Project Management Journal

Mutual Monitoring of Resources in an Enterprise Systems Program

PA
PERS

when one’s project assignments require
working with other groups in the orga-
nization (Katz, 1982). Goal interde-
pendence refers to the extent to which
individual members believe that their
individual goals can be achieved only
when the goals of other members and
the overall goals are also met (Weldon &
Weingart, 1993). The implicit assump-
tion of social interdependence theory is
that members of the same team are made
interdependent through common goals.
Social interdependence theory postu-
lates that a structure of interdependence
influences how individuals interact with
each other and that this interaction pat-
tern determines the collective outcome
(Deutsch, 1949; Johnson, Johnson, &
Stanne, 1989). Social interdependence
theory defines situations of promotive
interaction, oppositional interaction,
and no interaction. In promotive inter-
action (e.g., goal interdependence),
team members encourage and facili-
tate each other’s efforts to complete
tasks to reach the group and individual
goals (Johnson et al., 1989; Johnson
& Johnson, 2005). These promotive
interactions may involve mutual assis-
tance, communication, information,
and resource monitoring and sharing.
On the other hand, in oppositional
interaction, team members discourage
and obstruct each other’s efforts to com-
plete tasks to reach their goals (Johnson
et al., 1989; Johnson & Johnson, 2005).
These interactions often involve mis-
leading communication and inadequate
information sharing and resource com-
petition. In a no interaction pattern,
team members act separately without
any direct interaction with each other.
Team members only focus on increas-
ing personal productivity and achieve-
ment and ignore relationships with
others. Therefore, according to social
interdependence theory, goal interde-
pendence leads to promotive interac-
tion processes among team members;
interactive decision making, informa-
tion sharing, and mutual monitoring
would be expected during the imple-
mentation process (Guzzo & Shea, 1992;
Mathieu et al., 2008). That is, to resolve
potential resource conflicts among proj-
ects within a program and avoid poten-
tial “shirking” behaviors on the part
of individual project managers, mutual
resource monitoring among project
managers is desirable. This monitoring
allows project managers to keep track of
each project’s resource utilization as it
relates to individual project completion
and overall program accomplishment,
which is encouraged by the extent of
goal interdependence among the proj-
ects involved. Based upon the above
discussion, we, therefore, propose the
following research model for this study
(Figure 1). The detailed hypotheses
examined in this study are developed in
the following sections.

Research Model and
Hypotheses

The Impact of Mutual
Resource Monitoring

Resource monitoring refers to team
members tracking team resources con-
ditions as they relate to task accom-
plishment. It includes monitoring
the levels and performance of each
project’s resources, including personnel
and equipment. When project manag-
ers within the program monitor each
project resource status mutually, based
on agency theory, the individual proj-
ect managers are more likely to apply
appropriate strategies and respond in
the most efficient and effective fashion
to ongoing issues of resource utilization
(Cannon-Bowers, Tannenbaum, Salas,
& Volpe, 1995). In information systems
project management literature, some
studies have observed that:

“Projects have to compete with one another other for resources. Resource monitoring and dynamic resource allocation are therefore required to ensure that projects have adequate technical and managerial resources and that they are implemented on time and within budget . . . A middle-level IT manager mentioned, we often shuffle resources around projects and monitor on a weekly or bi-weekly basis. One of our important customers suddenly wanted an interface to be developed and we had to take away programmers from another project” (Tarafdar & Qrunfleh, 2009, p. 343).

Program managers, therefore, must ensure all projects have sufficient resources to complete their projects. At the program level, resource monitoring and control involves redirecting or modifying program resources as needed, based on feedback on the resources from individual projects (Project Management Institute, 2006). Therefore, the ability of project managers to effectively identify shared resources and successfully resolve the conflict over resources of competing projects is critical in meeting established program deadlines and budgets (Al-Jibouri, 2003; Aliverdi, Naeni, & Salchipour, 2013; Wong & Wong, 2014, Wong et al., 2010). Based on the above discussion and empirical evidence we propose the following hypothesis:

H1: The level of resource monitoring among projects within an IT program is positively associated with enterprise systems program implementation efficiency.