Managing I/S Design Teams: A Control Theories Perspective

The control relationship between project managers and team members is a central aspect of the working of any Information System (I/S) design team. This paper combines research on managerial control and team-member control in order to explore a range of control behaviors that can affect the performance of an I/S design team. Measures are developed and validated for managerial control and team-member control from both an outcome and a process perspective. Results from a study of 41 actual I/S design teams indicate that high-performing teams exhibit high process control by managers and high outcome control by team members. The results also support the proposition that both managerial and team-member control coexists and that increases in the total level of control behavior is positively correlated with performance.