Team self-regulation and meeting deadlines in project teams: antecedents and effects of temporal consensus

In a longitudinal study among 48 project teams, we investigated how temporal consensus (i.e., the extent to which team members have a shared understanding of the temporal aspects of their collective task) affects the ability of teams to establish coordinated action and meet deadlines. In addition, we examined temporal planning, temporal reminders, and temporal reflexivity as antecedents of temporal consensus. Our findings indicate that temporal consensus facilitates meeting deadlines through improved coordinated action. Furthermore, the development of temporal consensus is promoted by temporal planning in early project stages and by an increase in the exchange of temporal reminders in later project stages. Temporal reflexivity does not contribute to temporal consensus. Rather, our findings suggest that teams engage in reflexivity because they disagree about time.

Keywords: Self-regulation; Deadlines; Project teams; Consensus