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Multitasking teams with variable complementarity: challenges for capability management
Firms of seemingly equal technical merit often show great differences in the effectiveness of their capabilities. Differences in the management of unit interactions are the likely cause, with deficiencies at such integration resulting in wasted effort - work that is performed but not used. This paper uses a simple model to show that the simultaneous presence of complementary and substitutable tasks, a situation that arises routinely in product and process development, presents a serious risk of wasted effort. The substitutable task creates an outlet for agents who think that their partners have over-invested in the complementary task. Use of that outlet can lead to stranding some of their partner's effort and hence placing the team inside its production-possibility frontier. Avoiding such incidents is a difficult task for management given the latent nature of the underlying disagreements, their complex interactions, and the need to apply the correct set of tools to each specific type of misalignment. The model shows that plausible managerial interventions, such as providing output-based incentives, may backfire if the initial configuration of agent beliefs and motives featured two types of disagreement canceling out. Furthermore, interventions effective against one sort of problem may have no power in the face of another. Coordination in the strict sense, for example, is ineffective against many of the problems faced by managers. A discriminating match between interventions and problems is called for, which presents managers with a serious and delicate challenge.Printed journal
Call Number | Location | Available |
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PSB lt.dasar - Pascasarjana | 1 |
Penerbit | The Academy of Management., |
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Edisi | - |
Subjek | Management theory studies Group dynamics Multitasking |
ISBN/ISSN | 3637425 |
Klasifikasi | - |
Deskripsi Fisik | - |
Info Detail Spesifik | - |
Other Version/Related | Tidak tersedia versi lain |
Lampiran Berkas | Tidak Ada Data |