Hybrid Approach to the Study of Inter-Organization High Performance Teams

Abstract

As construction projects increase in scale and complexity, a major challenge is to ensure the effective transfer of relevant information to the right entities to make decisions, manage conflict, and solve challenges, which will allow organizations to achieve the goals of the project. Project teams whose members have the necessary attitudes, competencies, and skills to overcome this challenge are often termed high performing teams (HPTs). Building on recent studies about HPTs, this paper proposes a hybrid methodology that uses network theory and the jobs-to-be-done framework for the study of teams that aspire to develop high performance. Social network analysis (SNA) provides a reactive approach to the study of team connectivity and hierarchical leadership patterns and is complemented by the jobs-to-be-done framework that focuses on the drivers of the behavior of the various project organizations. The paper demonstrates these concepts by analyzing the characteristics of HPTs through a case study on a healthcare construction project. With this in mind, the contributions of this paper are twofold. The paper introduces jobs to be done as a proactive approach to initial team and work process design, given its focus on stakeholder motivations. In addition, the combination of SNA and jobs to be done allows the pursuit and iterative examination of both drivers of stakeholder behavior and their mechanisms of interaction, which generates more comprehensive insights than when each technique is used independently. Thus, this hybrid approach could facilitate the proactive design and refinement of HPTs.