How group size and team leader skills affect performance :the roles of domain knowledge, managerial ability, and span of control -

Abstract

The increase in the different specialization fields pushed companies to rely more on teams of specialists to handle the various aspects which lie within their scope. Team management difficulty exists in the coordination between its members which affect communication time, work efficiency and effectiveness of the team. The literature describes the direct impact of team size and manager’s skills on performance, but it does not tackle the relationship between them and the performance. The aim of this study is to combine the effects of team size with the effects of managerial and domain skills of the manager to build a model of team performance. The proposed computational model captures the specific relationships between group size and manager’s abilities, and their effects on team functioning. Depending on each specific work process and group internal communication, the study provides optimal combination (s) of team leaders’ skills and team size to reach project’s goal set in terms of time, cost, and quality.