A preliminary investigation of information systems team structures

Productivity in the information age is widely perceived to be a major organizational problem. One strategy for enhancing organizational productivity has been the use of task teams. Assignment to task teams is usually based on individual technical expertise, individual availability, and/or positional politics rather than on the effectiveness of the team members in the specific organizational situation. This paper investigations characteristics of team members and then examines the effect of these characteristics and the requirements of the organizational task on team effectiveness.The findings indicate that the perceptual types of team members and the task structure impacts team effectiveness. It lends evidence that heterogeneity of perceptual types is best for solving unstructured tasks whereas heterogeneity can be counter-productive when solving structured tasks. It also suggests that one team might not be appropriate for all stages of a project. As the structure of the tasks change, the optimum team composition might also change.