Investigation of team composition and task-related conflict as determinants of engineering service productivity

Although the early phases of engineering service projects are essential for product success, methods and tools to proactively and comprehensively evaluate the productivity of complex service processes are rare. In this paper the effects of team composition in terms of age diversity and task-related conflict on the outcome of a R&D task are examined in a laboratory experiment. Age heterogeneous and age homogeneous project teams were build and the level of task-related conflict was measured by means of an established instrument as a qualitative team aspect. In the outcome dimension the number of ideas generated during a brainstorming represents the quantitative team performance. To obtain also a quality-oriented view of team performance, the final task results were evaluated by domain experts. This evaluation allows the analysis of the impact of one isolated influence factor on service productivity across the whole chain of value creation within a complex engineering service setting.