Coordination and Task Interdependence during Schedule Adaptation

This article discusses the influence of organizational and behavioral variables on coordination between planners during plan adaptation. Fast communication and mutual alignment are necessary to maintain schedule feasibility in a situation with several schedulers. Therefore, coordination modes are required that facilitate communication and joint problem solving. Moreover, building on interdependence theory, we hypothesize that the schedulers' perceptions of task interdependence influence rescheduling performance. Experimental results indicate that a group decision-making coordination mode enforcing cooperation outperforms a distributed decision-making coordination mode involving emergent alignment. The level of perceived task interdependence explains this better performance. Therefore, perceptions of task interdependence are put forward as an important behavioral factor influencing rescheduling performance, with several important implications for theory and practice. © 2011 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

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