Peculiarities of the formation of informal institutions in the process of project team activity

Abstract

Purpose: to investigate the specific features of the informal institutions that are formed in the process of the project team activity. Discussion: there are a lot of discussions in scientific literature about new institutions that are created in the process of informal group functioning based on the manager’s leadership and shared values. Most attention is paid to their advantages. To a lesser extent the disadvantages inherent in such institutions have been studied. Results: the conducted institutional reconstruction of the project team activity shows that the set of rules of its formation and functioning can be characterized as an institution of «spontaneous communication of interests» that has positive characteristics from the functional point of view: the team members share common understanding of the project mission and goals; the decisions are made on the basis of consensus; mutual assistance is realized in the team; the activity intensity of informal leader (project manager) is high. Negative characteristics of this institution: role functions are fulfilled with different degree of intensity; collective responsibility has been formed, with passive, unproductive participants; the level of loyalty to its ineffective participants is unreasonably high; the group is vulnerable to «penetration» of persons who do not share its values or can not defend and implement them in practice; the level of conflict in the group is rather high.