Interdependence and Controversy in Group Decision Making: Antecedents to Effective Self-Managing Teams

Psychological capital's mediation of anxiety-related patterns of thinking and academic adjustment among university students

Objective: The study examined psychological capital's (PsyCap) role in the relations between anxiety-related patterns of thinking (rumination, obsessive-compulsive disorder, test anxiety) and students' academic adjustment. It argued the relations are not direct but are mediated by PsyCap. Participants: Participants were 250 s-year or higher university undergraduates in Israel; 60.4% in second year, 35.6% in third, 4% in fourth; 111 men (44%), 139 women (56%); age 18-40 years (mean age = 25, SD = 2.52). Participants were recruited through flyers distributed on campus. Methods: Six questionnaires tested study hypotheses: one gathered demographic information; five assessed anxiety-related patterns of thinking, PsyCap, and academic adjustment. Results: Findings showed PsyCap mediated relations between anxiety-related patterns of thinking (rumination, obsessive-compulsive disorder, test anxiety) and academic adjustment and was a crucial factor in explaining variance in academic adjustment. Conclusions: University policymakers may consider developing short-term intervention programs to foster PsyCap and thus possibly promote students' academic adjustment.

How does differential leadership affect team decision-making effectiveness? The role of thriving at work and cooperative goal perception

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to explore the mechanism and boundary conditions in the relationship between differential leadership and team decision-making effectiveness.

Design/methodology/approach

A total of 366 valid questionnaires were received from employees of high-tech enterprises in China, regression-based moderation and bootstrapping analyses were adapted to analyze data and test hypotheses by using the PROCESS syntax in SPSS software.

Findings

Differential leadership can positively contribute to team decision-making effectiveness, and thriving at work mediates the relationship between the two, and cooperative goal perception plays a moderating role in the relationship between thriving at work and team decision-making effectiveness and cooperative goal perception moderate the mediating effect of thriving at work between differential leadership and team decision-making effectiveness.

Practical implications

The findings suggest that managers need to focus on leadership style to promote improved team decision-making effectiveness by enhancing thriving at work and cooperative goal perception.

Originality/value

Overall, this study is based on the conservation of resources theory to uncover the “black box” between differential leadership and team decision-making effectiveness and to highlight the important role of thriving at work and cooperative goal perception.

Development and Psychometric Testing of a Taiwanese Team Interactions and Team Creativity Instrument (TITC-T) for Nursing Students

Background: How well team members work together can be affected by team interactions and creativity. There is no single instrument for measuring both variables in healthcare education settings in Taiwan. The purpose of this study is to develop an instrument to measure team interactions and team creativity for Taiwanese nursing students. Methods: A 34-item team interactions and team creativity self-report instrument was developed for nursing students in Taiwan (TITC-T). Items consisted of statements about how a participant perceived their team members’ constructive controversy, helping behaviors, communication, and creativity. Nursing students (n = 275) were recruited from two campuses of a science and technology university to examine the psychometric properties of the TITC-T. The reliability and psychometric properties were evaluated. Results: The Cronbach’s alpha was 0.98. The confirmatory factor analysis resulted in a one-dimensional factor structure that fit well with the model (Comparative Fit Index = 0.995, Tucker Lewis Index = 0.908, Root Mean Square Error of Approximation = 0.098). Conclusions: The TITC-T is a valid and reliable tool for evaluating team interactions and team creativity for students enrolled in nursing programs in Taiwan.

Building resilience in oncology teams: Protocol for a realist evaluation of multiple cases

Background

Teams caring for people living with cancer face many difficult clinical situations that are compounded by the pandemic and can have serious consequences on professional and personal life. This study aims to better understand how a multi-component intervention builds resilience in oncology teams. The intervention is based on a salutogenic approach, theories and empirical research on team resilience at work. This intervention research involves partnership between researchers and stakeholders in defining situations of adversity and solutions appropriate to context.

Methods

The principles of realist evaluation are used to develop context-mechanism-outcome configurations of a multi-component intervention developed by researchers and field partners concerned with the resilience of oncology teams. The multiple case study involves oncology teams in natural contexts in four healthcare establishments in Québec (Canada). Qualitative and quantitative methods are employed. Qualitative data from individual interviews, group interviews and observation are analyzed using thematic content analysis. Quantitative data are collected through validated questionnaires measuring team resilience at work and its effect on teaming processes and cost-effectiveness. Integration of these data enables the elucidation of associations between intervention, context, mechanism and outcome.

Discussion

The study will provide original data on contextual factors and mechanisms that promote team resilience in oncology settings. It suggests courses of action to better manage difficult situations that arise in a specialized care sector, minimize their negative effects and learn from them, during and after the waves of the pandemic. The mechanisms for problem resolution and arriving at realistic solutions to professional workforce and team effectiveness challenges can help improve practices in other settings.

Status Competition and Implicit Coordination: Based on the Role of Knowledge Sharing and Psychological Safety

Implicit coordination is an important research topic in the field of social cognition. Previous studies have studied implicit coordination behavior from the perspective of team mental model but ignored the internal mechanism of individual status competition motivation on implicit coordination behavior. Based on the differences of status competition motivation, the individual status competition motivation is divided into prestige-type and dominant-type. With knowledge sharing as the mediating variable and psychological safety as the moderating variable, this research constructed a process model of the influence of status competition motivation on implicit coordination behavior. The empirical study was carried out with a sample of 367 employees of 44 enterprises. The research results show the following findings: (1) Status competition has a differentiated impact on implicit coordination. Prestige-type status competition has a significant positive impact on implicit coordination behavior, while dominant-type status competition has a significant negative impact on implicit coordination behavior. (2) Knowledge sharing plays a mediating role between status competition (prestige-type status competition and dominant-type status competition) and implicit coordination. (3) Psychological safety positively moderates the relationship between prestige-type status competition, dominant-type status competition, and knowledge sharing. The research results provide a new perspective for the field of implicit coordination; reveal the mechanism of status competition motivation in implicit coordination, which is of great significance to the practice of enterprise team management and human resource management.

How Do Team Cooperative Goals Influence Thriving at Work: The Mediating Role of Team Time Consensus

Thriving at work is beneficial to the physical and mental health of individuals, promotes the innovation and development of organizations, and is a shield against job burnout. However, the current research on the antecedents of thriving at work lacks the exploration of team characteristics. This study introduces team temporal leadership as a moderating variable and team time consensus as a mediating variable to explore the relationship between team cooperative goals and thriving at work. Based on the analysis of 326 data from 92 teams, the results showed that: (1) Team cooperative goals have a significant positive impact on team time consensus, and team time consensus has a significant positive impact on team thriving at work; (2) Team time consensus mediates the relationship between team cooperative goals and team thriving at work; and (3) Team temporal leadership not only moderated the relationship between team cooperative goals and team time consensus, but also moderated the indirect effect of team cooperative goals on team thriving at work through team time consensus. This study enriches the research on the triggering mechanism of thriving at work to some extent and provides enlightenment for organizations to stimulate the state of thriving at work.

Individual Competencies for Self-Managing Team Performance: A Systematic Literature Review

Self-managing teams are popular but they can only benefit team performance if their members are competent to navigate within self-managing systems. Based on a systematic literature search on self-managing, self-directing, and self-leading teams, we reviewed 84 studies related to KSAOs and traits in self-managing teams. Grounded on existing models of team effectiveness and individual KSAOs, we integrated all findings into one KSAO model and showed the relations of single KSAOs with team performance. The results resembled other KSAO frameworks but were more comprehensive and provided practical application and future research guidance, for example, studying team compositions of individual KSAOs.

Expertise Diversity, Informal Leadership Hierarchy, and Team Knowledge Creation: A study of pharmaceutical research collaborations

Knowledge creation increasingly requires experts from diverse domains to collaborate in teams, yet the effect of expertise diversity on team knowledge creation is inconclusive. We focus on task uncertainty and informal leadership hierarchies – the disparity in team members’ engagement in leadership activities (task- and relationship-oriented) – to answer the questions when and why expertise diversity may hinder team knowledge creation. We develop a model in which informal leadership hierarchy mediates the conditional indirect effect of the team’s expertise diversity on its knowledge creation under different levels of task uncertainty. We test this moderated mediation model using multi-source data from self-managing project teams comprising collaborators from a pharmaceutical company and its research partners. We find that when task uncertainty is low, the indirect effect of expertise diversity on team knowledge creation is positive, whereas when task uncertainty is high, it is negative. This conditional indirect effect occurs via task-oriented but not relationship-oriented leadership hierarchy. Our findings provide insights into the mechanisms and boundary conditions for expertise diversity to hinder, rather than facilitate, knowledge creation in collaborations.

The relationship between swift trust and interaction behaviors on interdisciplinary and non-interdisciplinary teams in nursing education

The extent to which team interdisciplinarity affects trust and communicative interaction behaviors in healthcare settings has received limited attention. Undergraduate nursing students must understand and work with interdisciplinary team-based dynamics. This study examined the relationship between swift trust and interaction behaviors among nursing student teams and explored whether team interdisciplinarity moderated that relationship. In this cross-sectional, comparative, quantitative, descriptive study, students from a Nursing program (n = 63) at one university and a Design program (n = 65) at another university in Taiwan comprised the interdisciplinary group. Remaining nursing students (n = 147) comprised the non-interdisciplinary group. Self-report questionnaires included 10 items to assess perceived team swift trust (cognition-based and affect-based) and 24 items to assess students' interaction behaviors (constructive controversy, helping behaviors, and spontaneous communication). Canonical correlation analysis showed the teams' cognition-based-but not affect-based-trust correlated positively with each interaction behavior. Moderation models indicated that the interdisciplinary team negatively moderated the relationship between teams' cognition-based trust and constructive controversy. In conclusion, team members' higher perceived cognition-based trust is associated with higher perceived interaction behaviors, but team interdisciplinarity may negatively impact that relationship. Nursing educators may use these insights to improve outcomes for both educational and professional healthcare teams.

Conflict and interactions on interdisciplinary nursing student teams: The moderating effects of spontaneous communication

BACKGROUND

Recently, empirical researchers have observed direct associations between conflict and interaction behaviors within organizational teams. However, research concerning indirect links between conflict and interaction behaviors on interdisciplinary teams in nursing school is scant, particularly in Taiwan.

OBJECTIVES

The aim of this study was to explore the relationships among various types of conflict and interaction behaviors on interdisciplinary nursing education teams.

DESIGN, SETTING, AND PARTICIPANTS

This study utilized a cross-sectional, quantitative, descriptive design. The authors collected survey data from 99 nursing students who participated in 18-week capstone courses of small interdisciplinary groups collaborating to design healthcare products in Taiwan during 2018 and 2019.

METHODS

Questionnaires assessed the nursing students' perceptions about their teams' conflicts (of task, process, and relationship), and interaction behaviors (constructive controversy, helping behaviors, and spontaneous communication). The authors used descriptive statistics to compare demographics, conflict scores, and interaction behavior scores for collocated and distributed interdisciplinary teams. A Pearson's analysis identified correlations among the variables and their components, and the SPSS PROCESS macro showed moderating effects of spontaneous communication on the relationship between distributed team and conflict subscales.

RESULTS

After confirming the distributed team experienced significantly more conflict than the collocated team, we found significant negative correlations between constructive controversy and both process conflict and relationship conflict on the distributed team. Another interaction behavior, spontaneous communication, had a moderating effect on the relationships between the distributed team and both task conflict and relationship conflict.

CONCLUSION

In interdisciplinary educational settings for nursing students, spontaneous communication may moderate the types of conflict that distributed teams are more likely than collocated teams to experience. Constructive controversy may be especially effective at mitigating conflict on distributed teams. Nursing educators may refer to these insights to improve outcomes for educational interdisciplinary healthcare teams.

An empirical study of the impact of goal orientation on individual ambidexterity – moderating roles of goal interdependence and constructive controversy

Purpose

Ambidexterity is the source of organizational sustainable development and long-term success. However, understanding the role of individual ambidexterity in organizations remains underdeveloped. Recently, scholars have increasingly emphasized the importance of individual ambidexterity, calling for more research on the topic. This study aims to explore the factors influencing individual ambidexterity. It proposed that goal orientation would be related to individual ambidexterity, and perceived cooperative goal interdependence and constructive controversy would play moderating roles in this relationship.

Design/methodology/approach

The paper opted for a survey study. Questionnaires were distributed to enterprise managers from a part-time MBA program at a university located in Beijing, China. They were also asked to bring copies to their colleagues, so they could fill them out. The authors obtained 229 valid questionnaires and used hierarchical regression analysis to test the relationships.

Findings

The results revealed that both learning goal orientation and performance goal orientation were significantly and positively related to individual ambidexterity. Perceived cooperative goal interdependence and constructive controversy positively moderated the relationship between learning goal orientation/ performance goal orientation and individual ambidexterity.

Practical implications

The paper provides beneficial suggestions for both managers and employees. It offers a reference for managers regarding how to promote employee ambidexterity. It also provides suggestions for employee career development.

Originality/value

The paper explored the factors influencing ambidextrous activities at the individual level, a very scare approach in extant studies. It also constructed a systematic process mechanism of individual ambidexterity, integrating both internal and external factors.

Co-creating a program for teams to maintain and reflect on their flexibility

To prevent rigidity within teams in health care and to support teams in detecting early warning signs of decreasing flexibility, a program has been co-created in collaboration with mental healthcare teams. This program is intended to systematically monitor team behavior, and by doing so to facilitate team intervention. We aim to lay foundations for the further development of methods that can help teams to recognize and respond to processes going on under the surface. This paper introduces the program to the reader; and describes its premises and the co-creation process, leading to a program of nine steps. Then, it describes the application of the program within a team, what a team needs to use the program, and whether the nine steps are sufficient. This pilot shows that the program is a helpful framework within which teams can talk about rigidity, define indicators of their flexibility, and think about appropriate actions and interventions for maintaining or restoring their flexibility. Team ownership and the customizability of the program are important attributes. The program appears to provide a useful framework that helps a team to observe and discuss processes. Team members become aware of the indicators of their team and make their goals explicit.

Exposure to Ideas, Evaluation Apprehension, and Incubation Intervals in Collaborative Idea Generation

This study focused on the social factors and cognitive processes that influence collaborative idea generation, using the research paradigm of group idea generation, evaluation apprehension, and incubation. Specifically, it aimed to explore the impact of exposure to others' ideas, evaluation apprehension, and incubation intervals on collaborative idea generation through three experiments. The results showed that in the process of generating ideas in a group, exposure to others' ideas and evaluation apprehension can lead to productivity deficits in the number and categories of ideas, without affecting the novelty of ideas. Further, exposure to others' ideas and evaluation apprehension had an interaction effect on the number of ideas. As compared with the situation without exposure to others' idea, in that with exposure to others' idea, evaluation apprehension had a weaker impact on the productivity of the number of ideas. Furthermore, incubation intervals were beneficial in reducing the negative effect of exposure to others' ideas and in improving collaborative idea generation productivity.

Participative leadership and job satisfaction

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is twofold: first, to examine the relationships between participative leadership and employees’ work engagement and job satisfaction; and second, to determine whether the level of fun experienced at work moderates the effect of participative leadership on job satisfaction.

Design/methodology/approach

The participants were 177 employees in a retailing store in Hong Kong. Hierarchical multiple regression was conducted with the control variables to ascertain the relationships among participative leadership, level of fun experienced at work, work engagement and job satisfaction.

Findings

The results indicated that participative leadership was positively related to employees’ work engagement and job satisfaction. Employees’ work engagement mediated the relationship between participative leadership and job satisfaction. This positive relationship between participative leadership and job satisfaction was stronger when employees had more fun at work.

Research limitations/implications

The generalizability of the data was limited, as the characteristics of participants in a retail store are distinct from others in the service industry.

Practical implications

This paper’s findings imply that participative leaders can engage in role modeling by providing more fun workplace activities to employees, which will increase their work engagement and job satisfaction.

Originality/value

The findings help to explain the relationship between participative leadership and job satisfaction, provide a better understanding of leadership management styles and show that participative leaders who engage employees in fun activities in the workplace can increase employees’ job satisfaction.

Towards sustainable local welfare systems: The effects of functional heterogeneity and team autonomy on team processes in Dutch neighbourhood teams

Nowadays, many European countries delegate health and social care responsibilities from the national level to local authorities. In January 2015, the Netherlands similarly introduced a policy programme authorising municipalities to set their own social welfare policy. A specific feature of this programme is that it stimulates municipalities to implement teams wherein professionals from different disciplines are collectively responsible for a team's decision-making. This suggests that teams ideally have (a) high levels of functional heterogeneity (professionals from different disciplines) and (b) high levels of team autonomy (collective responsibility and decision-making). Based on the policy programme, it can be further assumed that (a) information elaboration, (b) boundary management and (c) team cohesion in teams will improve. In practice, the majority (87%) of Dutch municipalities implemented neighbourhood teams in January 2015. A common feature of these neighbourhood teams is that the various professionals are collectively responsible for all the curative and preventive healthcare, social work and voluntary social support of the citizens in a specific neighbourhood. Nevertheless, the structure and organisation of neighbourhood teams (including the level of functional heterogeneity and team autonomy) vary within and between municipalities. Given this situation, our aim was to examine to what extent functional heterogeneity and team autonomy influence information elaboration, boundary management and team cohesion in neighbourhood teams. We developed six hypotheses based on literature that were then tested on data collected (between May 2016 and January 2017) through an online survey from 1335 professionals in 170 neighbourhood teams. An SEM analysis showed a positive effect of team autonomy on information elaboration, boundary management and team cohesion. Results further showed a negative effect of functional heterogeneity on information elaboration and boundary management. The implications of these findings for practitioners and academics are discussed.

The dynamic relationship between multiple team membership and individual job performance in knowledge-intensive work

Many employees in modern, knowledge-based organizations are concurrently involved in more than one team at the same time. This study investigated whether a within-person change in such individual multiple team membership (MTM) may precede and may be predicted by changes in an employee's overall job performance. We examined this reciprocal relationship using longitudinal archival data from a large knowledge-intensive organization, comprising 1,875 employees and spanning 5 consecutive years. A latent change score model demonstrated that an increase in an employee's MTM was associated with a subsequent decrease in his or her overall job performance evaluations. By contrast, an increase in job performance was associated with a subsequent increase in an employee's MTM. Moreover, our results indicated that although an increase in an individual employee's MTM initially decreases his or her job performance, in the long run, this increase in MTM was associated with higher job performance. Together, these results suggest a dynamic association between an individual employee's MTM and his or her overall job performance, such that these variables are mutually connected in a highly complex manner over time.

Nurses' psychological empowerment: An integrative approach

AIM

To investigate the role of psychological empowerment as a mediator between authentic leadership and organisational citizenship behaviours (OCB), tardiness, absenteeism and intent to leave.

BACKGROUND

Despite the extensive literature on predictors and outcomes of psychological empowerment, there is a lack of studies on the nursing profession using an integrative model, simultaneously focusing on the effects of authentic leadership and psychological empowerment on OCB, and time-related misbehaviours.

METHOD

Data were collected from 172 nurses in 28 Israeli public hospitals from questionnaires, and tardiness and absenteeism records. We tested our model using structural equation modelling (SEM).

RESULTS

Nurses' perceptions of their head nurses as authentic leaders positively predicted psychological empowerment, while psychological empowerment positively predicted their OCB, tardiness and intent to leave the hospital. Psychological empowerment partially mediates the relationship between the nurses' perceptions of their head nurses as authentic leaders and OCB, tardiness and intent to leave the hospital.

CONCLUSIONS

Nurses' psychological empowerment and their head nurses' authentic leadership may increase the nurses' OCB, while simultaneously holding opposing behaviours.

IMPLICATIONS FOR NURSING MANAGEMENT

Nursing management should use the study measures to evaluate factors that can affect their nurses' effectiveness, including developing training programs to increase nurses' OCB.

Transforming cross-cultural conflict into collaboration

Purpose

Scholarly research provides few insights into how integrating the western values of individualism and low power distance with the eastern values of collectivism and high power distance may influence cross-cultural conflict management. Following the framework of the theory of cooperation and competition, the purpose of this paper is to directly examine the impacts of organization-level collectivism and individualism, as well as high and low power distance, to determine the interactive effects of these four factors on cross-cultural conflict management.

Design/methodology/approach

This is a 2×2 experiment study. Data were collected from a US laboratory experiment with 80 participants.

Findings

American managers working in a company embracing western low power distance and eastern collectivism values were able to manage conflict cooperatively with their Chinese workers. Moreover, American managers working in a company valuing collectivism developed more trust with Chinese workers, and those in a company culture with high power distance were more interested in their workers’ viewpoints and more able to reach integrated solutions.

Originality/value

This study is an interdisciplinary research applying the social psychology field’s theory of cooperation and competition to the research on employee-manager, cross-cultural conflict management (which are industrial relations and organizational behavior topics, respectively), with an eye to the role of cultural adaptation. Furthermore, this study included an experiment to directly investigate the interactions between American managers and Chinese workers discussing work distribution conflict in four different organizational cultures.

Pulling together and pulling apart: influences of convergence and divergence on distributed healthcare teams

Effective healthcare requires both competent individuals and competent teams. With this recognition, health professions education is grappling with how to factor team competence into training and assessment strategies. These efforts are impeded, however, by the absence of a sophisticated understanding of the the relationship between competent individuals and competent teams . Using data from a constructivist grounded theory study of team-based healthcare for patients with advanced heart failure, this paper explores the relationship between individual team members' perceived goals, understandings, values and routines and the collective competence of the team. Individual interviews with index patients and their healthcare team members formed Team Sampling Units (TSUs). Thirty-seven TSUs consisting of 183 interviews were iteratively analysed for patterns of convergence and divergence in an inductive process informed by complex adaptive systems theory. Convergence and divergence were identifiable on all teams, regularly co-occurred on the same team, and involved recurring themes. Convergence and divergence had nonlinear relationships to the team's collective functioning. Convergence could foster either shared action or collective paralysis; divergence could foster problematic incoherence or productive disruption. These findings advance our understanding of the complex relationship between the individual and the collective on a healthcare team, and they challenge conventional narratives of healthcare teamwork which derive largely from acute care settings and emphasize the importance of common goals and shared mental models. Complex adaptive systems theory helps us to understand the implications of these insights for healthcare teams' delivery of care for the complex, chronically ill.

Mutual Monitoring of Resources in an Enterprise Systems Program

During the implementation of IT programs, competition among project managers for the scarce resources required for the completion of individual projects is a common phenomenon. To avoid such self-interested resource competition among individual project managers, according to agency theory, resource monitoring among project managers can serve as an effective management mechanism for effective resource conflict resolution within a program. Furthermore, team cognition theory suggests that an understanding of goals for each project among project managers can also serve as a solid foundation for effective resource monitoring. Social interdependence theory also suggests that positive goal interdependence among projects within a program can motivate project managers to engage in cooperative interactions, allowing them to accomplish individual project goals as well as the overall program's goals. Based on a survey of 146 enterprise system implementation programs, the results of this study confirm that mutual resource monitoring among project managers is positively associated with final program implementation efficiency. Goal understanding among project managers, as well as goal interdependence, is positively associated with the effectiveness of resource monitoring among project managers within the implementation program.

Guanxi’s Contribution to Commitment and Productive Conflict Between Banks and Small and Medium Enterprises in China

Guanxi has long been thought to play a critical role in understanding and practicing leadership, teamwork, and organizational partnerships in China. Researchers have argued that guanxi can be usefully understood as a kind of close relationship that obliges partners to assist each other. This study proposes that the theory of cooperation and competition as developed in the West can help us to understand how guanxi affects partner relationships. Findings from data on partnerships between banks and small or medium enterprises in Shanghai support the argument that guanxi strengthens cooperative goals, which in turn results in relationship commitment and productive conflict. Our study’s findings suggest that partners with guanxi interact in mutually beneficial ways that enhance their cooperative goals. Further research is needed to provide a stronger foundation for the causal inferences of these findings, and to investigate whether guanxi as it is known in China can also serve to develop cooperative goals, relationship commitment, and productive conflict among partnerships in other Asian societies and in the West.

Perceptions of Turning Points and Dialectical Interpretations in Organizational Team Development

This study examined perceptions of turning points and six dialectical contradictions for organizational team development. Sixty-three team members were interviewed utilizing a revised version of the Retrospective Interview Technique (RIT). After turning points were identified, a questionnaire was administered to determine the centrality or importance of six dialectical contradictions for each turning point. The six contradictions were autonomy versus connection, predictability versus novelty, openness versus closedness, team versus individual, dominance versus submission, and competence versus incompetence. Turning point types clustered around issues of cohesion, project development, socialization, member change, competence, workload, and conflict. Questionnaire results revealed that team versus individual and competence versus incompetence were rated as significantly more important and dominance versus submission was significantly less important than the other three contradictions.

The Big Five Personality Traits and Individual Satisfaction With the Team

Relationships between team composition in terms of team members' Big Five personality traits and individual satisfaction with the team after project completion were researched. Questionnaires were filled out by 310 undergraduate students ( N= 68 teams) working on an engineering design assignment. Individual satisfaction with the team was regressed onto individual, dissimilarity, and interaction scores. A positive main effect was found for individual agreeableness and emotional stability and for dissimilarity in conscientiousness. A moderation of the main effect of dissimilarity was found for extraversion: Satisfaction with the team is negatively related to dissimilarity to the other team members only for members low in extraversion.

Self-Managing Teamwork and Psychological Well-Being

In this article, we present a qualitative discussion of 28 empirical studies on self-managing team-work and psychological well-being. We address three questions: (a) Which variables did they include and which results did they obtain?; (b) How did authors deal with issues of level of theory, measurement, and analysis?; and (c) Do such level issues affect the results of the studies? This review demonstrates that only job satisfaction is consistently related to self-managing teamwork. In addition, authors often fail to specify the level of their theory, thereby impeding judgment on the appropriateness of analysis procedures. Finally, we present preliminary evidence that level issues may affect the results. We plead for the incorporation of multilevel theory andanalysistechniquesintothefieldofself-managingteamworkandpsychologicalwell-being.

Managing Anger and Annoyance in Organizations in China

Results from critical incidents, developed through diaries of organizational members in China, support the social cognitive perspective's emphasis on the role of cognitions in the experience and response to anger and suggest that this perspective is a potential foundation for managing anger. Findings indicate that the open-minded discussion (constructive controversy) of the anger and annoyance incidents confirms social face and strengthens relationships. These productive dynamics and outcomes were found to occur when organizational members felt cooperatively interdependent. Results were interpreted as suggesting that even in a society where collectivist and conflict-negative values are influential, anger and annoyance can be constructively managed through an open-minded discussion of the incident.

Reflexivity for Team Innovation in China

Teams that can manage their internal functioning may be able to continue to work effectively so that they innovate. This study suggests that cooperative but not competitive or independent goals are a foundation for effective team reflexivity. Two hundred employees in 100 work teams in China completed measures of their team’s goal interdependence (cooperative, competitive, and independent) and reflexivity. The managers of these 100 teams rated their team’s innovation. Results support the theorizing that cooperative goals can contribute to team reflexivity. Structural equation analysis suggested that cooperative but not competitive or independent goals promote reflexivity that in turn results in team innovation. These results, coupled with previous research, were interpreted as suggesting that cooperative goals and reflexivity are complementary foundations for team innovation.

Group Risk Taking

Considerable research has suggested that because of persistent cognitive biases organizations often lack the ability and discipline to take risks effectively. However, group members who discuss their opposing views openly for mutual benefit (constructive controversy) may be able to manage risks effectively. Members of 107 teams working in Chinese organizations indicated their constructive controversy and risk taking; their manager provided ratings of the group's innovation and recovery from mistakes. Results of the structural equation analysis supported the reasoning that constructive controversy can facilitate risk taking that, in turn, promotes innovation and recovery.

Have you experienced fun in the workplace?

Purpose

This purpose of this study is to examine the relationship between workplace fun, trust-in-management, employee satisfaction and whether the level of fun experienced at work moderates the effects.

Design/methodology/approach

Data were collected from a sample of 240 frontline staff in a large-scale retail store in Hong Kong.

Findings

The results show that trust-in-management mediates the relationship between workplace fun and employee job satisfaction. Additionally, employees who experience a high level of fun in the workplace have a greater effect on workplace fun, trust-in-management and job satisfaction.

Research limitations/implications

The main limitation of this study is that it collects data from a self-reported single source in a cross-sectional survey design.

Practical implications

Because workplace fun helps organizations promote employee trust and job satisfaction, organizations should provide more enjoyable activities for employees to participate in.

Originality/value

This study provides a new insight into the effects of workplace fun on employees’ trust-in-management and job satisfaction.

Principal leadership and school capacity effects on teacher learning in Hong Kong

Purpose

– Over the past decade, studies of school leadership effects have increasingly aimed at identifying and validating the paths through which principal leadership impacts key teaching and learning processes in schools. A recent meta-analysis by Robinson and colleagues identified principal practices that shape teacher professional development experiences in schools as the highest impact path used by instructional leaders. The purpose of this paper is to examine relationships between principal leadership, dimensions of school capacity, and teacher professional learning in 32 Hong Kong primary schools.

Design/methodology/approach

– The study employed a cross-sectional research design and quantitative methods to analyze teacher perceptions of principal leadership and key school conditions. The research employed hierarchical linear regression analysis to explore survey data collected from a sample of 970 teachers. The surveys covered a range of principal leadership and school capacity dimensions, as well as a measure of teacher professional learning.

Findings

– Results indicated that multiple dimensions of principal leadership made significant contributions to both school capacity and teacher professional learning. The presence of cooperation, trust, communication, support for students, and alignment, coherence, and structure in schools also affected teacher professional learning.

Research limitations/implications

– These findings contribute to the global discourse on leadership for learning. The study addresses the need established by multiple scholars (e.g. Leithwood, Hallinger, Heck, Robinson, Witziers) for research that further illuminates “paths” and “intermediate targets” through which leadership impacts teaching and learning. The findings elaborate on the means by which leadership can enhance school capacities that directly impact teacher classroom practice and student learning. Consistent with other scholarly research (e.g. Bryk and Schneider, Louis and colleagues, Sahphier and King) the findings also point toward the importance of establishing selected workplace conditions (e.g. trust, cooperation, communication) as a foundation for fostering teacher professional learning.

Practical implications

– The study reinforces the finding from other studies that it is productive for principals to foster an environment aimed at enhancing teacher professionalism. The study also highlights the potentially dysfunctional consequences that can arise from competing system-level initiatives aimed at increasing monitoring and teacher accountability and fostering teacher professionalism.

Originality/value

– The study contributes to a small but growing body of leadership effects research conducted in non-Western societies. As such the study offers insights with relevance for understanding leadership processes in other Asian and non-Western cultures.

The predictive validity of the team diagnostic survey

Purpose

– The aims of the present study were to test the predictive validity of the Swedish version of the Team Diagnostic Survey (TDS).

Design/methodology/approach

– A model with both performance and satisfaction was tested with structural equation model (SEM) analyses. Participants completing the survey were employees (N = 214) across three large workplaces. Analyses were done at the group level and data from 33 teams were included in the final data material.

Findings

– Results from validation data indicate that the TDS has satisfactory high Cronbach’s alpha values on most factors. Results from the SEM analyses show a moderate model fit for the main model. Team-level factors predict both performance and satisfaction, while organization and coaching factors do not.

Research limitations/implications

– The present study was limited to a cross-sectional design, but earlier studies have shown that the accuracy of the TDS remains consistent over time. The main purpose of this study was to test the predictive validity of the instrument. Theoretical implications of the study are that a survey can be used to get a valid overall picture of the real-life work team’s effectiveness.

Practical implications

– Practical implications of the study are that communication between researcher and/or consultant and organizational stakeholders is made easier, as the most important factors that affect team effectiveness are identified.

Originality/value

– The work on the development on TDS has shown that it is possible to use a complex instrument to diagnose work groups, and this line of research is leading the way for better instruments.

The Role of Leader Boundary Activities in Enhancing Interdisciplinary Team Effectiveness

This study examined how leaders’ internal and external activities mediate the relationship of functional heterogeneity and interteam goal interdependence to team effectiveness (in-role performance and innovation) in interdisciplinary teams. The results of the structural equation model from a sample of 92 interdisciplinary teams indicate that leaders’ internal activities fully mediate the relationship of team functional heterogeneity and interteam goal interdependence to team in-role performance. The leaders’ external activities were found to fully mediate the relationship of interteam goal interdependence to team innovation. We discuss the implications of these findings for both theory and practice.

Investigating the Relation Between Team Learning and the Team Situation Model

The development of a team situation model (TSM), a shared understanding of the current situation developed by team members moment by moment, and its impact on team effectiveness have received minor attention in team research. This study investigates a moderated mediation model including the relationship between the team learning processes of co-construction and constructive conflict, the TSM, and team effectiveness. Forty-seven emergency management command-and-control teams participated in this field study. Their task was to manage a realistic emergency simulation developed and organized by field experts. The multi-rater approach included ratings of team members, researchers, and field experts. Results show that co-construction is related to the TSM under the condition of high constructive conflict. The TSM predicts team effectiveness in terms of the quality of actions at the incident scene.