Elsevier

Design Studies

Volume 64, September 2019, Pages 124-153
Design Studies

The dynamics of design: exploring heterogeneity in meso-scale team processes

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.destud.2019.08.001Get rights and content

Highlights

  • A work sampling study of meso-scale team processes in two engineering design cases.

  • Novel characterisation of goal/action and temporal heterogeneity in design work.

  • Identification of principals of proportional goal/action composition.

  • Proposed framework for understanding heterogeneous team processes in design.

  • Proposed ‘archetypal process types’ linking goal/action and process patterns.

There is a critical gap in understanding how meso-scale team processes - interactions between individuals in a team - develop in design teams and specifically how they dynamically balance design with managerial effort. We treat this deficit by contrasting two in-depth cases using work sampling data. We identify a number of contributions. First, we describe how design team processes display both goal/action and temporal heterogeneity. Second, we demonstrate how this heterogeneity is underpinned by common principles that consistently shape team processes in design. Specifically: proportional goal/action composition and recurring process patterns over time. Finally, we describe how these principles can be integrated via ‘archetypal process types’. Together, these substantially extend prior theory and point to specific implications for future design research.

Section snippets

Theoretical background

In this section we describe the theoretical context and dynamic character of team processes before outlining the conceptual framework used as the basis for the empirical work.

Method

This research aims to develop theory by refining understanding of the variables involved in team processes as well as their relationships and underpinning mechanisms of interaction in design (Cash, 2018). We thus draw on two contrasting cases (Handfield & Melnyk, 1998). The presented cases provided unique data access offering detailed and in-depth insights on dynamic team processes at the meso-scale (Gibbert et al., 2008, Yin, 2013).

Results

The work sampling data analysis revealed two major findings related to team process heterogeneity in product development. These are associated with goal/action composition and temporal heterogeneity, which together illustrate heterogeneous taskwork/teamwork interaction. As a basis for understanding these findings it is important to note that both cases reflected high performance teams with consistent and high levels of motivation, good understanding of established organisational structures and

Team process dynamics in design

This research delivers three key insights on team process heterogeneity and dynamics in the design context, by answering the RQs outlined in the introduction. First, team processes in design, linking taskwork and teamwork, show substantial compositional and temporal heterogeneity. This contrasts prior theory that has typically focused on modelling either taskwork or teamwork, with little consideration for heterogeneous interaction effects (Leenders et al., 2016). Second, despite this

Limitations and further work

The first limitation of note is the extent of the sampling data and the inherent limitations of work sampling as a method. Although the sampling session lasted for only two weeks, comparison of the two cases revealed a number of dimensions of alignment in terms of individual activity and team dynamics. Further, these results were found to fall within the scope of prior findings in the design domain, despite differences in context (Robinson, 2010a, Wasiak et al., 2010). As such, the reported

Conclusions

This work set out to examine the meso-scale team processes in design in order to address critical gaps in prior theory associated with assumed homogeneity in composition and progression over time, as well as bifurcation in discussion of taskwork and teamwork. Thus, the aim of this work was to develop theory by refining understanding of the variables and underpinning mechanisms shaping team process progression in design. We addressed this aim by contrasting two in-depth cases using work sampling

Conflicts of interest

There are no conflicts of interest to report.

Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank the reviewers and editors for helping to develop this manuscript. This paper reports on work funded by the Croatian Science Foundation MInMED (http://www.minmed.org) and TAIDE Projects (http://www.taide.org). Croatian Science Foundation project IP-2018-01-7269: Team Adaptability for Innovation-Oriented Product Development – TAIDE (http://www.taide.org).

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