Mutual Monitoring of Resources in an Enterprise Systems Program
PA
PERS
project managers is positively associ-
ated with the effectiveness of resource
monitoring. This finding provides
new insight into the role of goals in an
enterprise systems context beyond a
traditional single-project implementa-
tion perspective (Yan & Dooley, 2013).
That is, goal understanding can help
programs effectively tailor resources
to the demands of individual projects
and avoid situations in which project
managers compete for resources with
each other and only focus on the inter-
ests of their own individual projects.
The results of this study also encourage
further studies about the impacts of
other types of team cognition (e.g., task-
work and team-work mental models)
on the coordination and/or cooperation
among project managers within a multi-
project context. Such studies would
extend our current understanding of
team cognition theories developed
within the single team context. Third,
the results of this study indicate that
project goal interdependence is posi-
tively associated with the effectiveness
of mutual resource monitoring (H3).
The results indicate that a positive inter-
dependence among projects (i.e., goal
interdependence) within a program has
a positive influence on the behavior of
project managers. Based upon social
interdependence theory, in the case of
positive interdependence (either goal
or resource), team members encour-
age and facilitate each other’s efforts
to complete tasks to reach individual
as well as the overall goals (Johnson
et al., 1989; Johnson & Johnson, 2005).
Although Parolia et al. (2011) showed
the first empirical evidence on the
positive impact of resource interdepen-
dence on joint effort among key IT per-
sonnel within an information system
service outsourcing vendor, our results
provide the first empirical evidence of
the impacts of goal interdependence
in a program management context.
Jiang et al. (2014) also indicates the
importance of goal interdependence
on integrated conflict resolution. This
empirical evidence suggests that future
studies on conflict resolution (or joint
effort) among multiple projects within
an IT program should incorporate the
“interdependence” factor. Finally, our
study explores the joint effect of project
goal understanding and project goal
interdependence on mutual resource
monitoring. The result suggests that goal
understanding and project goal interde-
pendence can substitute for each other,
and that the social interdependence
theory and team cognition theory were
developed independently. To the best
of our knowledge, this is the first study
that incorporates constructs from these
two independent theories to explore
their joint effect on the same dependent
variable (i.e., mutual resource monitor-
ing) in the information system proj-
ect management literature. Although
there is no formal theory to explain the
combination of social interdependent
theory and team cognition theory, in
this study, no formal hypothesis is pro-
posed. This result suggests that some
management mechanisms may not
have the additive effect. This substitute
effect could be explained by the fact that
project goal interdependence enhances
levels of trust among project teams,
encouraging information sharing and
mutual resource monitoring, as sug-
gested by the social interdependence
theory. Within an IT program, however,
the goals and/or tasks of each proj-
ect are assigned such that cooperation
is necessary to accomplish the over-
all goals set by the program; therefore,
there should not be a significant conflict
between overall goal accomplishment
and the completion of each project’s
assigned goals and/or tasks. That is,
without these enhanced levels of com-
mitment to accomplishing the overall
goals, the impact of shared goal under-
standing on resources monitoring won’t
be further strengthened by the level of
interdependence. Similarly, the team
cognition shared among project manag-
ers within the program about the overall
goals and means of each project is likely
to overlap somehow with the goal inter-
dependence, because the goals and/or
tasks of each project are often assigned,
such that interdependence is necessary
to accomplish the overall goals set by
the program.
The results of this study also have
several implications for management.
First, IT program implementation
requires effective resource monitoring.
Mutual resource monitoring discloses
the resource status of competing projects in detail and alleviates resource
conflict. Effective resource monitoring
activities include redirecting or modifying the program as needed based
on feedback from individual projects
(Project Management Institute, 2006),
and tracking resource use among projects (Marks et al., 2001). At the program
level, monitoring should not only be
based on a comparison of work progress
against the baseline individual project
plan but should also take into account
and approve any changes to the plan
(Thiry, 2010). More importantly, our
findings suggest that resource monitoring should not only be carried out by
the program managers but also by all
the key project managers within the
program. Second, program managers, to
motivate cooperative behaviors among
project managers, can structure goals
of individual projects to be somehow
interdependent upon each other so that
individual team success is always predicated upon the larger success of the
program. As a caveat to this conclusion,
however, program managers must be
aware of two types of social interdependence: cooperative and competitive. In
other words, interdependence can also
lead to complexity and conflict. Unlike
traditional single-project management,
program management requires that
managers ensure that the goals of each
project are not competing and/or conflicting with those of others within the
program. Thiry (2010) suggests using
a benefits map as a program planning
tool to show benefit/goal interdependence among projects involved within
a program. In other words, from a program management perspective, program managers need to focus on the
