Procrastination phenomenon in virtual project team members

Abstract

The modern world sets high requirements for work structure. Therefore, a great number of services become outsourcing. In order to reduce their charges, various enterprises found virtual project teams (PT). The main problems in this decision are connected with high necessity of PT members’ self-regulation. One of the reasons of PT members’ self-regulation failure is procrastination phenomenon. Over 15-25% of people demonstrate procrastination behaviour. Procrastination can be analysed as a type of inadequate coping behaviour, and it correlates with high level of stress. Thus, the main purpose of this research is to analyze the procrastination phenomenon in PT members with different job stress level.

We collected the following data: objective measures (age, gender); General Procrastination Scale (Lay, 1986); Job Diagnostic Survey (Hackman, Oldham, 1980); Survey for actual and chronic stress manifestation assessment (Leonova, 2004). 52 respondents from several PTs were under study. Subjects show high level of stress manifestation and moderate level of procrastination. Regression analysis was also conducted (adj. R-squared=0.457, p<0.001). Only appraisal of chronic resource exhaustion and job experience emerged as significant predictors of procrastination. Conducted research should help in PT members’ job organization in order to protect them from deadline breakdowns.