Reconsidering Coordination and Information Dissemination Challenges in Integrated Project Teams: A Team-level Perspective

• In Event: Organizational Communication Research Escalator - Extended Session

Abstract

Organizations collaborate to collect, share, or exchange resources with one another, when resources are difficult to obtain from market transactions. These interorganizational collaborations utilize project teams to coordinate and disseminate information within and among organizations. Several interorganizational studies provide insights to coordination and information dissemination challenges in integrated project teams. However, these studies have not addressed the team-level implications of communication behaviors that fosters coordination and information sharing.
Moreover, two coordination paradoxes that haunt multi-level integrated project teams demand attention. This proposal examines motivations for interorganizational collaborations, identifies coordination paradoxes including technology inhibiting instead of fostering coordinated action and concentric nature of integrated teams create network silos, and offer propositions to guide research on (a) what type of communication behaviors of organizational team members improves coordination, (b) how can organizational members facilitate communication and spur discussions, and (c) what type of communication behaviors have team-level implications rather than individual/dyadic implications.

Authors

• Dron M Mandhana, The University of Texas at Austin

• Claire Marie Schneider, The University of Texas at Austin