Team Of Employees Research Articles

Leadership and member voice in action teams: Test of a dynamic phase model.

Voice is an important way that members contribute to effective team functioning. And yet, the existing literature provides divergent guidance as to how leaders can promote member voice in action teams-a dynamic team context where eliciting voice may be difficult, due to different task demands encountered in the preparation and action phases of task performance, among members who may have little history of working together. Drawing on the employee voice and team leadership literatures, we focus on three leader behaviors-directing, coaching, and supporting-and employ a functional leadership perspective to assess whether certain leader behaviors enhance voice in one phase of the performance episode versus the other. We also assess whether these leadership-voice relationships are further contingent on team members' prior familiarity with one another. Observation and survey data from 105 surgical team episodes revealed that leader directing promoted voice in both the preparation and action phases. Coaching also facilitated voice in both phases, especially in the action phase for more familiar teams. Surprisingly, supporting did not enhance voice in either phase, and in fact exhibited negative effects on voice in the preparation phase of more familiar teams. Theoretical and practical implications around how leaders can elicit voice in action teams are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record

Основные управленческие принципы формирования лояльности потребителей к брендам региональных компаний

The problem of forming of consumer loyalty to companies that implement market activity in the regions of the Russian Federation on the scale of small and medium business is investigated. Due to the fact that such business structures do not have the opportunity to compete with large international corporations, they should identify their vector of development with a focus on the consumer, understanding that the formation of loyalty is a very important element of ensuring a stable market position. It is noted that the managers need to work towards improving the quality of not only products, but also implemented management measures in a number of areas. The customer satisfaction is an indicator of achieving a match between the subjectively expected value of the product to the potential consumer and the actual value obtained as a result of the experience of its acquisition and consumption. Thus, only in the case of positive consumer experience can the formation of loyal attitude. A list of basic practice-oriented principles that allow to attract customers, to form a loyal attitude to the company and products has been presented. It is determined that the formation of loyalty is not a one-time marketing campaign, but a complex work of a cohesive team of employees under the guidance of an effective manager. Their effective work, implemented on a permanent basis, will ensure the strengthening of the market position of the brand of the regional business structure. The presented principles will help managers working on the scale of small and medium-sized businesses to form and implement their own strategies to ensure the competitiveness of the company and the demand for products in modern turbulent times, which in turn will contribute to a positive impact on the development of the regional economy of our country.

Peer Bargaining and Productivity in Teams: Gender and the Inequitable Division of Pay

Problem description: A recent trend in personnel operations is to reduce hierarchy and allow employee teams to self-manage tasks, responsibilities, and rewards. Yet we know little about how this arrangement relates to worker productivity and fairness. Academic/Practical relevance: We provide the first firm-based evidence that when service teams are allowed to internally allocate compensation, the ensuing peer bargaining process can generate inequitable outcomes for women. Methodology: We demonstrate this using fixed effect models to identify productivity and peer bargaining traits in 932 workers at 32 large Chinese beauty salons. We measure individual productivity through service and prepaid card sales and measure bargaining through the division of team-based commissions. We also build a parsimonious bargaining model to explain our empirical results. Results: Although productivity and bargaining outcomes are positively correlated, female workers consistently receive bargaining outcomes below their productivity level, while men are consistently overcompensated. Importantly, we provide evidence that our results can only be explained by a combination of higher prosociality and lower bargaining power in women. We also demonstrate that the resulting inequity is positively correlated with shorter tenure. Managerial Implications: Our findings provide unique organizational evidence on how bargaining among peers relates to productivity in service operations. We show that the discriminatory social dynamics observed throughout society are evident in operational designs that delegate decision rights to teams, and that the magnitude in these systems is at least as large as those observed in traditional hierarchical pay systems. Managers must anticipate and mitigate this gender-based inequity because it is in and of itself an operational performance issue, and because of the myriad of productivity, retention, and ethical implications that can result from peer-based bargaining.

Watercooler Chat, Organizational Structure and Corporate Culture

Modeling firms as networks of employees, occasional collaborative decision making around the office watercooler changes long run employee behavior (corporate culture). The culture that emerges in a given team of employees depends on team size and on how the team is connected to the wider firm. The implications of the model for organizational design are explored and related to empirical research on communication, innovation, the size and decision making of teams and trends in the design of hierarchical structures.

Effects of Inclusive Leadership on Employee Voice Behavior and Team Performance: The Mediating Role of Caring Ethical Climate

As an emerging research field of leadership, inclusive leadership reflects the new style of leadership demanded by researchers and practitioners. Is it a leadership style that can better integrate employees and organizations, and adapt to new complex management situation? Based on theories of social exchange, organizational support, and self-determination, this study investigated the impact of inclusive leadership on employee voice behavior and team performance through caring ethical climate. We evaluated the model with a time-lagged data of 329 team members from 105 teams in six cities in China. Results indicated as following: inclusive leadership was positively correlated with employee voice behavior at the individual level and team performance at the team level; caring ethical climate mediated the relationship between inclusive leadership and employee voice behavior at the individual level, as well as mediated the relationship between inclusive leadership and team performance at the team level. This study revealed the mechanism of the positive cross-level effects of inclusive leadership on the caring ethical climate, employee voice behavior, and team performance. These findings also provided important contributions for human resource management and practice.

Man vs. Machine: When is Automation Inferior to Human Labor?

In this paper, we study a principal's decision to introduce automation into a production process governed by a team of employees. When introduced, automation displaces an employee with a machine. This displacement increases efficiency as the machine carries out the tasks of the employee at a lower cost, and reduces the scope of moral hazard as the machine does not make unobserved effort choices. We show that, despite the direct benefits, a principal may prefer not to adopt automation due to its indirect costs. Before automation is introduced, the principal is able to take advantage of her ability to shape the interactions between the team members to manage the agency problem. Automation eliminates this ability and removes an incentive device at the principal's discretion, resulting in an indirect cost. On the one hand, adopting automation is always optimal when the principal incentivizes employees independently, abstaining from creating a team interaction. On the other hand, automation may be suboptimal when the principal incentivizes employees by encouraging them to compete via a 'relative performance evaluation' contract or to cooperate via a 'joint performance evaluation' contract. We offer two extensions to test the robustness of these findings qualitatively. First, the findings carry through if we consider alternative effects of automation, where it impacts employees symmetrically without displacing any employee. Second, the findings also remain consistent when there are synergies between the efforts of team members.

Effects of Person-Environment Fit on Team Commitment: Exploring a Three-way Interaction of Fit

This study examines the positive relationship between employees perceived fit and team commitment on the basis of similarity-attraction and social identity theory. Using data collected from a Korean manufacturing firm, this study examined three types of fit: person-organization (PO) fit, person-supervisor (PS) fit, and person-group (PG) fit. In this process, we found that a three-way interaction between PO fit, PS fit and PG fit predicts an employee's team commitment. The results highlight the role of PG fit in raising team commitment where there are proper configurations of PO fit and PS fit. Implications and future research directions are discussed.

Age-based Social Status, Team Safety Climate, and Innovation: Overcoming Culture with Team Effects

In this paper, we examine the importance of employee age and team psychological safety climate for innovative performance in a Confucian-based culture with strict age-related social hierarchies. To...

Employee Voice and Team Innovation: Examining the Role of Team Voice Intensity in R&D Teams

Drawing on the dialectical perspective on innovation (Bledow, Frese, Anderson, Erez, & Farr, 2009), we propose that both promotive and prohibitive voices are necessary for team innovation through d...

A multi-level study of servant leadership on creativity

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to explore the influencing mechanism of servant leadership on employee and team creativity based on efficacy theory. Specifically, the study intends to develop a model of efficacy beliefs that mediates the relationships between servant leadership, employee creativity, and team creativity at different levels. The study also aims to investigate the moderating effects of team power distance on the relationships between servant leadership, creative self-efficacy, and team efficacy at both individual and team levels.Design/methodology/approachServant leadership, employee creativity, creative self-efficacy, team creativity, team efficacy, and team power distance were assessed in an empirical study based on a sample of 466 employees and 83 team leaders from 11 banks in China.FindingsFrom efficacy theory perspective, this paper finds that servant leadership promotes employee creative self-efficacy and team efficacy, which enables the simultaneous promotion of employee creativity and team creativity. Team power distance also moderates the relationship between servant leadership and team efficacy.Practical implicationsThe results suggest that it is important to encourage managers to engage in servant leader behaviors, which is conductive to enhancing employees’ self-efficacy beliefs and thereby improving creative outcomes of employees. The results are also helpful for managers to enhance their understanding of the differences in cultural values in management behavior and the effects of behavior on team efficacy.Originality/valueThe research findings provide a significant contribution to the literature in that it shows self-efficacy as a crucial mediating mechanism through which servant leadership influences creativity at individual and team levels. Moreover, the findings support the view that power distance is an important contextual factor that affects the influencing mechanism of servant leadership on team creativity. Furthermore, this paper is one of the few studies answering the call to examine the effect of leadership at multiple levels.

Case Study: New York City Office Space Optimization, an Operational Excellence in Government Success Story

Case Study: New York City Office Space Optimization, an Operational Excellence in Government Success Story

THE BEHAVIORAL PROFILE OF HARVESTER OPERATORS

ABSTRACT This study aims to characterize the behavioral profile of harvester operators, with the goal of assisting forest managers in selecting and training new teams of employees. A forest company located in central-western Brazil was examined from a sample of 20 harvester operators that did not have experience carrying out the functions of their industry. A behavioral profile evaluation tool was used, consisting of a management system that creates a profile based on behavioral competencies; it was initially used to develop a profile of a high-performing harvester operator; or rather, a reference profile. Next, the behavioral profile of the operators were grouped into distinct classes and compared with the reference profile to identify traits that could positively or negatively affect an operators' performance. An optimal profile had the following qualities: attentive to details, meets deadlines and follows rules, technically-oriented, patient with repetitive tasks, the ability to avoid conflicts, and being an introvert. An improper profile included aspects such as aggressiveness, being argumentative, being persuasive, explosive, and tense at work. The behavioral profile evaluation tool can support the process of choosing forest machine operators; however, it is important to also consider skills and work experience.

REHABILITATION OF POLLUTED URBAN AREAS

Industrial structures, residential buildings and other objects of infrastructure are being constructed in many Russian cities now. In addition to new constructions, reconstruction and rebuilding of existing buildings is also being performed. Meanwhile, such construction objects are situated not only in open suburban areas but also in urban districts and city zones. Often it is necessary to dismantle or demolish old run-down buildings or distressed structures before constructing new buildings. Such works always cause large amounts of construction waste. 
 To accommodate constructive materials for new structures and to store elements of disassembled buildings and construction wastes special storage grounds are used. Being of temporal nature, these storage grounds are not capable to ensure full protection of the environment from pollution.
 The team of employees of Samara State Technical University investigated several districts of the city of Samara. This investigation revealed that in all temporary dumping sites construction wastes amount to 8% and dumping sites of a mixed type containing construction wastes – to 35%. 
 The majority of temporary dumping sites are removed in a short time. Mostly, it is done by collection and removal of construction waste to special waste landfills. At the same time, the investigation demonstrated that though these dumping sites are temporal, their existence causes environmental pollution of underlying open ground as repugnant substance penetrates the ground with rains and pollution of airspace as light pollutants are dispersed by wind. Moreover, even after these temporary dumping sites are removed, already polluted soil layers continue to pollute soils as a secondary pollutant source. 
 The authors offer a technical solution which allow to carry out rehabilitation of polluted urban areas more effectively. In particular, it is recommended to remove waste from the temporary dumping sites stage by stage. At the first stage, off-site areas should be inspected and the extent of pollution (pollution depth) of underground layers should be estimated. At the next stage, a protective barrier in the ground around the dumping site and on the surface should be built. Only after that we recommend that wastes should be removed and sent to a waste recycling plant or to a specially equipped waste landfill. Then, it is required to cut off all polluted soils and to remove them to a special waste landfill for storage.
 Thus, this solution makes it possible to reduce the risk of secondary environmental pollution.

The role of wisdom leadership in increasing job performance: Evidence from the Egyptian tourism sector

The paper aims to explore the intervening role of wisdom leadership in the link between leadership styles and employees' team performance, in the context of travel agents. Drawing on the leadership theory and the strategic leadership model, we develop an integrative model exploring the relationships between four distinct leadership styles and their influence on employees' satisfaction and team performance, through the mediating role of wise leadership. Using data collected from 505 travel agents operating in Egypt, we show that not all leadership styles have a positive influence on employees’ satisfaction. We also show that a positive influence takes place through the development of wisdom leadership. Our findings hold important implications for both the research community and travel agents.

The relationship between human resource practices and knowledge sharing in service firms

Human resource practices have been found to be critical in knowledge sharing. Thus, this study examined the effects of job satisfaction, employee commitment, workplace friendship and team culture on knowledge sharing. This study used the survey research design. The respondents of the study were employees of the service industry. Multiple linear regression was used to analyse the data. The results show that employee commitment, workplace friendship and team culture explain the variance in knowledge sharing in service firms. The implications of the findings have been discussed at the end of the article.

The Psychology of Leadership Selection: DiSC Results and Leadership Success in Health Care

Health care organizations seek successful leaders for their executive positions. Often, a psychologically-based assessment is used in an attempt to recognize factors that cannot easily be seen in applicants during the screening and selection process. There are a variety of assessments available for this purpose, each with its own approach and cost to administer. DiSC is one such instrument used for assessing traits of applicants. Using measures of Dominance, Influence, Steadiness, and Compliance, DiSC is currently used in business settings for the purpose of employee development and team building. Dr. William Marston, a physiological psychologist writing in the 1920s and 1930s, explored the meaning of normal human emotions by relating how a person perceives himself or herself in relation to the environment and describing how the person is likely to behave in response. However, it is questioned whether the assessments used, and the results they produce, can be associated with the success of the leader. In order to address this question, data on the results from the DiSC assessment for a small number of senior leaders of a health care organization is compared to their overall success in that organization. Granted that while the sample is small, 18, and the measures for success are not universal, there is some evidence to study. Other questions that arise are how do the traits of other organizational leaders compare to senior leadership traits, and are these traits indicators of their individual success. Effectively, in terms of success, does it pay to be like the boss or is it better to differ in your traits?

Employee Mobility and Interfirm Relationship Transfer: Evidence from the Mobility and Client Attachments of United States Federal Lobbyists, 1998–2014

Research summary: Employee mobility can erode competitive advantage by facilitating interfirm knowledge and relationship transfer. This study investigates the latter and identifies factors that influence the likelihood of its occurrence. Using a novel database that tracks the employment and client attachments of U.S. federal lobbyists, I show that repeated exchange with employees (firms) increases (decreases) the likelihood clients follow employees who switch firms. Structurally, multiplexity reduces the likelihood of client transfer and weakens the effect of employee–client repeated exchange, with the multiplexity effect strongest when team members have specialized expertise. By examining the main and interactive effects of repeated exchange, multiplexity, and specialized human capital, this study extends prior work by demonstrating how individual, organizational, and structural relationship characteristics affect client transfer and retention ex‐post employee mobility.Managerial summary: When do clients follow employees who switch firms? What can firms do to guard against it? These questions are important in service‐based industries where clients may become loyal to individual employees within the firm rather than to the firm itself. This study provides evidence that helps practicing managers: (a) identify which clients are most at risk of defecting if employees exit, and (b) structure relationships in ways that mitigate the likelihood that employee exit results in client loss. Findings suggest that a client is more likely to defect when she has extensive history working with the exiting employee, particularly if the employee was the sole link between the client and firm. Managers, however, can reduce the risk of client loss following employee exit by structuring relationships so that clients work with teams of employees rather than exclusively with an individual and by increasing the degree of specialization within these teams. Copyright © 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Colorado & Utah Canyons Tour Company

Ron Hopkins had just finished his first year as founder, president, head mechanic, chief cook, and lead tour guide for the Colorado & Utah Canyon Tours Company (CUCTC). The first year had been a good one, and Hopkins thought he probably had made a small profit—after all, he had ended the year with a positive balance in the CUCTC checking account. Among the many roles and tasks he performed at CUCTC, however, accountant/bookkeeper was not one of them. For that task, he calls on his former college roommate, Chris Norris to prepare the financial statements needed for a $300,000 loan application he intended to make at Lofton National Bank next month. Norris plans to organize the CUCTC financial notes and records Hopkins has sent him. Excerpt UVA-C-2364 Jul. 29, 2015 Colorado & Utah Canyons Tour Company Ron Hopkins had just finished his first year as founder, president, head mechanic, chief cook, and lead tour guide for the Colorado & Utah Canyon Tours Company (CUCTC). The company offered tours of the canyon lands located in western Colorado and eastern Utah. Depending on the season, a variety of tours were available including summertime rafting, hiking, horseback riding, and ATV tours as well as wintertime snowmobile, snowshoe, and cross-country ski tours. The first year had been a good one, and Hopkins thought he probably had made a small profit—after all, he had ended the year with a positive balance in the CUCTC checking account, and he had not gone hungry. Among the many roles and tasks he performed at CUCTC, however, accountant/bookkeeper was not one of them. For that task, he had called his former college roommate, Chris Norris, and offered him a free four-day summer ATV tour in exchange for preparation of a set of financial statements suitable for a $ 300,000 loan application he intended to make at Lofton National Bank next month. Norris, an avid outdoorsman, jumped at the offer, and he planned to spend the upcoming weekend organizing the CUCTC financial notes and records Hopkins had sent him. Company Background After college, Hopkins had worked for six summers as a seasonal U.S. Forest Service employee in southwestern Colorado. In that capacity, he had helped maintain backcountry forest roads, led a small team of other seasonal employees building new hiking trails, liaised with ranchers on some recurring cattle-grazing issues, and he had even been called on to help fight some sizeable forest fires. All in all he had loved the life and the land. He also loved the fact that when forestry season ended, he signed on with a nearby ski resort as a snowmobile tour guide and mechanic. He had not saved much money during the six years he had spent cobbling together his “careers” but he was not yet 30, was fit as any big-time college athlete, and hadn't spent more than a handful of days at a desk since graduating from college. . . .

Fmc Aberdeen (Condensed)

This is a condensed version of (UVA-OB-0385). Excerpt UVA-OB-0431 Rev. Dec. 1, 2010 FMC ABERDEEN (Condensed) Kenneth Dailey, site manager for FMC Corporation's Green River, Wyoming, facility, leaned back in his seat in the conference room near his office. He was listening to a team of employees tell him about their visit to FMC's Aberdeen, South Dakota, plant and the unusual operating procedures they had observed there. Dailey was intrigued with the results that Roger Campbell, plant manager at Aberdeen, and his predecessors had been able to achieve at the plant, and he had sent this team to see it and make recommendations about whether or not it would work at Green River. He wondered if the Aberdeen system would work for his operation as a whole, in part, or not at all; if there were parts that might work, he wondered what they were and how to implement them. FMC and the Vertical Launch Missile Canisters FMC Corporation was a Chicago-based conglomerate with $ 3.4 billion in 1989 sales spread over five major businesses: Industrial Chemicals ($ 975,000), Performance Chemicals ($ 566,000), Precious Metals ($ 190,000), Defense Systems ($ 900,000), and Machinery and Equipment ($ 783,000). The company's products included military equipment (including the Bradley Fighting Vehicle), a variety of industrial chemicals, gold and other precious metals, agricultural chemicals and a variety of specialty chemicals, and a broad range of specialized machinery and equipment for the material-handling, petroleum, and food industries. . . .

USING OF STATE HOUSING MONOPOLY TO ADDRESS SOCIO-ECONOMIC ISSUES AS PART OF THE SOVIET HOUSING POLICY IN THE 1920-30S.: LEGAL ASPECT

The article deals with one of the little-known aspects of the housing policy of the Soviet state in 1920-30-ies., related to the use of state housing monopoly on housing solutions for the economic problems in the Soviet Union, and above all we are talking about the development of industry in the towns within a known industrialization. To this end, the villagers, who came to the urban area, settled in the dormitories and apartments, belonging to the state and is available to guide companies, getting the most dependent on the latter. The paper presents the legal acts regulating this process, given their analysis and evaluation. In particular, according to the Decree SNK on the tariff issue on 10 September 1921 provided that the relationship of workers and employees now and the institution was “full”, while there was a note that it is the company, where the worker labored, lived in the housing stock, became a place of reception of cultural and household goods, including an apartment for your family. This approach gave the Soviet government initiated the process of creating a “labor-home communities”. The authors note in this context that the idea of labor-residential communities not only refers to the production teams of factories and plants, but also to other Soviet labor collectives, in particular, teams of employees of institutions. Moreover, in accordance with this principle resettled their employees’ central government, local councils, political institutions, commissariats and other official organizations and institutions.