Peer Control Interactions: Boundary Spanners Upholding the Paradox of Self-Management

Abstract

Peer control is considered the process whereby team members notice and respond to their peers’ behavior or performance. While peer control occurs during social interactions between team members, research is yet to uncover how team members use direct control tactics to coordinate their interdependent taskwork. We shadowed and studied the interaction dynamics of five agile scrum teams and their meetings over a 18-month period to explore how team members attempt to control each other’s behavior, what drives these attempts, and how peers respond in these situations. Results show that team members in close contact with the customer, so-called Product Owners, controlled their peers most often during daily meetings. They used their position as boundary spanner, which holds information advantages and role ambiguity, to legitimize their coercive control tactics (i.e., threatening peers to quickly deliver high-quality work, directing unsolicited work instructions, and making overruling decisions). While peers responded relatively passively by ignoring, agreeing, joking, or conditionally taking responsibility for the tasks, it did impact the team’s performance both positively and negatively. These findings are in sharp contrast with the principles of agile working (i.e., self-management, lack of hierarchy, and team/individual autonomy). Our study contributes to developing a better theoretical understanding of peer control interactions, sheds light on the influential control tactics of boundary spanners, plus reveals crucial trade-offs that peers make when formulating their reactions.