It's Only Temporary: Time Frame and the Dynamics of Creative Project Teams
| Author | Leon A.G. Oerlemans,René M. Bakker,Patrick Kenis,Smaranda Boroş |
| Date | 01 September 2013 |
| Published date | 01 September 2013 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-8551.2012.00810.x |
It’s Only Temporary: Time Frame and the
Dynamics of Creative Project Teams
René M. Bakker, Smaranda Boros¸,1Patrick Kenis2and
Leon A.G. Oerlemans3
Australian Centre for Entrepreneurship Research, Queensland University of Technology, 2 George Street,
QLD 4000, Brisbane, Australia, 1Tilburg University and Vlerick Leuven Gent Management School, Reep 1,
9000 Gent, Belgium, 2Antwerp Management School, Sint-Jacobsmarkt 9-13, 2000 Antwerp, Belgium, and
3Tilburg University and University of Pretoria, Warandelaan 2, 5000 LE Tilburg, The Netherlands
Corresponding author email: rene.bakker@qut.edu.au
The success of many knowledge-intensive industries depends on creative projects that lie
at the heart of their logic of production. The temporality of such projects, however, is an
issue that is insufficiently understood. To address this, we study the perceived time frame
of teams that work on creative projects and its effects on project dynamics. An experi-
ment with 267 managers assigned to creative project teams with varying time frames
demonstrates that, compared to creative project teams with a relatively longer time
frame, project teams with a shorter time frame focus more on the immediate present, are
less immersed in their task and utilize a more heuristic mode of information processing.
Furthermore, we find that time frame moderates the negative effect of team conflict on
team cohesion. These results are consistent with our theory that the temporary nature of
creative projects shapes different time frames among project participants, and that it is
this time frame that is an important predictor of task and team processes.
“Everybody knows it’s temporary. We all know the
deadline, and then we shut down everything here.
The whole thing is built up to be broken down. [. . .]
You become one team, certainly, but through it all,
in the back of your mind, you ask: for how long will
it stay?” (Project engineer on major medical innova-
tion project, on what characterizes being on a crea-
tive project team. Interviewed 4 May 2009)
Introduction
As organizations in more and more industries
look for innovative ideas and flexible ways of
production in the wake of rapidly changing
market environments, project-based organizing is
becoming an increasingly important mode of
organization in knowledge-intensive industries
(e.g. Bouncken, 2011; Bryde, 2005; Eisenhardt
and Tabrizi, 1995; Whittington et al., 1999). Areas
such as new product development (Eisenhardt and
Tabrizi, 1995), movie production (Jones, 1996),
research and development (Katz, 1982) and aca-
demic knowledge production (Wuchty, Jones and
Uzzi, 2007) all seem to increasingly rely on crea-
tive project teams to perform the primary produc-
tion process. A unique characteristic of these
projects is that they involve groups of people who
are temporarily grouped together around specific
tasks to be solved, after which the team disbands
and may or may not collaborate again in different
compositions later (Baker and Faulkner, 1991;
Sorenson and Waguespack, 2006). This tempo-
rary nature, coupled with high volatility in com-
petition, technologies and client needs, creates a
The authors gratefully acknowledge helpful comments
by Remus Illies, Candy Jones, Joerg Sydow, Ramon
Rico and Petre Curseu. We also thank Sander Smit for
his considerable help in collecting data, and TiasNimbas
Business School for its continuous support for the
project. All remaining errors are our own.
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British Journal of Management, Vol. 24, 383–397 (2013)
DOI: 10.1111/j.1467-8551.2012.00810.x
© 2012 The Author(s)
British Journal of Management © 2012 British Academy of Management. Published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd,
9600 Garsington Road, Oxford OX4 2DQ, UK and 350 Main Street, Malden, MA, 02148, USA.
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