Resumen de Customer focus competencies and the dynamics of project teams

Velimir Bole, Laura Fink, Janez Prasnikar

• We investigate the role of the customer focus (CF) competencies of project teams in achieving the strategic intent of marketing in a company. In an exceptional reach study of more than 1500 teams in a construction company over the period 2006–2012, we found that the construction project teams with better CF competency assessments perform better. In addition, due to the rich longitudinal database, the research provides new results on the mechanisms and interactions among team members. We show that the entire team contributes evenly to the achievement of quality goals (conjunctive tasks), while team members with better customer competency assessments contribute significantly more to the achievement of the budget and deadline goals (disjunctive tasks). We also provide support to the view that the achievement of the budget and quality goals does not diverge during the crisis period compared to the pre-crisis period. However, the reduction of funds for investment projects during the crisis profoundly affected the deadline goal and the completion of projects. Finally, our research shows that when one or several team members perform more team roles, team performance is likely to improve, while the effects of team size on team performance are not conclusive.