IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/inm/orisre/v25y2014i2p364-384.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Project Managers' Practical Intelligence and Project Performance in Software Offshore Outsourcing: A Field Study

Author

Listed:
  • Nishtha Langer

    (Indian School of Business, Hyderabad, Andhra Pradesh, 500032, India)

  • Sandra A. Slaughter

    (Ernest Scheller Jr. College of Business, Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, Georgia 30308)

  • Tridas Mukhopadhyay

    (Tepper School of Business, Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania 15213; and Carnegie Mellon University in Qatar, Education City, Doha, Qatar)

Abstract

This study examines the role of project managers' (PM) practical intelligence (PI) in the performance of software offshore outsourcing projects. Based on the extant literature, we conceptualize PI for PMs as their capability to resolve project related work problems, given their long-range and short-range goals; PI is targeted at resolving unexpected and difficult situations, which often cannot be resolved using established processes and frameworks. We then draw on the information processing literature to argue that software offshore outsourcing projects are prone to severe information constraints that lead to unforeseen critical incidents that must be resolved adequately for the projects to succeed. We posit that PMs can use PI to effectively address and resolve such incidents, and therefore the level of PMs' PI positively affects project performance. We further theorize that project complexity and familiarity contribute to its information constraints and the likelihood of critical incidents in a project, thereby moderating the relationship between PMs' PI and project performance.To evaluate our hypotheses, we analyze longitudinal data collected in an in-depth field study of a leading software vendor organization in India. Our data include project and personnel level archival data on 530 projects completed by 209 PMs. We employ the critical incidents methodology to assess the PI of the PMs who led these projects. Our findings indicate that PMs' PI has a significant and positive impact on project performance. Further, projects with higher complexity or lower familiarity benefit even more from PMs' PI. Our study extends the literatures on project management and outsourcing by conceptualizing and measuring PMs' PI, by theorizing its relationship with project performance, and by positing how that relationship is moderated by project complexity and familiarity. Our study provides unique empirical evidence of the importance of PMs' PI in software offshore outsourcing projects. Given that PMs with high PI are scarce resources, our findings also have practical implications for the optimal resource allocation and training of PMs in software offshore services companies.

Suggested Citation

  • Nishtha Langer & Sandra A. Slaughter & Tridas Mukhopadhyay, 2014. "Project Managers' Practical Intelligence and Project Performance in Software Offshore Outsourcing: A Field Study," Information Systems Research, INFORMS, vol. 25(2), pages 364-384, June.
  • Handle: RePEc:inm:orisre:v:25:y:2014:i:2:p:364-384
    DOI: 10.1287/isre.2014.0523
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1287/isre.2014.0523
    Download Restriction: no

    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1287/isre.2014.0523?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Anandasivam Gopal & Guodong (Gordon) Gao, 2009. "Certification in the Indian Offshore IT Services Industry," Manufacturing & Service Operations Management, INFORMS, vol. 11(3), pages 471-492, December.
    2. Williamson, Oliver E, 1979. "Transaction-Cost Economics: The Governance of Contractural Relations," Journal of Law and Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 22(2), pages 233-261, October.
    3. Evelyn J. Barry & Chris F. Kemerer & Sandra A. Slaughter, 2006. "Environmental Volatility, Development Decisions, and Software Volatility: A Longitudinal Analysis," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 52(3), pages 448-464, March.
    4. J. Alberto Espinosa & Sandra A. Slaughter & Robert E. Kraut & James D. Herbsleb, 2007. "Familiarity, Complexity, and Team Performance in Geographically Distributed Software Development," Organization Science, INFORMS, vol. 18(4), pages 613-630, August.
    5. Ray Reagans & Linda Argote & Daria Brooks, 2005. "Individual Experience and Experience Working Together: Predicting Learning Rates from Knowing Who Knows What and Knowing How to Work Together," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 51(6), pages 869-881, June.
    6. Sarma Nidumolu, 1995. "The Effect of Coordination and Uncertainty on Software Project Performance: Residual Performance Risk as an Intervening Variable," Information Systems Research, INFORMS, vol. 6(3), pages 191-219, September.
    7. Abhijit V. Banerjee & Esther Duflo, 2000. "Reputation Effects and the Limits of Contracting: A Study of the Indian Software Industry," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 115(3), pages 989-1017.
    8. Anandasivam Gopal & Konduru Sivaramakrishnan & M. S. Krishnan & Tridas Mukhopadhyay, 2003. "Contracts in Offshore Software Development: An Empirical Analysis," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 49(12), pages 1671-1683, December.
    9. White, Halbert, 1980. "A Heteroskedasticity-Consistent Covariance Matrix Estimator and a Direct Test for Heteroskedasticity," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 48(4), pages 817-838, May.
    10. Laurie S. Kirsch, 1997. "Portfolios of Control Modes and IS Project Management," Information Systems Research, INFORMS, vol. 8(3), pages 215-239, September.
    11. Anjana Susarla, 2012. "Contractual Flexibility, Rent Seeking, and Renegotiation Design: An Empirical Analysis of Information Technology Outsourcing Contracts," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 58(7), pages 1388-1407, July.
    12. Aaron J. Shenhar, 2001. "One Size Does Not Fit All Projects: Exploring Classical Contingency Domains," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 47(3), pages 394-414, March.
    13. Wanda J. Orlikowski, 2002. "Knowing in Practice: Enacting a Collective Capability in Distributed Organizing," Organization Science, INFORMS, vol. 13(3), pages 249-273, June.
    14. Wood, Robert E., 1986. "Task complexity: Definition of the construct," Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, Elsevier, vol. 37(1), pages 60-82, February.
    15. Anandasivam Gopal & Sanjay Gosain, 2010. "Research Note ---The Role of Organizational Controls and Boundary Spanning in Software Development Outsourcing: Implications for Project Performance," Information Systems Research, INFORMS, vol. 21(4), pages 960-982, December.
    16. Pamela J. Hinds & Mark Mortensen, 2005. "Understanding Conflict in Geographically Distributed Teams: The Moderating Effects of Shared Identity, Shared Context, and Spontaneous Communication," Organization Science, INFORMS, vol. 16(3), pages 290-307, June.
    17. Anandasivam Gopal & Konduru Sivaramakrishnan, 2008. "Research Note ---On Vendor Preferences for Contract Types in Offshore Software Projects: The Case of Fixed Price vs. Time and Materials Contracts," Information Systems Research, INFORMS, vol. 19(2), pages 202-220, June.
    18. Stigler, George J., 2011. "Economics of Information," Ekonomicheskaya Politika / Economic Policy, Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration, vol. 5, pages 35-49.
    19. Katrina Maxwell & Luk Van Wassenhove & Soumitra Dutta, 1999. "Performance Evaluation of General and Company Specific Models in Software Development Effort Estimation," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 45(6), pages 787-803, June.
    20. Michael T. Pich & Christoph H. Loch & Arnoud De Meyer, 2002. "On Uncertainty, Ambiguity, and Complexity in Project Management," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 48(8), pages 1008-1023, August.
    21. Donald E. Harter & Mayuram S. Krishnan & Sandra A. Slaughter, 2000. "Effects of Process Maturity on Quality, Cycle Time, and Effort in Software Product Development," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 46(4), pages 451-466, April.
    22. Laurie J. Kirsch & V. Sambamurthy & Dong-Gil Ko & Russell L. Purvis, 2002. "Controlling Information Systems Development Projects: The View from the Client," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 48(4), pages 484-498, April.
    23. Debabrata Dey & Ming Fan & Conglei Zhang, 2010. "Design and Analysis of Contracts for Software Outsourcing," Information Systems Research, INFORMS, vol. 21(1), pages 93-114, March.
    24. Robert S. Huckman & Bradley R. Staats & David M. Upton, 2009. "Team Familiarity, Role Experience, and Performance: Evidence from Indian Software Services," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 55(1), pages 85-100, January.
    25. Samer Faraj & Lee Sproull, 2000. "Coordinating Expertise in Software Development Teams," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 46(12), pages 1554-1568, December.
    26. Yuanyuan Chen & Anandhi Bharadwaj, 2009. "An Empirical Analysis of Contract Structures in IT Outsourcing," Information Systems Research, INFORMS, vol. 20(4), pages 484-506, December.
    27. Catherine Durnell Cramton, 2001. "The Mutual Knowledge Problem and Its Consequences for Dispersed Collaboration," Organization Science, INFORMS, vol. 12(3), pages 346-371, June.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Bent Flyvbjerg & Alexander Budzier & Jong Seok Lee & Mark Keil & Daniel Lunn & Dirk W. Bester, 2022. "The Empirical Reality of IT Project Cost Overruns: Discovering A Power-Law Distribution," Papers 2210.01573, arXiv.org.
    2. Nishtha Langer & Ram D. Gopal & Ravi Bapna, 2020. "Onward and Upward? An Empirical Investigation of Gender and Promotions in Information Technology Services," Information Systems Research, INFORMS, vol. 31(2), pages 383-398, June.
    3. Keumseok Kang & Jungpil Hahn & Prabuddha De, 2017. "Learning Effects of Domain, Technology, and Customer Knowledge in Information Systems Development: An Empirical Study," Information Systems Research, INFORMS, vol. 28(4), pages 797-811, December.
    4. Terri L. Griffith & John E. Sawyer & M. Scott Poole, 2019. "Systems Savvy: Practical Intelligence for Transformation of Sociotechnical Systems," Group Decision and Negotiation, Springer, vol. 28(3), pages 475-499, June.
    5. Shyamali Satpathy & Violeta Cvetkoska & Gokulananda Patel, 2021. "The Impact of Organizational Stress on Financial Performance: Evidence from Software Development Companies," SPOUDAI Journal of Economics and Business, SPOUDAI Journal of Economics and Business, University of Piraeus, vol. 71(3-4), pages 122-140, July-Dece.
    6. Nishtha Langer & Tarun Jain, 2024. "Peer Influence and IT Career Choice," Information Systems Research, INFORMS, vol. 35(2), pages 642-656, June.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Mingfeng Lin & Siva Viswanathan & Ritu Agarwal, 2010. "An Empirical Study of Online Software Outsourcing: Signals under Different Contract Regimes," Working Papers 10-22, NET Institute.
    2. Iván Alfaro & Ranganathan Chandrasekaran, 2015. "Software Quality and Development Speed in Global Software Development Teams," Business & Information Systems Engineering: The International Journal of WIRTSCHAFTSINFORMATIK, Springer;Gesellschaft für Informatik e.V. (GI), vol. 57(2), pages 91-102, April.
    3. Robert S. Huckman & Bradley R. Staats, 2011. "Fluid Tasks and Fluid Teams: The Impact of Diversity in Experience and Team Familiarity on Team Performance," Manufacturing & Service Operations Management, INFORMS, vol. 13(3), pages 310-328, July.
    4. Ravi Bapna & Alok Gupta & Gautam Ray & Shweta Singh, 2023. "Single-Sourcing vs. Multisourcing: An Empirical Analysis of Large Information Technology Outsourcing Arrangements," Information Systems Research, INFORMS, vol. 34(3), pages 1109-1130, September.
    5. Anjana Susarla & Martin Holzhacker & Ranjani Krishnan, 2020. "Calculative Trust and Interfirm Contracts," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 66(11), pages 5465-5484, November.
    6. Eunkwang Seo & Hyo Kang & Jaeyong Song, 2020. "Blending talents for innovation: Team composition for cross-border R&D collaboration within multinational corporations," Journal of International Business Studies, Palgrave Macmillan;Academy of International Business, vol. 51(5), pages 851-885, July.
    7. Ravi Bapna & Alok Gupta & Gautam Ray & Shweta Singh, 2016. "Research Note —IT Outsourcing and the Impact of Advisors on Clients and Vendors," Information Systems Research, INFORMS, vol. 27(3), pages 636-647.
    8. Anandasivam Gopal & Sanjay Gosain, 2010. "Research Note ---The Role of Organizational Controls and Boundary Spanning in Software Development Outsourcing: Implications for Project Performance," Information Systems Research, INFORMS, vol. 21(4), pages 960-982, December.
    9. Emmanouil Avgerinos & Bilal Gokpinar, 2017. "Team Familiarity and Productivity in Cardiac Surgery Operations: The Effect of Dispersion, Bottlenecks, and Task Complexity," Manufacturing & Service Operations Management, INFORMS, vol. 19(1), pages 19-35, February.
    10. Keumseok Kang & Jungpil Hahn & Prabuddha De, 2017. "Learning Effects of Domain, Technology, and Customer Knowledge in Information Systems Development: An Empirical Study," Information Systems Research, INFORMS, vol. 28(4), pages 797-811, December.
    11. Anjana Susarla, 2012. "Contractual Flexibility, Rent Seeking, and Renegotiation Design: An Empirical Analysis of Information Technology Outsourcing Contracts," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 58(7), pages 1388-1407, July.
    12. Eunkwang Seo & Hyo Kang & Jaeyong Song, 0. "Blending talents for innovation: Team composition for cross-border R&D collaboration within multinational corporations," Journal of International Business Studies, Palgrave Macmillan;Academy of International Business, vol. 0, pages 1-35.
    13. J. Alberto Espinosa & Sandra A. Slaughter & Robert E. Kraut & James D. Herbsleb, 2007. "Familiarity, Complexity, and Team Performance in Geographically Distributed Software Development," Organization Science, INFORMS, vol. 18(4), pages 613-630, August.
    14. Daniel Tzabbar & Alex Vestal, 2015. "Bridging the Social Chasm in Geographically Distributed R&D Teams: The Moderating Effects of Relational Strength and Status Asymmetry on the Novelty of Team Innovation," Organization Science, INFORMS, vol. 26(3), pages 811-829, June.
    15. Sidhu, Jatinder S. & Volberda, Henk W., 2011. "Coordination of globally distributed teams: A co-evolution perspective on offshoring," International Business Review, Elsevier, vol. 20(3), pages 278-290, June.
    16. Fabio Fonti & Massimo Maoret, 2016. "The direct and indirect effects of core and peripheral social capital on organizational performance," Strategic Management Journal, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 37(8), pages 1765-1786, August.
    17. Jaime B. Windeler & Likoebe Maruping & Viswanath Venkatesh, 2017. "Technical Systems Development Risk Factors: The Role of Empowering Leadership in Lowering Developers’ Stress," Information Systems Research, INFORMS, vol. 28(4), pages 775-796, December.
    18. Rajiv D. Banker & Robert J. Kauffman, 2004. "50th Anniversary Article: The Evolution of Research on Information Systems: A Fiftieth-Year Survey of the Literature in Management Science," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 50(3), pages 281-298, March.
    19. Pamela J. Hinds & Catherine Durnell Cramton, 2014. "Situated Coworker Familiarity: How Site Visits Transform Relationships Among Distributed Workers," Organization Science, INFORMS, vol. 25(3), pages 794-814, June.
    20. Melissa A. Valentine & Tom Fangyun Tan & Bradley R. Staats & Amy C. Edmondson, 2019. "Fluid Teams and Knowledge Retrieval: Scaling Service Operations," Manufacturing & Service Operations Management, INFORMS, vol. 21(2), pages 346-360, May.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:inm:orisre:v:25:y:2014:i:2:p:364-384. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Chris Asher (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/inforea.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.