Abstract:
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 experiment
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.
