Disentangling the Effects of Team Competences, Team Adaptability, and Client Communication on the Performance of Management Consulting Teams

We examined the effects of organizational district and team contexts on team processes and performance in a longitudinal cross‐level design. As hypothesized, at the team‐level of analysis, interdependence related positively to team performance as partially mediated by processes. Moreover, a cross‐level mediational relationship was evident between the organizational district‐level openness climate and team performance as fully mediated by team processes. In contrast, organizational district‐level multi‐team coordination unexpectedly exhibited a direct cross‐level relationship with team performance. Multi‐team coordination also negatively interacted with team processes as related to team performance, in an exploratory analysis. Results are discussed in terms of the importance of considering both organizational‐district and team contexts as embedding conditions that influence team effectiveness. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Leadership capacity in teams

The interest in team adaptation has continuously increased for both research and organizations. However, whether team experience collected by adapting to prior nonroutine events supports teams to adjust their processes and cognition to later nonroutine events and to perform successfully, remains unclear. Building on theories of team adaptation, we explore the team adaptation process as a whole, the role of updated Transactive Memory System (TMS) under nonroutine conditions and extend their scope towards team adaptation experience (input) and team performance (outcome). Using a between-subjects design, we manipulate team adaptation experience on a sample of 72 teams (288 individuals) completing a team task over four consecutive rounds. In the present laboratory experiment, we test the relations between team adaptation experience, team adaptation process, TMS updating and team performance under nonroutine conditions. The results indicate that team adaptation experience supports TMS updating but not the team adaptation process and team performance. Supporting hitherto theoretical suggestions, findings show that the team adaptation process is positively related to team performance. Results also indicate that the team adaptation process and TMS updating vary with team adaptation experience, demonstrating their dynamic nature. We discuss the theoretical and practical implications of gaining team adaptation experience and highlight the importance of the team adaptation process under nonroutine conditions.

An experiment exploring the effects of team composition on the acquisition and retention of team performance and cognitive skill is reported. Team performance was measured in the context of photographing ground targets in an unmanned aerial vehicle synthetic task environment. Team process was taken as a measure of team cognition. Experimental results include the findings that team mixing and longer retention intervals have a short lived deleterious effect on team performance immediately after the interval, while team mixing has a positive effect on team process after the interval. These findings suggest that changes in team composition and retention interval can lead to improvements in team cognition if a brief decrement in team performance post-interval can be afforded. These results are interpreted as perturbation of established coordination patterns due to team mixing leading to more flexible and adaptive teams. Implications for process-oriented research are also considered.

Purpose The purpose of this study is to investigate the combined effect of gender, trust, leadership style and team integration on entrepreneurial team performance. Through an integrated analysis of gender composition and team processes, we enhance the understanding of the drivers of new venture teams’ performance. Design/methodology/approach We use data collected from multi-player startup simulations involving 52 teams of masters-level students across two countries. We used the fsQCA methodology to perform a configurational analysis of different team composition and processes. This innovative application of the methodology allows us to identify new combinations of gender diversity and team processes that improve team performance. Findings Teams with higher proportions of women who shared leadership were more profitable in several configurations, demonstrating the importance of the relationship between gender and leadership models on performance. Shared leadership resulted in high levels of trust and sense of control, which increased team effectiveness and performance. We found that combining trust with shared leadership consistently resulted in successful positive outcomes, although not all successful teams included these attributes. Originality/value Our findings contribute to renewing the frame of research on new venture team performance that has long revolved around the leadership-cohesion-alignment (LCA) triangle. Although the LCA paradigm certainly improved our understanding of new venture success, it provided only a partial understanding of the organizational and relational context. It offered a restricted view of the sources of cohesion and alignment. We believe that our approach to data analysis based on the fsQCA method allowed us to extend our understanding of the determinants of entrepreneurial team performance.

Information systems (IS) usage by team members within organizational teams is crucial to organizational work. Research shows that in addition to IS use, teams work through a number of processes (e.g., coordination, communication, conflict management, knowledge sharing) and develop emergent states (e.g., cohesion, ambidexterity) that influence their effectiveness. This research theoretically explores the distinction between team processes and emergent states and how they affect team outcomes. Specifically, it focuses on how the emergent state of team ambidexterity mediates the relationship between the team processes of IS usage and coordination and team performance. We conducted an observational study and a quantitative study with 106 team members in 33 teams in an organization. The findings indicate that team ambidexterity mediates the relationship between team IS usage and performance, as well as team coordination and performance. This research contributes to a better understanding of the construct of team ambidexterity and the concepts of team processes and emergent states and their relative roles in affecting team performance in technology-enabled work. We discuss the theoretical implications and contributions of our work and provide avenues for future research.

Managing adaptive performance in teams: Guiding principles and behavioral markers for measurement

In an increasingly complex and changing competitive environment, organizations inevitably face various conflicting demands, such as the contradiction between the psychological needs of employees and the organization's performance requirements. Paradoxical leadership could focus on these competing needs of the organization and employees in multiple ways simultaneously. According to the trickle-down effect of social learning theory, we investigated whether and how paradoxical leadership may increase team adaptation and team performance. The study had a time-lagged survey design and included 254 team members and 60 leaders in 60 work teams in mainland China. The results of the structural equation modeling analysis indicated that paradoxical leadership is an essential predictor of team adaptation and performance, and that inclusive climate is mediating in this relationship. Our findings reveal a mechanism underlying the benefits of paradoxical leadership on team adaptation and team performance from a team-level perspective.

Bringing team improvisation to team adaptation: The combined role of shared temporal cognitions and team learning behaviors fostering team performance

Team adaptation is particularly impactful within extreme and isolated environments, where sudden and abrupt events drastically challenge effective teamwork. To advance the team adaptation literature, we examined how event characteristics influence the relationship between team adaptation processes and team adaptive performance. To do so, we conducted an on-site, multi-study research using sequential explanatory mixed methods and a retrospective event history approach. The first study (based on a quantitative multilevel methodology) was designed to understand how the characteristics of the events influenced team adaptation processes and team adaptive performance (we collected data of 86 events described by 56 informants nested within 21 teams) during one Antarctic Summer Campaign at the South Shetland Islands Archipelago, Antarctica. The second study, based on qualitative methodology focused on thematic analysis, was designed to obtain a detailed description of the relationship between adaptation triggers and team adaptation (we collected data from 20 semi-structured interviews). Overall, our findings highlight that different team processes are significant in shaping perceptions of team adaptive performance, making the modification of transition and interpersonal processes the most critical. We additionally show how these relationships are moderated by the characteristics of adaptation triggers. We discuss the implications of these findings for teams within extreme environments and beyond.

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to describe a study investigating the role of organizational context on the effectiveness of engineering work teams.Design/methodology/approachPrevious research was used to operationalize organizational context and work team effectiveness, and a survey was developed to assess both in this research. This study was conducted within two engineering units of a high‐technology company. In total, 16 teams of engineering knowledge workers participated in the study. Correlation and path analysis were used to investigate both direct and mediated relationships between nine organizational context variables and team effectiveness.FindingsDirect relationships between eight organizational context variables and team member satisfaction and between two organizational context variables and team performance were found. Effects of five variables on team member satisfaction were either fully or partially mediated by team processes (TP).Research limitations/implicationsThis study empirically validated existing models of team effectiveness and identified multiple dimensions of organizational context that are important to the development of effective teams as measured by team member satisfaction and team performance. The study took place within a single organization. Additional research is necessary to generalize the findings.Originality/valueA broader cross‐section of organizational context variables were included in this study than in previous studies. This research contributes to the body of knowledge by empirically studying organizational‐team relationships using intact work teams. This research addressed an increasingly important set of teams – teams of knowledge workers. Finally, this research was designed to specifically test for the existence of a mediating variable (TP).

Multiple contexts shape team activities and how they learn, and group learning is a dynamic construct that reflects a repertoire of potential behaviour. The purpose of this developmental paper is to examine how better learning behaviours in semi–autonomous teams improves the level of team adaptability and performance. The discussion suggests that learning behaviour enables the team to better respond to critical uncertain contexts which in turn improves team adaptability. The overriding theme of the paper is that better team adaptability leads to higher team performance; learning behaviour provides the means by which teams and their members are more adaptable in responding to different contexts. The paper develops a number of hypotheses. The need to understand the link between multiple uncertainty contexts, team adaptability and team learning is important in improving team performance indicating a significant research gap.

PurposeTeam cognition is known to be an important predictor of team process and performance. DeChurch and Mesmer-Magnus (2010) reported the results of an extensive meta-analytic examination into the role of team cognition in team process and performance, and documented the unique contribution of team cognition to these outcomes while controlling for the motivational dynamics of the team. Research on team cognition has exploded since the publication of DeChurch and Mesmer-Magnus’ meta-analysis, which raises the question: to what extent do the effect sizes reported in their 2010 meta-analysis still hold with the inclusion of newly published research? The paper aims to discuss this issue.Design/methodology/approachThe authors updated DeChurch and Mesmer-Magnus’ meta-analytic database with newly published studies, nearly doubling its size, and reran their original analyses examining the role of team cognition in team process and performance.FindingsOverall, results show consistent effects for team cognition in team process and performance. However, whereas originally compilational cognition was more strongly related to both team process and team performance than was compositional cognition, in the updated database, compilational cognition is more strongly related to team process and compositional cognition is more strongly related to team performance.Originality/valueMeta-analyses are only as generalizable as the databases they are comprised of. Periodic updates are necessary to incorporate newly published studies and confirm that prior findings still hold. This study confirms that the findings of DeChurch and Mesmer-Magnus’ (2010) team cognition meta-analysis continue to generalize to today’s teams.

In this paper, we examine the unique effects of situational goal orientation and cultural learning values on team adaptation to change and the moderating role of cultural learning values in the relationship between goal orientation and team performance and adaptation. To do this, we conducted an experiment using a 2 × 2 × 2 repeated-measures factorial design, consisting of high and low levels of learning values, situational goal orientation (i.e., learning goals and performance goals). The experimental task involved two phases: we looked at team performance in Phase 1 and team adaptation to change in Phase 2. Forty 3-person teams were randomly assigned to four experimental conditions and all teams engaged in a complex bridge-planning task. Performance was measured in terms of the quality of the planned bridge. Results showed independent effects of situational goal orientation and cultural learning values on team performance and adaptation to change. Cultural learning values also moderated the relationship between goal orientation and performance and adaptation to change. Finally, the combination of learning goals and high learning values resulted in the highest levels of initial team performance (Phase 1) and adaptation to change and improved performance (Phase 2), as compared to all other examined conditions.

We tested the impact of teammates' team and task mental model sharedness on team processes and performance using 70 undergraduate teams that completed a series of missions on a PC-based flight simulator. Moreover, we considered how the quality of mental models might moderate such relationships. Team processes were found to partially mediate the relationship between task mental model sharedness and team performance. Although team mental model sharedness failed to exhibit a significant linear relationship with team processes or performance, it did evidence a multiplicative relationship as moderated by the quality of those models. Team processes and performance were better among teams sharing higher-quality team mental models than among teams evidencing less sharedness or who had lower-quality models. Again, team processes partially mediated these relationships. Results are discussed in terms of the equifinality of mental model quality and applications to various team environments. Copyright © 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.