Designed Interdependence, Growing Social Capital and Knowledge Sharing in IS Project Teams

This study brings in the task interdependence as the antecedent for growing team social capital and increasing knowledge sharing among team members in IS project context in which heterogeneous members need to interact very closely. Data collected from 203 IS projects largely confirm the proposed research model. Between the task interdependence and team performance, the team social capital as well as the knowledge sharing among members fully mediates the relationship. Interestingly, direct path from task interdependence onto performance is found to be insignificant, rebutting the suggestions of the work design theory which says well designed interdependence directly increase performance in heterogeneous teams. Findings of our study signify the criticality of the mediating roles of social capital and knowledge sharing. Additionally, it is also confirmed that the social capital grows with time. Also, longer term projects revealed a bit different mechanism than shorter ones. Implications are discussed with limitations and further studies.