Managing Cooperation in Multipartner Project Teams with Heterogeneous Team Members

Abstract

In multipartner projects, team members from two or more organizations often have different skills and behavioral preferences. A major purpose of managing such teams is fostering cooperation among different types of team members, which is critical for the successful completion of a project. Traditional studies assumed that the preferences of members within a team are homogeneous and examined their effects on cooperation. Motivated by the heterogeneity of team members’ preferences within a team, we propose a model of effort expenditures in multipartner project teams with two heterogeneous members to explore how the cooperative effort expenditure (CEE) of one agent is affected by the preference type of a coworker. We theoretically formulate the problem, provide the solution, and conduct the parameter sensitivity analysis. Furthermore, we present a numerical example to demonstrate the usage of the model and gain insight into the mechanism of the effect of heterogeneous preferences on the team cooperation. The theoretical analysis and experimental results showed that the effort cost and potential value of collaboration are the most critical factors that determine the interaction among the team member’s optimal CEE, project outputs, and the coworker’s preference type. The payoff differences between team members play a complex moderating role in the effect of team members’ heterogeneity preference types on team cooperation. This paper contributes to the body of knowledge on project management by understanding the cooperative behavior of team members with heterogeneous behavioral preferences, and providing managerial insights for project managers to promote cooperation in multipartner project teams. Multipartner projects have become increasingly common due to the increasing complexity and difficulty of the projects. These projects, such as mega construction projects, require the input from professionals of diverse disciplines. But the heterogeneities of partners (stakeholders) increase the difficulty of cooperation. This paper provides managerial insights and suggestions for the project managers to promote cooperation between team members with heterogeneous preference types and marginal effort contributions in multipartner projects. First, for low-complexity projects (such as simple housing construction projects) and high-complexity projects (such as the Hong Kong–Zhuhai–Macao Bridge project), the project managers may pay less attention to the heterogeneity of team members’ behavioral preferences. Second, for other moderate-complexity projects, project managers should emphasize soft management to reduce the negative influence caused by behavioral preference heterogeneity, such as hiring team members with high risk tolerance, reducing payoff information transparency between team members and concealing their payoffs, fostering reciprocity among the agents, reducing their level of spitefulness through team building, and reducing competition, as well as encouraging the positive emotions (such as altruism) through publicity, education, praise, and rewards. Third, to avoid negative influence caused by profit-sharing differences (PSDs), it is better for project managers to set a higher profit-sharing rate for team members with a higher marginal contribution.