Project Team Communication in Financial Service Innovation

We examine the role of communication during the innovation process of new financial services from an information processing perspective. A contingency framework is developed on the role of communication and its impact on new financial services success. In order to assess the unique nature of the services context of this study, this framework also depicts the moderating impact of the specific services characteristics (intangibility, inseparability, heterogeneity and perishability) on project communication during the innovation process. Project team communication is conceptualized by three types of communication: (1) intra-project communication, (2) extra-project communication involving (i) organizational liaisons, which refer to the transfer of intra-organizational communication by project members and (ii) gatekeepers of information, which refer to the transfer of extra-organizational information by customer-contact personnel. The relationship between project team communication and the reduction of innovative uncertainty on new financial service success is examined. Our contingency model implies that managers have to recognize the critical communication roles that project members and frontline employees may fulfill. The communication flows mediated by these individuals foster the uncertainty reduction during the innovation process. Moreover, financial service innovation management should conceive the service characteristics as sources of task uncertainty, as they may lower project communication effectiveness, i.e. the reduction of innovative uncertainty. Following the managerial implications of our model, we finally formulate directions for future research.     

Influence of Trade‐Level Coordination Problems on Project Productivity

This study aims to investigate the influence of coordination problems in glass and metal curtain wall (GMCW) installation on project productivity in Singapore. Trade‐level coordination problems in GMCW installation were identified through literature review and included in a survey questionnaire. The survey results indicated that, on average, 66.5 days of rework and 52.5 days of waiting resulted from coordination problems, and that “last‐minute changes in design by the client” led to the longest rework and waiting time. Additionally, the rework and waiting time caused by trade‐level coordination problems were correlated with the total rework and waiting time.     

A Holistic View on Learning in Project‐Based Organizations

Although researchers have over the years highlighted the importance of managing and supporting learning in project‐based settings, it still seems to be problematic. New project management capabilities are needed, such as systems thinking, which will allow project‐based organizations to better cope with learning in the organizations. This article explores how Swedish project‐based organizations within an engineering and construction context manage and support learning activities today and discusses, with the support of process management literature, how an “organizational‐wide project learning process” could improve the prerequisites for learning in project‐based organizations. Our findings from three project‐based organizations indicate a lack of a holistic perspective on project learning. A conceptual model is proposed, with the aim of validating and promoting process thinking by introducing, for example, new roles responsible for intra‐ and inter‐project learning, respectively.     

Team Incentives and Reference‐Dependent Preferences

We investigate a multi‐agent moral‐hazard model where agents have expectation‐based reference‐dependent preferences à la K?szegi and Rabin (2006, 2007). We show that even when each agent's probability of success in a project is independent, a principal may employ team incentives. Because the agents are loss averse, they have first‐order risk aversion to wage uncertainty. This causes the agents to work harder when their own failure is stochastically compensated through other agents' performance. In the optimal contract, agents with high performance are always rewarded, whereas agents with low performance are rewarded if and only if other agents' performance is high.     

Multi‐Level Efficacy Evidence of a Combined Interprofessional Collaboration and Project Management Training Program for Healthcare Project Teams

Project work is essential for the improvement of healthcare organizations; yet, project management and collaboration in the project context are not taught to healthcare professionals. Three half‐day training workshops integrating project management and collaboration were designed and delivered to 14 interprofessional healthcare project teams. Multivariate measures were taken over the course of 36 weeks. Individual, team, and project‐level results showed high satisfaction and perceptions of utility; improved self‐efficacy for project‐specific task work and teamwork; increased goal clarity and coordination; and a significant impact on the functional performance of projects. This study provides initial benchmark measures regarding the pertinence of project management and interprofessional collaboration training for healthcare project teams.     

Costly Pre‐Play Communication and Coordination in Stag‐Hunt Games

In this paper, we experimentally investigate the impact of costly indirect and direct messages on coordination levels in a stag‐hunt game. Three main insights emerge from our experiments. First, we find a significant decrease in message usage with message cost in both treatments and a higher decrease in the indirect‐message treatment. Second, we find that although there is no significant effect of costless or costly indirect messages on the frequency of risky actions, both costless, and costly direct messages significantly increase the frequency of risky actions. Third, while we find a significant increase in the coordination rate on the payoff‐dominant equilibrium from costless indirect message treatment to costly indirect message treatment, this rate significantly decreases from costless direct message to costly direct message treatment. Our findings show that depending on the structure of messages, message cost may increase or decrease the coordination rates on the payoff‐dominant equilibrium with respect to costless communication. However, costly communication increases efficient coordination rates with respect to the no communication baseline. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

工程项目管理沟通与协调

随着全球经济的一体化逐渐加强,各行各业的经济体系、行业标准也随之趋同,企业间的分工、合作的关系也日益紧密。在项目化管理大行其道的今天,顺畅的沟通与协调变得举足轻重,成为各个项目成功与否的重要因素,往往很多项目失败的原因要归咎于不顺畅的沟通。本文首先对现代工程管理的特点做一个简单叙述,再针对工程项目管理中沟通的重要意义和沟通的技巧进行一一叙述。     

沟通管理在能源行业大型国企风险评估项目的应用实践

结合风险评估项目沟通管理实践,在分析该项目沟通管理特点,介绍沟通管理主要做法的基础上,就搞好项目协调工作、提升沟通管理水平提了几点对策,可作为类似项目管理工作的参考。     

Diagnostic analysis for a vector autoregressive model under Student′s t‐distributions

In this paper, we use the local influence method to study a vector autoregressive model under Student^′s t‐distributions. We present the maximum likelihood estimators and the information matrix. We establish the normal curvature diagnostics for the vector autoregressive model under three usual perturbation schemes for identifying possible influential observations. The effectiveness of the proposed diagnostics is examined by a simulation study, followed by our data analysis using the model to fit the weekly log returns of Chevron stock and the Standard & Poor's 500 Index as an application.     

Counteracting Free‐Riding With Team Morale—An Experimental Study

This study focuses on a behavioral perspective to examine the detrimental effects of free‐riding on team performance, and investigates team morale as a key factor that counteracts the tendency of free‐riding among team members. Results of the empirical test imply that enhancing team morale can effectively reduce the scale of free‐riding behavior in project teams; in addition, controlling team size also provides help to constrain the undesired behavior. The two means can be carefully applied to project management during early stages of project development before the commitment of significant resources. Implications for both research and team practices are discussed.     

Broad‐based incentive plans,HR practices and company performance

The purpose of this paper is to further develop our knowledge of the complementarities between broad‐based incentives and human resource (HR) management practices, and their combined impact on company performance. We focus on three HR practices that are expected, separately and in combination, to enhance the effectiveness of broad‐based plans: information sharing, upward communication, and training in team skills. Using a sample of 305 Canadian firms, we find that companies with broad‐based incentive plans have lower levels of upward communication and higher levels of information sharing compared with companies that do not offer incentives to the majority of their workforce. Further, we find that companies with broad‐based incentive plans are more productive compared with companies with no such plans, and the presence of supporting HR practices increases their productivity advantage even further. In particular, upward communication combined with broad‐based incentives has a strong positive relationship with productivity.     

Organizational Learning in Project‐Based Companies: A Process Thinking Approach

Although a traditional project model is clearly useful for laying out the patterns of relationships surrounding a project, it does not provide the temporally embedded accounts that enable us to understand how organizational learning takes place. The process thinking perspective offers a means to solving this problem. This article provides an analysis of how different processes interact dynamically in order to benefit project‐based companies' organizational learning. Two findings from this study are: (1) organizational learning is a dynamic concept that emphasizes the continually changing nature of a project‐based company and (2) sensemaking and negotiation of meaning are ongoing processes in project‐based companies.     

A Socio‐Psychological Perspective on Team Ambidexterity: The Contingency Role of Supportive Leadership Behaviours

In addressing the notion of team ambidexterity, we propose that socio‐psychological factors (i.e., team cohesion and team efficacy) may help team members to resolve paradoxical challenges and to combine exploratory and exploitative learning efforts. In addition, we theorize that senior executives may play an important role in facilitating the emergence of ambidexterity at lower hierarchical levels. In doing so, we develop a multilevel contingency framework and propose that the effectiveness of teams to achieve ambidexterity is contingent upon supportive leadership behaviours at the organizational‐level. Using multilevel, multisource, and temporally separated data on 87 teams within 37 high‐tech and pharmaceutical firms, we not only reveal how team cohesion and efficacy may matter for the emergence of team ambidexterity but also show that the effectiveness of supportive leadership behaviours from senior executives varies across cohesive and efficacious teams.     

项目协调管理研究

一个项目的顺利完成,与项目在建造过程中的协调管理密不可分。可以说,只要做好了项目协调管理,就可以实现项目的预期目标。通过对协调及协调管理产生和发展的思想起源以及项目建造现状的论证,提出新的论点:项目协调管理,并提出了项目协调管理的定义,讨论了项目协调管理的框架性内容,给出了项目协调管理的主要方法。     

Strategic shirking in competitive labor markets: A general model of multi‐task promotion tournaments with employer learning

In a multitask, market‐based promotion tournament model, under different environments concerning employer learning about worker ability, it is shown that: (a) asymmetric learning in multitask jobs is a necessary condition for “strategic shirking” (i.e., underperforming on certain tasks to increase the promotion probability); (b) when learning becomes increasingly symmetric on one task, the effort allocated to that task could increase or decrease, but effort on the other task increases; (c) strategic shirking does not occur in equilibrium in single‐task models; and (d) promotions signal worker ability even when there is symmetric learning on one task, if learning is asymmetric on another.     

An analysis of interrelationships between project management and student‐experience constructs

This article seeks to explore, through the utilization of correlational analysis, how the parameters that impact the student experience may be interrelated. We found that the experiences of students studying project management appear to be heavily influenced by e‐resource provisions and the actual experiences that the students are subjected to when using virtual learning environments (VLEs). These findings support previous research acknowledging that information and communications technology (ICT) plays an important role in teaching and learning project management. Students' experience of interpersonal skills also correlated uniquely and significantly with other constructs, supporting the premise that learning is integral to the development of interpersonal skills. Discussion surrounds the interdependency of student experiences adding to their learning and how future research should consider larger and more diverse samples to establish exactly what constructs detract and/or add to their learning in project management, which could then contribute to pedagogical discourse in other disciplines.     

How project management office leaders facilitate cross‐project learning and continuous improvement

The purpose of this study is to shed light on how project management office (PMO) leaders facilitate cross‐project learning and continuous improvement. Twenty leaders of PMOs were interviewed; findings were validated by two focus groups. The research reveals that PMO leaders facilitate cross‐project improvement by embedding accumulated knowledge from past project experiences into project management routines that are utilized across multiple projects. The research also points to the phenomenon of “red light learning,” where lessons learned sessions can be enculturated as punitive, undermining individual and organizational learning. Recommendations focus on enhancing the social capital of the PMO leader and improving the quality and quantity of reflective practice over the course of the project life cycle.     

Aligning Misaligned Systemic Innovations: Probing Inter‐Firm Effects Development in Project Networks

Implementing systemic innovations in a project network can significantly improve its performance; however, implementing systemic innovations is difficult if project network structures misalign to the innovation. Little research has examined how project network structures can align to systemic innovations. To address this research gap, we studied an advanced building information modeling tool implemented in a Finnish design and development project network. We found that misaligned innovations are aligned through a process of task sequence alignment, knowledge base alignment, and work allocation alignment. Our findings are important; they suggest that implementing systemic innovations in project networks is a multistage inter‐firm process.     

工程项目管理中做好设计管理的协调的重要性探讨

通过对工程项目设计管理的内容分析,探讨做好设计管理的协调的重要意义。提高我们的设计管理意识,更好的确保项目进度有序、有效的开展,充分发挥员工的工作热情,提高工作效率,保证工程项目的质量,提高公司的效益。     

建设项目协调管理机制研究

建设项目协调管理职能需要通过各种管理活动来实现,而协调管理职能的实现是由各项管理活动中蕴含的协调管理机制所决定的。文章在阐明建设项目协调管理机制内涵的基础上,提出了5种重要的建设项目协调管理机制:决策机制、合作机制、沟通机制、激励机制和约束机制,并由此构建了这5种协调管理机制的运行模式,以期为建设项目协调管理实践提供理论基础。