a r t i c l e

i n f o

a b s t r a c t
Quality is an important factor in information systems development (ISD), and ISD team performance closely relates to quality. To better understand ISD teams, we empirically tested a model on ISD team performance by combining socio-technical theory and coordination theory. Using existing empirical studies and data collected from three well-known ISD companies in China, our research results identied inuential characteristics of ISD team performance, and revealed similarities and differences between Chinas ISD team performance and those in other countries. By the results, we nd that knowledge sharing and major do not affect team performance. The compensation satisfaction to job performance is not signicant in China, either. Our research provides suggestions for building and supporting ISD teams that could lead to performance improvements. 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Article history: Available online 22 December 2010 Keywords: Information systems development Team performance Socio-technical theory Coordination theory

1. Introduction An information system (IS) is an integration of people, data, and information technology (IT). These key elements interact with each other to collect, handle, save, and provide information for enterprise operation and decision making (Aubert, Barki, Patry, & Roy, 2008). Companies use IS to manage their daily operations and conduct business transactions to increase productivity, improve quality, enhance their competitive advantage, increase service quality, and reduce costs (DeJarnett, 1993; Mathieson & Wharton, 1993; Fok, Fok, & Hartman, 2001). Despite research efforts and best practice recommendations by both academic researchers and industrial practitioners, many ISD projects fail. Some cannot be completed on time or on budget; others are halted or canceled due to poor performance (Gaudin, 2003). The Standish Group conducted a survey of 8400 IS projects from 1994 to 2004 and revealed that the success rate was consistently below 30%. In 2004, only 16.2% of the projects were successful, and 31.1% actually failed. Even though 52.7% eventually could be functional, they might go over budget, overtime or only accomplish
Corresponding author. Tel.: +86 27 87558100.
E-mail addresses: luyb@mail.hust.edu.cn (Y. Lu), wendy0924@smail.hust.edu.cn (C. Xiang), binwang@utpa.edu (B. Wang), xiaopeng@us.ibm.com (X. Wang). 1 Tel.: +86 27 87558100. 2 Tel.: +1 956 3813336. 0747-5632/$ - see front matter 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.chb.2010.11.006

part of their designed functions. Likewise, the situation of ISD in China is not optimistic either with numerous failed projects. ISD failures present a serious challenge for IS researchers. It is important to carefully analyze the ISD process and examine the issues inuencing ISD project success and failure. Many aspects, such as basic information about the project, the development team, and end-user participation, should be examined in ISD studies (Bubshait & Selen, 1992; Guinan, Cooprider, & Faraj, 1998; Kirsch, Sambamurthy, Ko, & Purvis, 2002). Of these aspects, the development team is the most important throughout the ISD process because project performance is the result of the interactions and dynamics among team members (Gladstein, 1984; McGrath, 1984), and human factors directly relate to the success or failure of a project (Guinan et al., 1998). Teams are the most common working structure used in most enterprises. Teams are usually used when tasks are complicated and difcult for individuals to accomplish on their own (Espinosa, Slaughter, Kraut, & Herbsleb, 2007). But teamwork requires coordination, leadership, and collaboration (Klimoski & Mohammed, 1994). Examples of human factor challenges related to managing teams include choosing appropriate team members, forming an efcient team by motivating members and engaging them in team building exercises, improving relationships, and managing team dynamics (Hoegl & Gemuenden, 2001; Thompson, 2003; Balijepally, Mahapatra, & Nerur, 2006). A couple of the more obvious advantages of teamwork include using the abilities of people sufciently

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and having a exible structure to avoid risks (Cooke, Kiekel, & Helm, 2001). In addition, highly-technical tasks require utilizing teamwork over traditional individual working approaches because of their coordination complexity (Wood, 1986) and structural complexity (Darcy, Kemerer, Slaughter, & Tomayko, 2005). Therefore, understanding the performance of teams is critical to improving the success of ISD projects. This paper uses a quantitative approach based on socio-technical theory and coordination theory. We adopt the partial least squares (PLS) method to analyze the data from ISD enterprises. Based on a review of the extant literature and our own interviews with IT professionals, we developed and empirically tested a model that illustrates unique aspects of ISD in China. The rest of our paper is organized as follows. In Section 2, we review the prior literature. Next, we present our research model and hypotheses in Section 3, followed by a discussion of the research methodology in Section 4. We report the results in Section 5. Finally, we discuss and conclude the implications of our ndings in Sections 6 and 7. 2. Literature review Due to the complex nature of IS projects and the benets associated with using a team, the ISD team is critical to information systems development (Faraj & Sproull, 2000; Glassop, 2002). To identify the important factors that affect ISD team performance, we rst reviewed the extant literature on ISD team performance, socio-technical theory, and coordination theory. 2.1. ISD team performance Because of the important inuence of ISD team performance on system quality, existing research focuses on various aspects ranging from technology to the behavior of team members and different groups. To perform the development job effectively and efciently, ISD teams should use appropriate technologies, such as tools, machinery and computers (Goodman, 1986). IS development methods include the methodologies, techniques, and tools team members use to complete an ISD project (Fichman & Kemerer, 1993). For example, structured methods, Computer Aided Software Engineering (CASE), data ow diagramming, and object-oriented methods are commonly used in ISD. Another research area is testing specic system parameters (for example, function points, lines of code generated, defect rates, and elapsed time). The use of established project development methods and recommended best practices has lead to signicant improvements in team performance when such methods are specically suited to the requirements of the application (Vessey & Glass, 1998). However, some empirical studies also indicate that using these technologies is disappointing because of the software crisis, which has been dened as software projects commonly coming in over budget, behind schedule, and unreliable (Zmud, 1983). The idea of software crisis was put forward almost 20 years ago, but the situation has not been improved until now. The main problem coming out of software crisis is the overreliance on technology and a lack of consideration for the human factor (Glass, 2006). Therefore, the research that focuses on the technological perspective does not sufciently explain the performance of development teams (Sawyer, 2001). When ISD tasks become more complex, development involves not only technology problems, but human factor problems as well (Balijepally et al., 2006). As a result, we should be more concerned with team members behavioral issues. The technological perspective focuses on the notion that tools and techniques could lead to project success, whereas the behavioral perspective emphasizes

the importance of people characteristics and their coordination (Guinan et al., 1998). Many studies have focused on ISD team members characteristics. Guinan et al. (1998) show that team skills, managerial involvement, and minimized variance in team experience are more important than software development tools and methods in enabling effective team processes. By revealing the importance of behavioral factors on ISD teams, this research directed researchers attention from technical to behavioral aspects. Sawyer (2001) distinguished team members characteristics from team characteristics in software development, pointing out that a teams characteristics are not the simple integration of team members characteristics. The study also included elements such as sharing resources and interdependence. Additionally, these two individual-level factors and team-level factors have different inuences on software development team performance. Team members behaviors include many elements. But the basic component is communication. The delivery and understanding of a message is the pivotal element for team members as they exchange information, coordinate efforts, provide feedback, and comprehend each other in order to complete the tasks at hand (Brodbeck, 2001; He, Butler, & King, 2007). High-performing ISD teams typically have stronger communication skills than low-performing teams. Because communication is so important to team performance, many researchers include the characteristic in their investigations of team performance antecedents (Katz & Tushman, 1979; Pinto & Pinto, 1990; McKinney, Barker, Smith, & Davis, 2004). He et al. (2007) emphasized that communication is a main mechanism for team members to work out complicated and ambiguous development tasks, and noted that the skill is essential for building team cognition and improving team performance. Han, Lee, and Seo (2008) treated communication as an element to represent the degree of interaction, which is the basis of trust and commitment in building ISD teams. Knowledge sharing among team members is another important behavioral factor to ISD success. Because ISD development tasks are complex and require a variety of people with different backgrounds to work together, the sharing of task and process knowledge could help them develop a common understanding of relevant issues and contribute to devising practical development action plans with their colleagues (Kraut & Streeter, 1995). Faraj and Sproull (2000) discussed knowledge sharing in software development teams and asserted that knowledge sharing has a strong impact on teams. When a team faces and resolves problems, it accumulates and conserves expertise that can be used in the future. Lee (2001) argued that people with stronger knowledge sharing skills could make better decisions that ultimately affect IS outsourcing success, and that this relationship would be improved by the higher organizational capability of such an enterprise. The importance of knowledge sharing is more obvious when the communication condition is restricted and made more difcult by serious competition and pressure (Mathieu, Goodwin, Heffner, Salas, & Cannon-Bowers, 2000). And ISD teams typically nd themselves in such circumstances (Kraut & Streeter, 1995). ISD teams also heavily rely on management resources and support to complete their work; therefore, a number of scholars have investigated the importance of management support on ISD team performance. They have found that people serving in management roles should possess specic characteristics including ambition, a will to lead, integrity and honesty, condence, wisdom, and specic knowledge of the work being done (Kirkpatrick & Locke, 1991). Huxham and Vangen (2000) dened leadership as making things happen, and Tichy (1997) argued that leadership is about having smart ideas and getting them implemented well. Fiedler (1967) presented his contingency model to point out that effective group performance depends on the suitable match of leadership

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style and a leaders ability to control circumstances. He also uses three factors to measure leadership: leader/member relations, task structure, and position power. Wang, Xin, & Tsui (2006) expanded on Fiedlers leadership theories and divided leader behaviors into two categories: relation-directed leader behavior and task-directed leader behavior. These categories have direct and indirect impacts on enterprise performance, respectively. Faraj and Sambamurthy (2006) insisted on the importance of management support and proposed a leadership style that focuses on empowerment and directive leadership practices. They proved that this leadership style is more effective than traditional mechanisms. Han et al. (2008) also indicated that management support is benecial to the ISD interaction process, and that management and ISD teams should trust each other. From the reviews conducted, our research identied common limitations in the literature. First, ISD is a process that involves a combination of technical and human aspects, but some studies addressed only one aspect. Guinan and his colleagues considered both parts, but they only investigated them during the requirements denition phase rather than over the course of the entire ISD life cycle. Moreover, they did not consider the relationships between these two aspects. Second, some research studied just examined one group of ISD work. An example was Faraj and Sambamurthys (2006) research on leadership and investigations on development teams (He et al., 2007). Our study attempts to establish a model that includes both aspectstechnical and humanthroughout the entire life cycle, while considering their inherent relationships. In addition, we consider leadership and development teams to understand the dynamics of how each group affects ISD team performance. 2.2. Socio-technical theory First proposed by Cherns in 1976, the socio-technical theory aims at the need of a t between technical and social factors (Cherns, 1976). Bostrom and Heinen (1977) studied three aspects of socio-technical theory: people, technology, and task. Most applications of socio-technical theory focused on the integration of a specic technology or a tool, such as a working system (Carayon & Karsh, 2000) and new mobile applications (Allen, 2003). Sociotechnical theory has been used to explain the emergence of a new technology that attempts to create and maintain a new method of social interaction and contributes to improving the performance and convenience of working, living, and coordinating with other people (Allen, 2003). Socio-technical theory is concerned with the integration of social factors and tools, but from the discussions of ISD we found that ISD tasks are often more of a social event than a technical case. The concentration of social-technical theory on technical aspects is not sufcient for our research. Therefore, we expanded this theory to help it better t our research objectives. 2.3. Coordination theory Coordination theory demonstrates how different people work together on single task (Yuan, Zhang, Chen, Vogel, & Chu, 2009). Because of the impact of coordination on project performance, many studies were conducted from different perspectives. In the context of ISD, we are more concerned with improving team performance by improving coordination. Faraj and Sproull (2000) discussed the coordinating expertise in software development teams, and revealed that expertise coordination (knowing where expertise is located, knowing where expertise is needed, and bringing needed expertise to bear) has a strong inuence on team performance, which is more signicant than traditional factors such as team input characteristics and administrative coordination. Furthermore, coordination could be divided into

two categories: horizontal and vertical. Horizontal coordination could increase leadership empowerment, knowledge transfer, and clarify the teams mission, but vertical coordination only has inuences on knowledge transfer and mission clarication (Parolia, Goodman, Li, & Jiang, 2007). Coordination theory illustrates the ISD team performance from behavioral view, which is different from social-technical theory. Therefore, our study attempted to combine the two theories, and our approach is described in detail in the next section. 3. Research model and hypotheses 3.1. Theoretical basis of model We developed our research model following two steps presented in the research methods of Sabherwal, Jeyaraj and Chowa (2006). First, we explained a theoretical basis of our research model based on socio-technical theory and coordination theory. This theoretical basis identies our research propositions, which intend to explain our research ideas by combining these theories. Second, we expanded our theoretical basis and obtained our comprehensive research model and factors based on our research objectives and the extant literature on ISD team performance. Socio-technical theory involves three main factors: people, technology, and task. One aim of this paper is to study the relationship between people and team performance, thus we could apply the statement about people and task in socio-technical theory to develop our research hypotheses. The last factor, technology, emphasizes the tools and highly technical methods (such as advanced computers, stable development platforms, standardized development languages, and processes) used in ISD occupations. Because of the complexity of information systems, more and more people are involved in system development work, so we want to research the ISD team performance from the view of the behavioral aspects of ISD teams rather than from the traditional technical aspects. While the technological factor on socio-technical theory is not our direct research target, people do use highly technical tools in ISD to facilitate their tasks. For example, team members interact with their colleagues more effectively and accurately when using stable development platforms; they can exchange their experiences by using advanced computers and software; and they can better understand their specic tasks by using standardized regulations. Understanding how human behavior affects ISD is the focal point of our research objectives, and these are often based to some degree on the technologies they employ. So while we do not directly consider the technologies human use when performing ISD tasks, we examine the outcomes and inuences of technologies. Coordination theory often illustrates how these inuences affect the way different people adjust their behaviors when working on a common goal. And coordination is the target of using technology, concentrating on the behavioral aspects of technology adoption. However, in this study, we focus on the coordination as part of the result of technology and its interaction with social factors. Hence, we applied coordination theory to address the relationship between coordination and the other two constructs. Therefore, we attempt to combine these two theories and use coordination factors to illustrate the inuence of technological factors in sociotechnical theory. 3.2. Socio-technical constructs Socio-technical theory involves three factors: people, technology, and task. Because we use the coordination construct to examine the inuence of technology on task from the behavioral aspect, two socio-technical theory factors remaintask and people.

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The task factor is the result factor of the socio-technical theory. In our research, task results point to the ISD team performance (TP). Two approaches can be taken when measuring the performance of ISD teams. One is using many metrics to quantify the production aspects of ISD performance. For example, function points, lines of code, and complexity metrics (Sawyer, 2001). The other approach is less tangible and less crucial, but more perceptual than the former. In this approach, ISD performances are measured by peoples perception of ability and efciency (Delone & Mclean, 1992; Henderson & Lee, 1992). The best approach is to integrate the quantitative and perceptual measures. Measurements such as function points and lines of code are collected at the product level, but our research target is at the team level. Thus, we use perceptual team performance to evaluate ISD team performance and represent the task factor is socio-technical theory (Sawyer, 2001). The people-related factor involves the people in the study group. We included team members characteristics (TC) and management support (MS) in this construct. Management support refers to senior executives favorable attitude toward, and explicit support for, the teams (Doll, 1985). With support from senior executives, teams can more easily obtain the resources necessary to perform their jobs (Yap, 1989). Management can also identify performance gaps and help set targets to narrow such gaps (Parolia et al., 2007). Senior management can help cultivate a learning culture within the organization, which facilitates knowledge sharing and enhances performance (McGill, Slocum, & Lei, 1992). Employees can perform their job functions more successfully and efciently under effective senior management (Jarvenpaa & Ives, 1991; Purvis, Sambamurthy, & Zmud, 2001). Based on this, we hypothesize: Hypothesis 1 (H1). Management support is positively related to ISD team performance. Team members characteristics refer to personalities and attributes of the team members (He et al., 2007). An individuals capabilities are greatly inuenced by his or her personality (Hogan, 1991). The personality traits of a person are usually enduring and are typically reected at work (Kichuk & Wiesner, 1997). Therefore, team members personalities are important to team performance (Ridgeway, 1983; Kichuk & Wiesner, 1997). The t between a workers personality and the job assignment, together with his or her ability to be a team player, has a signicant inuence on the outcome of the task (Cockburn, 2001). When investigating conict control in software development team performance, Sawyer (2001) indicated that positive team member characteristics could decrease the conict and improve team performance. Hence, when examining ISD team performance, we need to focus more on the team members rather than just on the rules at the workplace because the team members establish and follow these rules (Balijepally et al., 2006). Based on the above discussion, we hypothesize: Hypothesis 2 (H2). A team members characteristics are positively related to ISD team performance.

Besides people-related characteristics, another important aspect of a team is the behavior of the team membersbased on using technologies. Here, we refer to such factors as coordination similarly to the manner applied by Parolia and colleagues (Parolia et al., 2007). Coordination here means the process of managing dependencies between activities (Yuan et al., 2009). Coordination theory, proposed by Malone and Crowston (1994) and its framework summarized by Kotlarsky, Van Fenema, & Willcocks (2008), contains four aspects: organization design mechanisms, workbased mechanisms, technology-based mechanisms, and social mechanisms. Organization design mechanisms refer to hierarchies, rules, and regulations in the enterprise. Work-based mechanisms encompass specications, standards, and categorization systems such as prototypes and standards documents. These two classications represent more of the norms and criteria, so we do not consider them in this research. Technology-based mechanisms involve the coordination behaviors supported by technologies, such as sharing data and clearing work schedules through email and common operations systems. Social mechanisms include the personal activities such as communication and social cognition. These two aspects are consistent with our research target because we investigated the behaviors based on technology instead of pure the technology itself. Therefore, we chose communication quality to reect social mechanisms, and knowledge sharing and clarity of mission to reect technology-based mechanisms in coordination theory. Communication is critical to ISD success because team members rely on communication to coordinate their efforts and share knowledge. Through communication, people convey their thoughts, exchange ideas, express their concerns, and collectively nd solutions to their problems (Han et al., 2008). We often use accuracy, adequacy, and currency to measure the quality of communication (Henderson, 1990). In the workplace, communication is the primary tool that allows team members to address the ambiguity and uncertainty embedded in complicated and interrelated tasks (Kraut & Streeter, 1995; Brodbeck, 2001). ISD involves work that needs high-quality communication. Effective and frequent communication facilitates information exchange and is indicative of information processing activities among team members (He et al., 2007; Parolia et al., 2007; Han et al., 2008). At the same time, communication can lead to better knowledge sharing because communication is the most important way to promote knowledge ow within the team (Faraj & Sproull, 2000; Parolia et al., 2007). Communication is also critical to the understanding of the teams missions (OConnor, 1993). In an ISD team, communication is important because developers should have a clear understanding of their own tasks as well as the teams goals (Parolia et al., 2007). The diversity in personality directly determines communication methods and quality (Wang, 2007). Team members who are experienced could positively communicate with their colleagues to solve problems and increase their efciency (Chung & Guinan, 1994). Communication quality is decided by a persons feature and culture (Balijepally et al., 2006). Based on the above discussion, we hypothesize: Hypothesis 3 (H3). A team members characteristics are positively related to the communication quality among the ISD team members. Hypothesis 4 (H4). Communication quality is positively related to ISD team performance. Hypothesis 5 (H5). Communication quality is positively related to knowledge sharing. Hypothesis 6 (H6). Communication quality is positively related to clarity of mission.

3.3. Coordination construct An important concept in ISD research is coordination, which refers to the management of the dependencies among all related factors (Malone & Crowston, 1994). Only when project-related factors are well managed can we say that it is a coordinated project that will more likely result in a satisfying IS product. And it is the nal aim of using modern technologies to improve the team performance. The coordination construct in our research model considers three factors: communication quality (CQ), knowledge sharing (KS), and clarity of mission (CM).

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Knowledge sharing occurs when one person exchanges what he or she knows with someone else (Faraj & Sproull, 2000). Effective team members should be able to integrate technical and managerial knowledge, and learn new knowledge from others (Balijepally et al., 2006). Research on the importance of knowledge sharing in work groups shows that the more effective knowledge sharing is, the more productive a company is (Parolia et al., 2007). The ISD process is also a process of knowledge sharing and accumulation, so we hypothesize: Hypothesis 7 (H7). Knowledge sharing is positively related to ISD team performance. Clarity of mission describes the clear understanding of the goals of the ISD project and ones job assignment in the project. It is closely related to team members individual capabilities (Parolia et al., 2007). In an ISD project, tasks should be assigned to people who are capable of nishing them well. It is important not to repeat another persons tasks, thereby improving team performance and avoiding repetitive efforts (Hollingshead, 1998; Moreland & Myaskovsky, 2000). As a result, we hypothesize: Hypothesis 8 (H8). Clarity of mission is positively related to ISD team performance. 3.4. Compensation satisfaction Compensation satisfaction is a new factor that we added to our research model. In the pre-test we conducted for this research, we found that many respondents felt that compensation strongly affected performance. Many developers emphasized the importance of reasonable and competitive compensation to their job performance. This is consistent with research conducted in human resources. Compensation satisfaction refers to ones satisfaction toward salary, benets, recognition, and other rewards. However, few studies have examined the inuence of this factor in ISD from the view of behavioral aspects at the team level. Therefore, we incorporated this aspect into our model. Compensation satisfaction is one dimension of compensation theory, which was developed by Wallace and Fay (1988). Other factors, such as reinforcement, expectancy, and equity (Ferris, Rosen, & Barnum, 1995) are not as obvious as compensation satisfaction in our context. Meanwhile, compensation satisfaction is also one indicator of job satisfaction, which is signicantly related to good performance. Sturman (2006) pointed out that compensation can be used strategically, and noted that how employees are paid is often just as important as how much they are paid. For example, Ou and Wang (2007) examined baseball players salaries and performance. They found that when pitchers were satised with their pay, they would do their best in a competition and would often win the game. Based on results from these studies, we hypothesize: Hypothesis 9 (H9). Higher compensation satisfaction is positively related to ISD team performance. 3.5. Control variables In addition to people-related, coordination-related, and compensation several factors may affect ISD team performance. Even though we are not interested in their effects on ISD team performance, it is important to eliminate their potentially confounding effects. We included a team members educational level in terms of the highest degree obtained, major, and years of work experience as control variables (Balijepally et al., 2006). A team member who is more educated, whose major is more related to ISD, and

who has more work experiences can show better task performance (Pattit & Wilemon, 2005). 3.6. The comprehensive model The comprehensive theoretical model is presented in Fig. 1. It incorporates the hypotheses for relationships among the peoplerelated constructs, coordination constructs, task construct (team performance), compensation satisfaction, and control variables. In total, it includes seven factors, nine hypotheses, and three control variables. 4. Research methodology 4.1. Instrument development We developed a two-section questionnaire survey to test our research model. The rst section included demographic questions on the participants, and the second section included items measuring constructs in the research model. We used seven-point Likert scales with anchors ranging from one (strongly disagree) to seven (strongly agree) to measure the constructs. We developed the scales based on the extant literature whenever possible to ensure content validity. Specically, the items measuring management support were adapted from Parolia et al. (2007) and Pinto and Slevin (1987). When we administered our pre-test, we found that many developers hoped that their managers could think about the business from a higher level, so we developed MS4. We relied on the methods used in some psychological papers (Barrick, Stewart, Neubert, & Mount, 1998; Zhang, Hempel, Han, & Ijosvold, 2007) to research the relationship between characteristics and job performance, and adapted these items to measure team member characteristics from Costa and McCrae (1992a, 1992b) and Guinan, Cooprider, & Sawyer (1997). The items measuring communication quality were adapted from the instruments of Han et al. (2008) and we developed one item ourselves to address the overall condition of communication quality. Knowledge sharing was measured with items adapted from Parolia et al. (2007). Items measuring clarity of mission were adapted from Parolia et al. (2007). Items for compensation satisfaction were revised based on Lockes measurement scales of job satisfaction (Locke, 1976). There are nine dimensions in Lockes job satisfaction scale including the job itself, payment, promotion, approving, job condition, self, monitoring, colleagues, and customers. We selected payment, promotion, and approving, which we considered relevant to our research. Finally, team performance was measured by integrating and revising the items used by Guinan et al. (1998) and one item we developed ourselves based on the ISD context. One researcher rst translated all items from English to Chinese, then another researcher independently back translated the Chinese version to English. We compared the two English versions and made minor changes to the Chinese questionnaire to ensure the translation accuracy. We rst sent the questionnaire to ve academic experts on information systems and information systems development. Based on their feedback, we revised the questionnaire once again. Then, we conducted a pilot test using 30 undergraduate students majoring in information systems. These 30 students belonged to seven different working groups, and all of them had experience in team work and IS development. In addition, they all had experienced both success and failure in ISD projects. We asked them to answer the questionnaire independently and to provide their comments on the accuracy and practicality of the questionnaire. Based on their suggestions, we modied the ambiguous questions. The Appendix lists the items used in our research.

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Socio-technical Theory People-related Constructs

Management Support H1 H9 Team Characteristics H2

Compensation Satisfaction

H4

(Task Constructs)
H7 H3 H5 Communication H6 Clear Mission Knowledge Sharing H8

Coordination Theory and Constructs

Education

Major

Years of work experience

Fig. 1. Research model.

4.2. Sample Our sample included ISD team members in three large IT companies in China. Two of these companies are located in Wuhan, a metropolitan area in central China. The third one is in Jinan, a metropolitan area in northeast China. To make sure that our questionnaire included important factors affecting ISD team performance, we rst went to the third company to conduct a 10-day investigation. During this trip, we interviewed the senior executives and project managers. We discussed with them Chinas IT development status quo and their experiences in the IT eld. We also asked them to suggest factors that inuence ISD in China. This allowed us to make sure the research model we developed based on the literature was relevant to the Chinese context. All the people we interviewed identied compensation as an important factor that affects ISD team performance. As a result, we added this factor into our research model. After the interviews, we conducted a eld study by observing the daily work at this company, including participating in meetings, observing development procedures, and reviewing project documentation. In addition, we also conducted a questionnaire survey of all ISD team members including project engineers and project managers. Then more face-to-face interviews were carried out with randomly selected engineers and project managers. These interviews helped us to better understand Chinas ISD conditions and the typical lives of team members. In the other two companies, we also administered the pre-tests and interviews rst. The results showed that the questions that IS developers were concerned about were mainly the same with those in the company in Jinan, so we used the same questionnaire. For the main survey, we rst contacted these three rms, getting positive responses from all three. Then we met with the project managers of each rm and asked them to give us lists of employee names. Using the informant technique for data collection is an effective way of conducting organizational survey research (Phillips & Bagozi, 1981; Silk & Kalwani, 1982). The people we surveyed worked on more than 100 projects and belonged to about 25 different teams. We sent out 300 questionnaires and received 275 back. After deleting questionnaires with missing data or the same answer to all questions, we had 251 valid responses.

The demographic characteristics of our sample are shown in Table 1. A little more than 80% of the respondents were male, and just under 20% were female. The IT industry is characterized by more male employees, so it is not surprising our sample reected this. The majority of the respondents were young adults between 25 and 30 years old. The IT industry in China is young. Many IT professionals are recent graduates. A majority of our sample included graduates from IT programs such as computer science and information systems, but there were also graduates from IT-related majors such as information engineering, automation and control, and electrical engineering.

5. Data analysis and results 5.1. Analysis of reliability and validity All the data were collected at the individual level. Our aim was to investigate the team performance, which is a variable at teamlevel. So we needed to conduct aggregation analysis before using the data to represent team scores (James, 1982). We took the general approach using the intraclass correlation (ICC) and the value of g2. Aggregation is feasible if: (1) ICC, which compares within-group variation to between-group variation using the F test, is signicant (p < 0.05) (Katz & Allen, 1985); (2) the value of g2 exceeds 0.20 (Simon & Peterson, 2000). From Table 2 we can see that all the ICCs were signicant and all the g2 values were above the cutoff value 0.20. Therefore, we could say that the individual scores could be aggregated and used as the team scores. In order to proceed with the factor analysis, a KaiserMeyer Olkin (KMO) statistic higher than 0.5 was also required (Kaiser, 1974). After analyzing the corrected item-total correlations (CITC), we deleted two items (CS3 and TC4). The KMO coefcient of the remaining items was 0.846. Before testing the structural model, we tested the measurement model using conrmatory factors analysis (CFA) according to the two-step approach of structural equation modeling (SEM) analysis (Anderson & Gerbing, 1988). The reliabilities of the items were assessed by the value of Cronbachs alpha and composite reliabilities

Y. Lu et al. / Computers in Human Behavior 27 (2011) 811822 Table 1 Sample descriptive statistics. Variables Gender Age Categories Male Female 625 years old 2530 years old 3040 years old >40 years old Non-IT-related IT-related IT Associates degree Bachelors degree Masters or higher 63 years 35 years 510 years >10 years Count 201 50 58 141 48 4 20 88 143 33 181 37 95 61 70 25 % 80.1 19.9 23.2 56.3 19.2 1.3 7.9 35.1 57.0 13.2 72.2 14.6 37.7 24.5 27.8 9.9 MS TC CQ KS CM CS TP Table 4 Correlation matrix and square roots of AVEs. MS 0.77 0.47 0.34 0.41 0.36 0.38 0.49 TC 0.74 0.46 0.41 0.33 0.51 0.44 CQ KS CM CS TP

817

0.78 0.48 0.44 0.49 0.36

0.65 0.46 0.45 0.41

0.81 0.33 0.31

0.76 0.38

0.87

Major

Education

Years of work experience

Table 2 ICC and g2. Construct MS TC CQ KS CM CS TP ICC 0.427 0.564 0.481 0.259 0.539 0.398 0.448 F-value 2.41 3.76 2.83 1.54 3.37 2.23 2.56 P-value <0.01 <0.01 <0.01 <0.05 <0.01 <0.01 <0.01

g2
0.371 0.496 0.437 0.344 0.478 0.368 0.402

Table 3 Measurement model testing results. Factor MS Item MS1 MS2 MS3 MS4 TC1 TC2 TC3 TC5 TC6 CQ1 CQ2 CQ3 CQ4 CQ5 KS1 KS2 KS3 CM1 CM2 CM3 CS1 CS2 CS4 CS5 CS6 TP1 TP2 TP3 TP4 TP5 Standard loading 0.80 0.69 0.76 0.82 0.73 0.77 0.62 0.71 0.86 0.69 0.76 0.87 0.79 0.78 0.78 0.82 0.67 0.73 0.86 0.82 0.69 0.74 0.81 0.83 0.72 0.72 0.79 0.82 0.75 0.84 Total variance explained (%) 64.5 AVE 0.59 CR 0.85 Cronbachs alpha 0.726

(CRs) after being aggregated at the team level. As shown in Table 3, all of the Cronbachs alphas and CRs were over 0.7, which indicated that the scales had satisfactory reliability (Nunnally, 1978; Baggozi & Yi, 1988). The average variances extracted (AVE) for all constructs were all above 0.5, which meant that the scales had good convergent validity (Baggozi & Yi, 1988). We summarized the measurement model testing results in Table 3. We then tested the discriminant validity of the measurement model by comparing the square root of each factors AVE with its correlation coefcients with other factors (Fornell & Larcker, 1981). From Table 4, all the square root AVEs (diagonals in bold) exceeded 0.5, which satised the minimal requirement that at least half of the variance in indicators is accounted for by their respective construct (Gefen, Straub, & Boudreau, 2000). We could then see that all square roots of AVEs were larger than their corresponding correlation coefcients with other factors. To avoid common method bias, we randomized the order of the items in the questionnaire. Another check was conducted to reduce the potential for this occurrence. We used exploratory factor analysis of items and checked if any single construct displayed signicant variance across all items (Yang, Kang, & Mason, 2008). Table 5 shows that all seven constructs eigen values were above one, and no constructs explained variance was too high, which means that no construct was the main factor in the structure. And Table 5 also indicates that all items had higher loadings on their related factors (which are in bold) and low cross-loadings, thus showing good convergent and discriminant validities. 5.2. Hypothesis testing results We used PLS to examine the path signicance and the explanatory power of our theoretical model because of our small sample size at the team level (76). PLS is suitable for small sample sizes (Yang et al., 2008). The hypotheses were tested using the signicance of the path coefcients as determined by t-values. From Fig. 2, we can see that out of our nine hypotheses, seven (H1, H2, H3, H4, H5, H6 and H8) were supported. H7, H9 and the path from major to team performance are not signicant. All factors accounted for 47% of the variance in team performance. We considered this a satisfactory explanation of the variance value, though other factors excluded from the model also explained the variance in team performance. For example, human conict and control methods, and user participation could also impact ISD team performance. Because our research was based on socio-technical theory and coordination theory, such factors are not correlated to these two theories nearly as much as the factors in our model. Therefore, they were not included in our model. 6. Discussion

TC

58.1

0.55

0.86

0.718

CQ

60.1

0.61

0.89

0.747

KS

56.3

0.58

0.80

0.753

CM

63.9

0.65

0.85

0.756

CS

64.1

0.58

0.84

0.785

TP

69.7

0.76

0.92

0.831

6.1. Results Through a questionnaire survey of IT team members in three large IT businesses in China, we investigated factors that affected

818 Table 5 Exploratory factor analysis. Items

Y. Lu et al. / Computers in Human Behavior 27 (2011) 811822

Component 1 2 .065 .018 .049 .077 .143 .773 .853 .648 .658 .816 .000 .450 .076 .248 .089 .200 .336 .066 .318 .068 .231 .249 .192 .174 .286 .076 .317 .287 .047 .042 3.072 10.802 23.563 3 .085 .130 .200 .007 .005 .069 .044 .131 .179 .091 .078 .219 .129 .003 .042 .020 .162 .076 .044 .063 .131 .054 .088 .227 .052 .805 .721 .771 .873 .635 2.787 10.032 33.595 4 .094 .302 .112 .099 .122 .321 .085 .084 .236 .103 .030 .032 .195 .275 .101 .258 .846 .697 .765 .873 .341 .084 .145 .084 .225 .009 .073 .207 .123 .147 2.780 10.014 43.609 5 .269 .019 .184 .007 .387 .052 .009 .226 .260 .006 .124 .011 .804 .131 .026 .104 .009 .088 .146 .295 .747 .818 .807 .695 .689 .001 .120 .055 .016 .134 2.056 8.056 51.665 6 .062 .154 .049 .248 .060 .330 .133 .024 .363 .179 .001 .227 .079 .659 .816 .757 .005 .122 .116 .001 .048 .138 .153 .367 .082 .022 .064 .023 .066 .126 1.941 7.745 59.410 7 .355 .088 .022 .126 .201 .057 .029 .017 .069 .134 .668 .832 .812 .200 .021 .168 .319 .174 .296 .137 .177 .047 .136 .290 .167 .033 .164 .264 .346 .293 1.722 7.155 66.565

TC1 TC2 TC3 TC5 TC6 CQ1 CQ2 CQ3 CQ4 CQ5 KS1 KS2 KS3 CM1 CM2 CM3 MS1 MS2 MS3 MS4 TP1 TP2 TP3 TP4 TP5 CS1 CS2 CS4 CS5 CS6 Eigen value Explained variance (%) Accumulated explained variance (%)

.674 .698 .822 .653 .865 .137 .210 .109 .047 .076 .004 .377 .078 .171 .043 .252 .224 .145 .123 .218 .277 .070 .329 .239 .279 .038 .115 .082 .173 .103 3.796 12.761 12.761

Management Support

Compensation Satisfication

Team Characteristics

0.32* 0.41** 0.24*

0.85**

Team Performance
R 2 =0.47

Knowledge Sharing Communication

0.34 *
Clear Mission

0.22*

0.28**

0.14*

0.19*

Education Supported Non-supported

Major

Years of work experience

Fig. 2. Hypothesis testing results. Notes: p < 0.05;

p < 0.01.

ISD team performance. Specically, we have the following major ndings. Out of the nine hypotheses we formulated based on the extant literature, seven were supported. This shows that ISD team performance in China is also affected by factors found important in countries such as the US, UK, Japan, and Korea. The signicant path

between management support and team performance in our results is consistent with the prior literature (Ravichandran & Lertwongsatien, 2005). Similar to other countries, ISD team performance in China is also affected by team member personality, capability, and attitude (Cockburn, 2001; He et al., 2007). As expected, communication quality also affects team performance.

Y. Lu et al. / Computers in Human Behavior 27 (2011) 811822

819

Many projects fail because of the lack of communication and the existence of misunderstanding between project stakeholders and team members. Another factor that has a signicant impact on team performance is clarity of mission. So setting a clear goal and educating team members about their individual responsibilities is critical to ISD success. We also identied important relationships among the constructs that affect team performance. Team characteristics have a positive impact on communication quality. Team members who are experienced and friendly may have better communication quality because they enjoy talking to others and exchanging ideas. Communication quality positively inuences knowledge sharing and clarity of mission. This result is expected because knowledge sharing and a clear understanding of the team mission require interaction and communication among team members. We still had unexpected results. The relationship between knowledge sharing and team performance was not signicant (H7). There could be two reasons for this result. First, the subjects for this study came from three state-owned ISD enterprises. The working style of such traditional companies is functional and process-oriented, so employees in these enterprises may not have been accustomed to sharing knowledge and may not have been concerned about the importance to knowledge sharing on team work. The second reason behind this may be the cultural differences between China and other western countries. The IT industry in China is still young, and many companies lack systematic practices that facilitate knowledge sharing. And the competition between software engineers in China is erce. Because of project time constraints, many engineers do not have time to share what they know with others. In addition, job security concerns prevent some from sharing their knowledge with others in fear of losing their superiority to their peers. One surprise in our results is that compensation satisfaction was not signicantly related to team performance. This result may have been caused by the method used to distribute and collect our questionnaires. To avoid interrupting the daily work of the subjects, we gave the questionnaires to department managers and asked them to distribute questionnaires to their developers and to collect them when they had nished. This process may have skewed the subjects responses because they might have feared that their responses about compensation could be seen by their department managers. Another reason might be due to the competitive job market in China. Even though some IS developers may not be satised with their salaries, the IT industry still pays well compared with other industries. Hence, IT professionals still need to do their best in order to keep their jobs even they are not satised with their compensation. The relationship between major and team performance was not signicant either. Because of the popularity of IT in the last few years, many Chinese students majoring in other elds have taken computer science and IS-related courses. Also, Chinese students generally have good backgrounds in mathematics, science, and engineering, which makes it easier for them to do well on an ISD job after some initial training. The combined effects of these factors might have lead to the insignicant relationship between major and team performance. 6.2. Theoretical contributions and managerial implications This study has both theoretical and practical contributions. From a theoretical standpoint, the research examines ISD teams performance from an integration view of human behaviors based on technology. Working on ISD tasks requires highly-technical capabilities and a high level of cooperation, so the performance of ISD teams is the joint consequences of both human and technology.

Our study also expanded the scope of socio-technical theory. Traditional uses often focus on the adoption of a new product or a specic technology. Our study considered the effects of such technologycoordination. Therefore, we combined the coordination theory and the socio-technical theory, emphasizing the mechanism of coordination rather than the coordination itself. Our research also has managerial implications. First, selecting team members who are team players with positive attitudes is critical to team success. For example, companies can use the Myers Briggs personality test to select appropriate team members for a project. For job applicants, nding positions that they enjoy and are suited for is also very important. The study also showed that management should provide support to ISD teams to improve performance. Allocating enough resources is crucial to ISD success. Friendly and thoughtful managers who know how to empower their employees can help the team members identify with the company, which encourages them to do their best. Companies should establish formal procedures and mechanisms to facilitate communication; for example, they can use meetings, memos, project websites, emails, and face-to-face conversations. These efforts typically improve communication quality, which helps each IS team member understand his or her mission on the project team. In other words, improving communication leads to clarity of mission, and both are crucial to team performance. Clear communication also helps resolve conicts, which is another important factor that inuences team performance. Companies should also pay attention to employee dissatisfaction with compensation. Although our research showed that compensation satisfaction is not signicant with regards to job performance, the ndings are probably due to a temporally competitive job market in China. To motivate employees, it is important that compensation is tied to performance. In addition to salary, companies can use other forms of recognition such as awards. IT companies in China should also consider increasing employee education with respect to knowledge sharing and look for more opportunities to facilitate knowledge transfer. Because the IT industry in China is still young, many companies do not have established processes that are often found in western companies that encourage teamwork and collaborative learning. However, due to the complex nature of IS products and services, teamwork is important, and knowledge sharing can greatly enhance the performance of the entire team. Hosting regular training seminars that allow experienced employees to share what they know with others is one way of promoting knowledge sharing.

6.3. Limitations and future research Our research was conducted under known limitations, starting with the number of companies included in the study. Ideally, we should have conducted a random sampling of IT professionals, but it was not practical without a complete list of such people. For that reason, our survey involved only three IT companies in China. These companies are located in two metropolitan areas and specialize in telecommunications, enterprise resource planning (ERP), and control, respectively. Research using companies in other industries is needed to improve the generalizbility of our results. We also attempted to build a comprehensive model on team performance, but it is impossible to include everything in a single research effort. Other factors, such as the end users and the relationship between end users and ISD teams, may also affect overall team performance. We plan on researching their inuence on ISD team performance in the future.

820

Y. Lu et al. / Computers in Human Behavior 27 (2011) 811822

Third, when considering the theoretical basis of this research, we hope to explain the relationship between people and performance from a behavioral view, so we combined the socio-technical theory and coordination theory, but we did not consider technological factors such as tools, methods, and models. We will concern technological factors and research their impacts on ISD team performance in future research. 7. Conclusions The failure rate of information systems projects in China and abroad is surprisingly high, and this is mainly attributed to the low efciency and quality of ISD teams. Trying to thoroughly understand the inuential factors on team performance, we investigated three prominent ISD rms. Through a questionnaire survey, we empirically examined the hypotheses of these factors on team performance based on socio-technical theory and coordination theory. Our results showed that there are many similarities in ISD between China and other developed countries. This study demonstrated that management support, team characteristics, communication quality, knowledge sharing, and clarity of mission all have signicant impact on team performance. When these inuential elements are improved, the result is enhanced team performance. In addition, the relationships between some of these factors (for example, team characteristics and communication quality, communication quality and knowledge sharing, and communication quality and clarity of mission) are also signicantly inuential, and can have a positive effect on team performance when they are improved. At the same time, ISD in China also has its own unique aspects. The improvement of compensation satisfaction to job performance is not signicant. In addition, Chinese IT companies lack knowledge sharing methods and the subjects of our study seemed quite unaware of the importance of knowledge sharing. Acknowledgements We thank the Associate Editor and the anonymous referees for their suggestions. This work was partially supported by a grant from the National Natural Science Foundation of China (70971049 and 70731001) and a grant from NSFC/RGC (71061160505). Appendix A. Measurement scales A.1. Management support MS1: Our management can supply enough resources to the projects. (Adapted from Pinto and Slevin (1987).) MS2: Our management can give the policy support to the projects. (Adapted from Pinto and Slevin (1987).) MS3: Our management can help identify the obstacles of the projects. (Adapted from Parolia et al. (2007).) MS4: Our management can hold the strategic direction of the companys development. A.2. Team members characteristics (Adapted from Costa and McCrae (1992a, 1992b) and Guinan et al. (1997)) TC1: I am optimistic and lively. TC2: I can adjust my emotion in time to continue working. TC3: I believe this team will really inspire the very best in me in the way of job performance. TC4: I am highly dedicated to the job. TC5: I have a comprehensive understanding of the users business processes.

TC6: I know a lot about the business function area in which this system will be used. A.3. Communication quality CQ1: The communication quality between the members is good. CQ2: The communication during ISD is timely. (Adapted from Han et al. (2008).) CQ3: The communication during ISD is complete. (Adapted from Han et al. (2008).) CQ4: The communication during ISD is accurate. (Adapted from Han et al. (2008).) CQ5: The communication during ISD is credible. (Adapted from Han et al. (2008).) A.4. Knowledge sharing (Adapted from Parolia et al. (2007)) KS1: I have the opportunities to obtain successful experience from other members. KS2: Team members can share new work process. KS3: I have the opportunities to learn successful practice from other IS projects. A.5. Clear mission (Adapted from Parolia et al. (2007)) CM1: Objectives/goals provide clear roles for the project team members. CM2: Our team support and accept ISD objectives/goals. CM3: I have the opportunity for self-assessment with respect to goal attainment. A.6. Compensation satisfaction (Adapted from Locke (1976)) CS1: The compensation I have now is satisfying. CS2: My compensation is directly related to my task performance. CS3: When I choose my job, the compensation is the rst thing I think about. CS4: I am satised with the reward system in this company. CS5: If I have a better job performance, I will get rewards. CS6: When I get rewards for my job, my company publicizes it. A.7. Team performance TP1: My team has the ability to decrease the defects of the development job. TP2: My team has done a good job in guring out how work will ow among team members. (Adapted from Guinan et al. (1998).) TP3: My teammates have developed effective plans and procedures to coordinate work. (Adapted from Guinan et al. (1998).) TP4: My team has taken sufcient effort to ensure that the project being developed meets the users needs. (Adapted from Guinan et al. (1998).) TP5: My team does a good job of trying to ensure that the product being developed meets the company demands. (Adapted from Guinan et al. (1998).)

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