An extended model of temporal leadership, team processes, and project team performance.

Abstract

A new model of leadership, temporal leadership, has recently been introduced which considers specific leader behaviours regarding the use and management of time as critical elements in project team performance against deadlines. This research proposes an extended input-process-outcome (IPO) framework of temporal leadership within the project team context. The extended IPO framework suggests that the conceptualisation of temporal leadership includes two facets, temporal planning and temporal reminders, each important at different temporal stages in the project lifecycle. This conceptualisation is integrated with a two-phase model of team processes to suggest the mechanisms of team processes through which each aspect of temporal leadership may facilitate end-of-project task and social performance. Temporal planning is hypothesised to enable performance during the project initiation stage via the mediating mechanism of team transition processes, whereas temporal reminders are hypothesised to be useful for performance during the project execution stage via the mediating mechanism of team action processes. The explanatory power of temporal leadership facets to predict task and social performance above and beyond the classical leadership construct of initiating structure is also examined.Data were collected using survey questionnaires from the members and leaders of 62 application development teams. Two hundred twenty-five team members and their 62 leaders from four information technology companies participated in the study. Team members reported leader temporal planning and team transition processes just after the initiation of anew fixed-length project (Time 1) and leader temporal reminders and team action processes near the middle of the project (Time 2). The outcome variables of team task performance(timeliness and quality of output) and social performance (team cohesion) were rated by team leaders and team members (respectively) at the end of the project.The hypothesised multi-level relationships were tested using multilevel structural equation modelling and relative importance analysis. At project initiation, team transition processes mediated the relationship between leader temporal planning and team outcomes in the form of both task and social performance. During the project execution stage, team action processes mediated the relationship between leader temporal reminders and team social performance. The prediction that team action processes would mediate the relationship between temporal reminders and team task performance was not supported. Both facets of temporal leadership were more important and accounted for incremental variance in the prediction of team task and social performance above and beyond leader initiating structure measured at the same two project stages. The positive associations between temporal leadership behaviours and team processes remained significant when considered simultaneously with initiating structure measured at the same two time points. The study concludes with several theoretical and practical implications and suggested areas for future research