The Effects of Group Longevity on Project Communication and Performance

In his research on engineering project teams, for example, Allen (1977) carefully demonstrated that only 11 percent of the sources of new ideas and information could be attributed to written media; the rest ocurred through interpersonal communications. This study investigated the communication behaviors and performances of 50 R&D project groups that varied in terms of group longevity, as measured by the average length of time project members had worked together. Analyses revealed that project groups became increasingly isolated from key information sources both within and outside their organizations with increasing stability in project membership. Such reductions in project communication were also shown to affect adversely the technical performance of project groups. Furthermore, variations in communication activities were more associated with the tenure composition of project groups than with the project tenures of individual engineers. These findings are presented and discussed in the more general terms of what happens in project groups with increasing group longevity.