The antecedents and consequences of external leader empowerment of project teams

Project Teams are a special type of team which are to some extent cross-functional, self-managed and empowered. Their growing popularity in industry has inspired empirical research into both process and task tools to support team success. Very little practice-oriented empirical research has been done to develop a comprehensive toolset that provides full team support with project team tasks, processes, and procedural justice. A study by Deeter-Schmelz & Ramsey (1998) utilized an industry developed project team assessment tool in conjunction with process training to examine the impact on the team members' teaming process performance. They recommended that future research build upon their study with the inclusion of project management task tools and inclusion of procedural justice elements. This dissertation proposed to do just that. The specific research question investigated was: Will project team member process performance be effected by provision of a comprehensive teaming toolset.; This research studied project teams within the context of Gladstein's model of group task effectiveness, which identifies organizational context and group design as antecedents to effective group performance. Organizational design includes a procedurally just reward system in addition to team process and project management training. Group design applies task management and process management tools. The research was performed as a cross-sectional field study of team members from the spring term of a private mid-western online university. Project team process performance was the variable of interest. This study measured self-reported process performance as the construct for team performance. The teams were differentiated based upon their use or non-use of the comprehensive teaming toolset (CTT). These two groups were compared using a t-test for unequal variances at the .05 and .1 alpha to test the hypothesis. A statistically significant difference at the .05 alpha for goal setting, feedback and conflict was identified. Additional items were significant at the .1 alpha. Evidence did support statistically significant differences on the average of all items.