Leadership in Partially Distributed Emergency Response Software Development Teams

Emergency response and preparedness teams that are inter-organizational or international often work together in partially distributed teams (PDTs). A PDT has at least one collocated subteam and at least two subteams that are geographically distributed. Leadership configuration and behaviors present unique challenges in PDTs. This paper describes preliminary results of an initial field experiment with international student teams undertaken to examine leadership in PDTs working on high-level requirements for an emergency preparedness information system. Leadership is viewed through the lens of what leader behaviors, or roles, are enacted by the leaders. Leadership configuration was varied: some teams had just an overall team leader; others had no team leader but had a leader for each subteam, while others had both team and subteam leaders. The findings suggest that leadership configuration matters and that leaders do enact roles similar to those found in studies of fully distributed or traditional collocated teams.