My Team Members Are Everywhere! A Critical Analysis of the Emerging Literature on Dispersed Teams

Dispersed innovation teams rely upon team members who share leadership responsibilities to attain high levels of team performance. Although this concept of team shared leadership is receiving increasing attention, this dissertation shows that especially research on team-level antecedents of shared leadership has major deficits regarding a basic framework for analyzing antecedents, depth of theory, context-specific arguments, and empirical validation. This dissertation tries to fill these research gaps, thus shedding light on the question: How can we foster the important process of shared leadership in dispersed innovation teams? This dissertation introduces a theoretical framework into shared leadership literature to structure the antecedents of shared leadership according to their mode of functioning. As such, this dissertation argues for the first time that to establish high levels of team shared leadership the basic dimensions of motivation, opportunity, and ability for shared leadership should be addressed (motivation-opportunity-ability framework or MOA framework). Based on this notion team-level antecedents providing motivation, opportunity, and ability for shared leadership are operationalized and hypothesized as antecedents of shared leadership in dispersed innovation teams using acknowledged theories. Moreover, all discussed hypotheses are verified in a sample of 96 dispersed real work teams with innovative software tasks. Thereby, empirical results are drawn from 96 team leader responses (used to assess team-level antecedents of team shared leadership) and 337 team member responses (used to assess team shared leadership). Motivation for Team Shared Leadership. Based on the perspective of shared leadership as a risk-taking behavior for team members in dispersed innovation teams, trustworthiness is argued as a facilitator of the willingness, thus motivation to engage in risky shared leadership actions with others. This argumentation based on trust theory was supported by empirical results showing that team member trustworthiness in terms of benevolence and integrity was positively related to team shared leadership. Surprisingly, the proposed positive relationship between ability-based trustworthiness and shared leadership could not be confirmed, thus ability-based trustworthiness could not be validated as a facilitator of shared leadership in dispersed innovation teams. Opportunity for Team Shared Leadership. Opportunity for team shared leadership is addressed by discussing team reflexivity as an antecedent of shared leadership in dispersed innovation teams. Team reflexivity is argued as opportunity providing antecedent of shared leadership as it gives team members a clear information basis in the complex and constantly changing environment of dispersed innovation teams, thus making leadership needs identifiable. In support of this argumentation based on goal setting theory and shared mental model theory team reflexivity was positively related to team shared leadership. Thereby, the relationship between team reflexivity and shared leadership could be shown as even stronger under conditions of high team role breadth self-efficacy and high team empowerment. Ability for Team Shared Leadership. Ability for shared leadership is addressed in terms of social and project management skills. These two skills are argued as basic and complementary skills needed for shared leadership in dispersed innovation teams based on socio-technical systems theory. Underscoring the importance of interpersonal competence the empirical analysis showed that social skills were strongly positively related to team shared leadership. Contrary to the hypothesis of this study project management skills were not related to team shared leadership. Structural Team Properties and Team Shared Leadership. Moreover, several structural team properties are discussed as team-level antecedents of shared leadership, namely female ratio, mean age, age diversity, and national diversity. Thereby, structural team properties are argued as potentially affecting team shared leadership through several MOA dimensions. In the empirical analyses female ratio was positively related to shared leadership in dispersed innovation teams, while mean age was negatively related. Age diversity showed no significant relationship and national diversity was marginally positively related to shared leadership in dispersed innovation teams. Based on these findings, important implications for practice, related to the three stages of a project team (establishment, forming, and performing stage), are provided. As such, team leaders of dispersed innovation teams is given a check-list of how to foster shared leadership in dispersed innovation teams based on the results of this dissertation. Future research is especially suggested regarding the “non-findings” of this dissertation, interaction effects, additional team-level antecedents, the vertical team leader’s role within shared leadership evolvement, antecedents of shared leadership in other contexts, and other levels of antecedents (e.g., organizational-level antecedents).

Motivation -- A team is capable to resolve issues beyond the limits of the individual at the price of an additional layer of cognitive resources as team members must coordinate and synchronize their activities. Literature shows that the inter-predictability and observability of others' action is one of the key ingredients that foster team performance. Little research, however, is dedicated to design specifically for observability and inter-predictability with a dispersed team. Designing and evaluating a prototype that facilitates inter-predictability and observability results in improved team performance.Research approach -- The approach is both qualitative and empirical using an iterative design method. In parallel data gathered from emergency management training sessions and prototyping the artefact. Subsequently an experimental and valorisation phase leads to empirical results concerning the support value for coordination and synchronization within dispersed teams.Findings/Design -- This paper is an initial step towards the understanding of difficulties that exist within dispersed team in a crisis organization. Findings from a number of observations in combination with a number of studies show encouraging indications that back our motivation and initial ideas. These have led to an initial design for a prototype.Take away message -- The idea to facilitate inter-predictability and observability within dispersed team has a potential to enhance team effectiveness.

Our research integrates theoretical perspectives related to distributed leadership in geographically dispersed teams with empowering leadership theory to build a multilevel model of virtual collaboration and performance in dispersed teams. We test the model with procurement teams in a major multinational corporation. Our results show a significant cross‐level effect of empowering team leadership, such that under conditions of high empowering team leadership, a team member's virtual teamwork situational judgment (VT‐SJ) is positively and significantly associated with his or her virtual collaboration behaviors and also indirectly with his or her individual performance in the team. At the team level, our findings also suggest that the impact of empowering leadership on team members’ aggregate virtual collaboration, and indirectly on team performance, increases at higher levels of team dispersion. These findings shed important light on the role of team leadership in fostering effective collaboration and performance of geographically dispersed virtual teams.

In an attempt to take advantage of distributed knowledge, organizations are increasingly relying on dispersed teams--teams of individuals who primarily utilize information and communication technology (ICT) to collaborate to achieve a shared objective. Team context has often been recognized as an important factor in affecting performance in dispersed team settings. Recent research has called for the consideration of intra-team justice climate in dispersed teams; yet, how it shapes performance for teams at different degrees of dispersion remains unresolved. Drawing on and integrating extant justice climate and Information Systems (IS) literature on team dispersion, we develop a model to better understand the precise nature of the role played by intra-team procedural justice climate in the relationship between team member dispersion and team performance. Responses from 468 team members and supervisors belonging to 101 work teams were used to test the research model. We found that team dispersion and procedural justice climate affect team performance, and that procedural justice alleviates the negative effect of dispersion on performance, indicating that intra-team procedural justice climate can be a lever for mitigating the challenges posed by ICT-based interaction among members. These findings make important contributions to the extant IS literature on dispersed teams by outlining how organizations may mitigate some of the challenges of dispersion and improve team performance by creating an intra-team environment based upon fairness.

Increasingly, various tasks are being conducted by dispersed teams. However, such teams lack a common context, and knowledge gaps exist among dispersed team members making collaboration difficult. This paper seeks to examine whether and how properties of team context (e.g., familiarity with team members and task) have the potential to moderate the effects of structure of team context (e.g., dispersion) on dispersed team collaboration. Further, this paper teases out these effects in teams with a varying extent of dispersion. Findings offer evidence that a unique constraint of distance that dispersed teams face may not be the key factor that determines their performance.

Dispersed teams are increasingly a part of organizational life. This reality is putting increased pressure on team leaders and team members to make better use of the various communication media available to the organization. One theory that has been very influential on the way team leaders and team members select specific media for specific communication acts is that of ‘Media Richness Theory’. Media Richness Theory proposes that to communicate effectively in a dispersed team situation, team leaders and team members need to align the communication act with the appropriate communication media. Communications that are difficult, either intellectually or emotionally, need to use a “rich” medium that allows multiple levels of communication and real-time feedback. A better understanding of this perspective can help managers in charge of virtual or dispersed teams manage their staff for optimum results.Key words: Media Richness Theoryvirtual teamsdispersed teamsteamcommunication

Organizations are increasingly moving toward a team‐based structure for managing complex knowledge in new product development (NPD) projects. Such teams operate in an environment characterized by dynamic project requirements and emergent nonroutine issues, which can undermine their ability to achieve project objectives. Team improvisation—a collective, spontaneous, and creative action for identifying novel solutions to emergent problems—has been identified as a key team‐situated response to unexpected challenges toNPDteam effectiveness. Geographic dispersion is increasingly becoming a reality forNPDteams that find themselves needing to improvise solutions to emergent challenges while attempting to leverage the knowledge of team members who are physically distributed across various locations. However, very little is known about how teams' improvisational actions affect performance when such actions are executed in increasingly dispersed teams. To address this gap in the literature, this paper draws on the emerging literature on different forms and degrees of team dispersion to understand how team improvisation affects team performance in such teams. In particular this paper takes into account both the structural and psychological facets of dispersion by considering the physical distance between team members, the configuration of the team across different sites, as well as the team members' perception of being distant from their teammates. Responses from 299 team leaders and team members of 71NPDprojects in the software industry were used to analyze the relationship between team improvisation and team performance, as well as the moderating effect of the three different conceptualizations of team dispersion. Results of the study indicate that team improvisation has a positive influence on project team performance by allowing team members to respond to unexpected challenges through creative and timely action. However, increasing degrees of team member dispersion (both structural and psychological) attenuate this relationship by making it difficult to have timely access to other team members' knowledge and by limiting real‐time interactions that may lead to the development of creative solutions. The results of this research offer guidance to managers about when to balance the desire to leverage expertise to cope with unexpected events. Moreover, the present paper provides directions for future research on improvisation and team dispersion. Future research is encouraged to investigate factors that may help highly dispersed teams to overcome the shortcomings of team dispersion in dealing with emergent events.

Product development teams become increasingly dispersed because innovative project tasks require the input of specialized knowledge at multiple locations. Prior analyses indicate that as team member dispersion increases teams find it more difficult to perform high‐quality teamwork. Moreover, the literature has largely assumed that the performance effect of teamwork in innovative projects would be driven by the nature of the project task and that this would be true regardless of the degree to which team members were co‐located. The present study argues, however, that teamwork affects team performance more strongly as team member dispersion increases. Two main reasons for this are discussed: (1) High‐quality teamwork can leverage the increased knowledge potential of dispersed teams; and (2) team leaders in more dispersed teams have little possibility to compensate low‐quality teamwork through hands‐on leadership. Responses from 575 managers, team leaders, and team members of 145 new product development (NPD) projects in the software industry were used to analyze the moderating effect of team member proximity on the relationship between teamwork quality and team performance. Using regression analysis, support is found for the initial hypothesis that team member dispersion moderates the relationship between teamwork quality and team performance, that is, that increasing team member dispersion increases the positive impact of teamwork quality on team performance. As such, the present analysis advances understanding of dispersed teams, showing that teamwork quality not only is more difficult to achieve but also is more critical to team performance as team dispersion increases. Furthermore, low‐proximity teams can reach higher levels of effectiveness and efficiency than co‐located ones if they manage to achieve high levels of teamwork over distance. Thus, team dispersion may well be an opportunity and should not just be regarded as a liability to be overcome or avoided. This research recognizes that the vast majority of teams are neither perfectly co‐located nor perfectly virtual. There are many shades of gray between these two extremes, and various individual, team, task, and contextual characteristics may have an effect on how decreases—however small—in geographical proximity affect the process and performance of teams. Future research is encouraged to address such factors at different levels of analysis aimed at providing managers with recommendations for dispersed teamwork.

Given the distributed nature of modern organizations, the use of technology-mediated teams is a critical aspect of their success. These teams use various media that are arguably less personal than face-to-face communication. One factor influencing the success of these teams is their ability to develop an understanding of who knows what during the initial team development stage. However, this development of understanding within dispersed teams may be impeded because of the limitations of technology-enabled communication environments. Past research has found that a limited understanding of team member capabilities hinders team performance. As such, this article investigates mechanisms for improving the recall of individuals within dispersed teams. Utilizing the input-process-output model to conceptualize the group interaction process, three input factors—visual artifacts (i.e., a computer-generated image of each team member), team size, and work interruptions—are manipulated to assess their influence on a person's ability to recall important characteristics of their virtual team members. Results show that visual artifacts significantly increase the recall of individuals' information. However, high-urgency interruptions significantly deteriorate the recall of individuals, regardless of the visual artifact or team size. These findings provide theoretical and practical implications on knowledge acquisition and project success within technology-mediated teams.

Research problem: In recent years, many businesses have become involved in internationalized projects, yet understanding the dynamics of engineering communication in virtual dispersed teams is limited. Research questions: How do the factors mentioned in the literature function in an international engineering project? Are there factors that enhance or constrain the work in an engineering setting that are not mentioned in previous studies? Literature review: Existing knowledge on the contextual factors that affect virtual international professional communication is mainly built on the study of the communication practices of students or business professionals who are not engineers. Results of that literature have identified factors that enhance communication for dispersed virtual teams (which include cross-cultural training, using appropriate communication technology, face-to-face communication opportunities, respect for partners, regularly scheduled meetings, a common language, a common discipline, and cross-cultural understandings though popular media). There are factors that challenge communication for dispersed virtual teams (which include differing cultural assumptions, differing cultural communication styles, US Government export control regulations, proximity and time issues, and differing levels of perceived power and influence). Methodology: This study involved observing international engineer meetings in the US and the UK and interviewing 19 engineers leading an international design team. The participants worked for the same international company with about half from the US and half in Great Britain. Results and discussion: Many of the factors identified in general professional communication studies held true for this context. But some features were unique to an engineering environment that the literature had not previously mentioned, including iplanning for and working with intercultural dispersed virtual engineering teams and that people need to consider many complexities of culture that affect communication practices. Because this study observed one team in the context of only two cultures, future research may determine whether these factors are more widely found in other teams, workplaces, and cultures. Future research may also determine the relative levels of influence of the contextual factors on international dispersed virtual engineering teams. In addition, the study of engineers learning to communicate in international settings may be illuminating.

Purpose: Globalisation and the increased complexity of organisations create the need for alternative leadership approaches that can harness the collective intellectual capital that exists within the dispersed employees of organisations.Design/methodology/approach: This qualitative study explored how shared leadership can be facilitated in internationally dispersed non-formal teams through increased team connectedness, leader humility, empowering leadership, participative leadership and quality leader-member exchanges. The study explored the perspectives of 12 purposively sampled internationally dispersed team members, who represented three different functional nonformal teams.Findings/results: As dispersion of teams increases, some traditional leadership approaches become less effective. Shared leadership, however, has greater effects on team performance when team dispersion increases.Practical implications: The study offers a theoretical framework of leadership in internationally dispersed non-formal teams, which serves as a basis for future empirical research. It provides leaders of teams and organisations, as well as human resource practitioners with guidance on how to achieve the benefits of shared leadership of teams in this context. Participants represented nine nationalities, dispersed across eight countries, on four continents.Originality/value: Studies into shared leadership have increased over the past decade; however, the antecedents that facilitate shared leadership are still not exhaustive, and the majority of studies have been in co-located and formal teams. This study provides insight into how non-formal leaders can facilitate the emergence of shared leadership in the context of dispersed, non-formal teams.

The team members’ expertise has been shown to increase team effectiveness when it is actively coordinated. While in face-to-face teams such expertise coordination unfolds through direct interaction, expertise coordination in dispersed teams is unlikely to evolve automatically. In this context, shared leadership, that is, the distribution of leadership influence across multiple team members is argued to serve as initiating mechanism for expertise coordination.

Team process innovation in the new work landscape: The role of feedback climate and empowerment in dispersed settings

BackgroundPerformance management systems have been introduced in health and social services institutions to improve organizational performance, supporting the emergence of new management behaviors that are more rooted in collaborative management practices. This study aims to understand how different leadership styles emerge through the implementation of a performance management system and its related tools, and how these can foster distributed leadership.MethodsOver two years, the implementation of an integrated performance management system supporting the integration of social services for children, youth, and families was studied at a recently merged Canadian healthcare organization. Qualitative analysis of data collected from 15 interviews, 3 focus groups, and over 350 h of non-participant observation was conducted.ResultsThe results show that leadership evolved to adapt to the context of organizational integration and was no longer confined to a single manager. Transformational leadership was needed to encourage the emergence of a new integrated performance management system and new behaviors among middle managers and team members. Transactional leadership was legitimized through the use of a status sheet when the integration project did not deliver the expected results. Both transformational and transactional leadership paved the way to distributed leadership, which in turn promoted collaborative practices associated with activities in control rooms and dialogue stemming from the status sheets. Distributed leadership among team members made a difference in the outcome of the integration project, which became a driver of collaboration.ConclusionsThe integrated performance management system and the use of its tools can help renew leadership in health and social service organizations. The results lend credence to the importance of distributed leadership in promoting collaborative practices to improve services for children, youth, and families. The results also highlight how various leadership styles can contribute to the emergence of distributed leadership over time.

As more and more organizations rely on teams and teamwork, leaders need to be aware of and ready to deal with the inevitability that conflicts will arise among members of teams, especially dispersed teams. If teams can not only learn to effectively resolve conflict but also find ways to turn conflict to their advantage, the diversity of perspectives and ideas among teammates can lead to discovery rather than discord.