Team Context Research Articles

Network formation in organizational settings: Exploring the importance of local social processes and team-level contextual variables in small groups using bayesian hierarchical ERGMs

Statistical models for social networks, such as exponential random graphs (ERGMs), have increasingly been used by organizational scholars to study the social interactions inside organizations, departments, and teams. While such models have been successful in providing insights about the local processes that underlie these interactions (such as homophily, reciprocity or transitivity), an additional interesting avenue for research focuses on the role of group-level contextual variables (such as the climate or composition of a team or organization) when considering a multitude of teams or organizations. In this paper we show how, in a team context, integrating team-level factors in a multilevel framework (i.e., a Bayesian hierarchical ERGM) enables us to answer questions about: 1) how team-level contextual factors might provide alternative explanations for the emergence of intra-team ties, and 2) whether any variation in local tendencies between teams might be dependent on such team-level variables (i.e., cross-level interactions). Using data collected among 103 MBA students who were grouped into 18 teams of 5–7 members to work on a project, we study the impact of members’ expertise and perceived psychological safety on advice seeking behavior. At a local level, we focus on the effect of these nodal attributes for homophily and differences in advice seeking and giving, while at the team level we incorporate the average expertise and the team’s psychological safety climate. Our results show that expert members are more likely to be the recipient of advice ties, but also that this effect is more pronounced in teams where the overall level of expertise is high. For psychological safety, we find that a high psychological safety climate impacts the advice relations among all members in the group, not solely those who themselves perceive a high level of psychological safety, suggesting that the team climate has an impact on all its members. This illustrates how a Bayesian hierarchical ERGM allows us to obtain relevant results even when studying small-sized groups.

Hierarchy and Teams

An understanding of hierarchy in teams is crucial to the understanding of social structures in collectives and societies. Hierarchy is a fundamental element of social life and a predictor of individual and collective behaviors. Status and power, two of the most studied hierarchical dimensions, have received considerable attention in the social science literature (Blader & Chen, 2012; Blau, 1964; Fiske, 2010; Kemper, 2006; Magee & Galinsky, 2008; Weber, 1964). However, existing research on hierarchy has focused largely on its individual- level effects (see Magee & Galinky, 2008 and Li, Chen, & Blader, 2016 for reviews). Only recently have researchers turned their attention to examining social hierarchy in the team context (Bendersky & Hayes, 2012; Hays et al., 2021; Tarakci, Greer, & Groenen, 2016). Hierarchy in teams—one of the most proximal collectives for employees—influences how they behave and are perceived not only within the team, but also outside of the team (Ertug & Castellucci, 2013; Lahiri, Pahnke, Howard, & Boeker, 2017). This symposium aims to contribute to this emerging and important trend of studying status and power in the team context. We believe that our symposium will help generate new perspectives and important questions regarding hierarchy and teams. We hope that it will facilitate sophisticated theorizing and rigorous empirics for this line of research. How Team Performance and Its Trajectory Influence Voluntary Turnover: A Status Perspective Presenter: Jiani Zhu; Georgia Institute of Technology Presenter: Huisi Li; Georgia Institute of Technology Perceived Status Hierarchy Accuracy and Intergroup Negotiation Performance Presenter: Siyu Yu; Jones Graduate School of Business, Rice U. Presenter: Gavin J. Kilduff; New York U. Presenter: Yu Yang; ShanghaiTech U. Second in Command or Second Opinion? Testing a Dual-path Model of Informal Leader Emergence Presenter: Edward McClain Wellman; Arizona State U. Presenter: Min Yu; Arizona State U. Presenter: Luke Hedden; Boston College The Reciprocal Relationship between Power and Status Presenter: James Garrett Matusik; U. of Georgia Presenter: Rebecca Mitchell; U. of Colorado Boulder Presenter: Nicholas Hays; Michigan State U. Mean Dependence and Systematic Bias in Studies of Social Hierarchy in Teams Presenter: Brian Alan Burgess; Michigan State U. Presenter: Daniel Jacob Griffin; Michigan State U.

Voice in Reaction to Being Envied: The Self-Esteem Mechanisms Under the Agency-Communion Framework

Being envied in the workplace can make the target feel good for being superior to peers in certain aspects but can also make the target feel bad for not being liked by peers. These paradoxical feelings can have different effects on the envied employees’ behaviors, especially public behaviors that are observable to the peers. Based on the agency-communion framework, our research investigated how and when being envied affects one’s public voice. Field data from a service company found that being envied enhanced self-esteem in the agency domain (i.e. organizational-based self-esteem), which in turn increased public voice. This positive indirect effect was stronger when competitive climate was higher rather than lower. Meanwhile, being envied increased self-esteem threat in the communion domain (i.e. social self-esteem threat), which in turn inhibited public voice. This negative indirect effect was stronger when task interdependence was higher rather than lower. These findings suggest that, depending on the team contexts, employees' perception of being envied can either facilitate or impede their public voice by either enhancing their self-esteem in the agency domain or threatening their self-esteem in the communion domain, respectively. The theoretical and practical implications are discussed.

Antecedents and Outcomes of Team Gender Diversity: The Boundary Condition of Managers’ Inclusiveness

Integrating the diversity and inclusion literature, this study investigates the role of organizational inclusive staffing as the antecedent and team voice as the outcome of gender diversity in team contexts. In addition, managers’ inclusiveness and inclusive climate are considered potential moderators and mediators in our research framework. Multi-wave and multi-source data collected from research and development (R&D) teams, including 71 team leaders and 257 team members, revealed that team managers’ perceived organizational inclusive staffing is positively related to team gender diversity, and this relationship can be strengthened by top managers’ diversity-valuing behaviors. Moreover, team gender diversity is also found to facilitate team voice through team inclusive climate when team managers have higher levels of leader inclusiveness. Finally, we discuss valuable findings as well as theoretical and managerial implications of the study.

How Motivation Fluctuates During Virtual Team Work: The Role of Team Characteristics and Dynamics

Motivation is an essential factor in achieving high-level outcomes in virtual teams (VT). Using a dataset of 3,071 individuals nested in 614 VT, we examine whether distinct individual motivation-change patterns coexist during VT work and how team context (e.g., team characteristics and team dynamics) relates to such motivation-change patterns. Based on a problematization approach and social motivation theory, and using the latent class growth analysis, we identified three distinct classes of individual motivation-change patterns (i.e., constant high motivation, decreasing motivation, increasing motivation) over time. Interestingly, while team dynamics (e.g., transition/action process, collective efficacy, interpersonal process, team cohesion) are related to motivation-change patterns, team characteristics (e.g., the average age of team members, team size, homogeneity of intrateam nationalities, gender diversity) are not related to individual motivation-change patterns in VT. This suggests, in contrast to face-to-face work settings, that team characteristics may play a different role in VT because people do not meet in person. Thus, to improve and/or maintain the motivation of VT members over time, it would be beneficial to focus on task- and relational-focused processes (e.g., team dynamics), regardless of team characteristics.

Clarifying the Causes and Consequences of Multiple Team Membership: A Temporal Perspective

Many knowledge workers are members of multiple teams, and researchers have examined how this affects their job satisfaction and emotional exhaustion. We suggest that progress in this research area has been hampered by a lack of clarity about what multiple team membership (MTM) is and how to conceptualize it. Prevailing conceptualizations of MTM have focused on the number of teams an individual is a member of (MTM number). We identify the number of times an individual switches between different team contexts (MTM simultaneity) as an additional MTM dimension that may better capture MTM’s potential downsides. Our analysis of 1,265 knowledge workers involved in 5,274 project teams shows that MTM number and MTM simultaneity have opposing effects on job satisfaction and emotional exhaustion, especially when multiteamers are unfamiliar with the members of their teams. We also find that individuals’ organizational tenure and polychronic personality are differentially related to MTM number and MTM simultaneity. The theoretical implications and results of this study can help clarify the benefits and detriments of MTM and advance the growing literature in this area.

Performance and Turnover Consequences of Goal Orientation Faultlines: A Self-in-Social-Setting View

Teams are collections of interdependent people, each of whom bring their own personal motivational tendencies to their teams. Goal orientations are useful frameworks for categorizing the different motivational tendencies people have and that influence their interpretation of, and reactions to, achievement opportunities and outcomes. In this article, we examine the effects of differences in members’ goal orientation profiles in teams. We draw on the self-in-social-setting regulation view of self-regulation, which suggests that team contexts are ones in which people with different motivational tendencies can present a social hindrance to one another and impede one another’s goal pursuits. We argue that when that team members have different goal orientation profiles, goal orientation faultlines can emerge. We predict that teams with stronger goal orientation faultlines will report more stress (i.e., emotional exhaustion) than teams with weaker goal orientation faultlines and that emotional exhaustion mediates the effects of goal orientation faultlines on team performance and turnover. We tested our predictions using a sample of 131 teams (637 team members) in a field setting over 18 months, finding support for our hypothesized effects of goal orientation faultlines on emotional exhaustion and team turnover and suggesting a number of important theoretical, empirical, and managerial implications.

Conflict in Virtual Teams & Necessity of Cultural Intelligence for Effective Performance

Applying an Input-Processes-Output model of team processes, we view cultural intelligence as an input variable to global virtual teams, which could help reduce one procedural aspect of team dynamics – frequency of conflicts– and consequently influence the team outcome performance. Utilizing data from a sample of 1592 global virtual teams (consisting of 7029 individuals) we tested for the effects of cultural intelligence on conflict frequency by type and team performance at both the individual and team level. Results showed that cultural intelligence exerts its effect on both individual process performance (e.g., team member satisfaction with the project) and team outcome performance (e.g., grade of the final team report) indirectly via reduction of team conflict frequency. The effects of conflict on outcome performance were differential depending on the type of conflict, which corresponds with previous literature findings. Overall, the study suggests that educators and practitioners can utilize and develop the cultural intelligence of global virtual team members to decrease negative conflict frequency and ultimately increase global virtual team performance. The study contributes to research on cultural intelligence and conflict within the context of global virtual teams.

Sustainable Careers in Nursing: Focusing on Health, Happiness and Productivity

The purpose of this symposium is to illustrate factors resided on a personal and contextual level that effect the sustainability of a career in the nursing profession. Based on a systematic literature review, a quantitative and two qualitative empirical examinations, the papers refer to the individual level, the work-family intersection, the team and organizational context as well as the institutional context. The opening paper, Proactive Personality, Recovery Experiences, Stress and Turnover Intention of Registered Nurses, will provide insights about workplace demands and the role of proactive behavior on perceived stress of registered nurses based on a quantitative survey. The second paper, a qualitative study entitled “Who is On-Call to Take Care of my Kids?”: The Country and Occupation Contexts Enabling Informal Childcare and Nursing Careers, will explore the way in which nurses with little children manage their work-family balance. The third paper will be a qualitative study on Organizational Resources for Sustainable Careers in Nursing. The final paper Uniformity along the Way: A Scoping Review on basic Structures of Nursing Education in OECD Countries illustrates similarities and differences in nursing education based on a literature review. Altogether, the four papers aim to address a rich variety of individual and contextual layers for sustainable careers in nursing, and after the presentations our discussant is going to reflect on those and will come up with ideas for connecting the insights. Proactive Personality, Recovery Experiences, Stress, and Turnover Intention of Registered Nurses Presenter: Christine Brown Mahoney; Minnesota State U., Mankato Presenter: Marilyn L Fox; Minnesota State U. The Country and Occupation Contexts Enabling Informal Childcare and Nursing Careers Presenter: Wee Chan Au; Newcastle U. Business School Presenter: Melika Shirmohammadi; U. of Houston Presenter: Mina Beigi; Southampton Business School, U. of Southampton Organizational Resources for Sustainable Careers in Nursing Presenter: Markus Latzke; IMC Krems Presenter: Beatrice Van Der Heijden; Radboud U. Nijmegen Presenter: Harald Stummer; UMIT Tirol Presenter: Stephanie Kainrath; UMIT Tirol Uniformity Along the Way: Scoping Review on Basic Structures of Nursing Education in OECD Countries Presenter: Julia Van Kraaij; Radboud U. Medical Center Presenter: Hester Vermeulen; Spaarne Gasthuis Academy Presenter: Catharina Van Oostveen; Erasmus U. Rotterdam

When Variability Becomes a Liability: Team Incentive Composition and its Multilevel Influences

In the present study, we propose the concept of team incentive composition that involves the average level of team members’ team incentive levels and the variability in the team members’ team incentive levels, and examine its influence processes at the individual and team levels. We suggest that, especially in project team contexts, teams may consist of members who receive varying levels of incentives based on team performance (termed team incentives). Despite the well-documented motivational effects, we hypothesize that team incentives may not adequately motivate individuals and teams when the variability of team incentives among the members is high. Drawing on expectancy theory and the free-riding concept, we theorize how such team incentive variability induces pervasive motivational loss for both individuals and teams, thus weakening the effects of team incentives on team performance. Analyses of data from 720 teams conducting business consulting projects reveal robust support for our hypotheses, underscoring the importance of aligning the intensities of team incentives among the team members to more fully unlock the motivational potential of the team incentives.

Identity Fusion and New Venture Performance: Team Average and Dispersion Effects

The present paper studies the relationship between entrepreneurial identity on new venture performance through a group level analysis. It expands on the concept of identity with a metric of identity fusion for the new venture team context and uses a longitudinal field design with repeated survey responses of multiple members in knowledge-intensive new venture teams from Sweden, Denmark, and Russia. Results from multilevel structural equation modeling (MSEM) showed that while there was significant dispersion in intensity of identity fusion among members within a new venture team, there was no direct effect between average team identity fusion and venture performance, as represented by external funding, customer acquisition status and product advancement status. The results run contrary to recent findings of a positive effect between identity fusion and firm performance and makes the case for further explorations into the consistency of the relationship between identity fusion and venture outcomes. The study is among the first to consider venture outcomes of group-level identity in entrepreneurship, highlighting the salience of identity fusion as one of several potential forms of group identity.

Team Perceptions of Green HRM and Team Performance: The Mediating Role of Green Team Behaviors

Organizations are increasingly pressured to contribute to a greener society and to improve team performance. Research shows that by adopting green human resource management (green HRM), organizations foster green work behaviors and improve green workplace performance. However, whether this also applies to non-green workplace outcomes such as performance in a team context remains a question that is unexplored. This research addresses this gap by examining whether green HRM is related to performance through the mediating effect of green work behaviors at the team level. Analyses of the multi-sourced data from 63 teams show that team perceptions of green HRM are indeed related to team performance through the mediating effect of green team behaviors (i.e., in- and extra-role behaviors). This study discusses how the findings offer important implications for green HRM research and practice.

Is Intra-Team Political Behavior a Good Thing? It May Depend on Team Learning

Political behavior has been discussed for nearly a hundred years. Although political behavior has been explored in-depth in previous research, sufficient attention has not been paid to team-level politics. Moreover, whether political behavior is beneficial in a team context remains an unanswered question. This paper examines the influence of intra-team political behavior on individual task performance and voice. Based on transactive memory theory, this study explores the potential boundary role of team learning in the above relationship. Furthermore, the authors propose that intra-team competitive climate and leader-member exchange mediate the moderating effect of team learning. A multi-source field study was conducted to examine the hypotheses. Results showed that team learning moderated the relationship between intra-team political behavior and individual task performance, voice, and leader-member exchange. Furthermore, the interactive effect between team learning and intra-team political behavior on task performance was mediated by intra-team competitive climate. Finally, the results of this study provide a basis for critical thinking for organizations and managers seeking to develop their understanding of organizational politics.

Gratitude Disparity, Team Psychological Safety Climate, Performance & Customer Satisfaction

Research on expressions of gratitude has shown that they have many positive effects for both the expresser and the receiver. However, most of the literature has focused on individuals and dyads while overlooking the broader team-level contexts in which many workplace gratitude expressions occur. We examine this team context and argue that high levels of received gratitude expression disparity—wherein a small number of people receive most gratitude expressions within the team—is associated with low psychological safety climate, ultimately hurting team performance and customer satisfaction. We further propose that these effects are strongest when friendship disparity in the team is also high. We tested our model in a sample of teams from a large microfinance organization, employing a cross-lagged, multisource design. Our results supported our hypotheses, emphasizing the nuanced impact of received gratitude expressions within teams and highlighting the importance of patterns of affective expression on team outcomes. Implications for theory and practice are discussed.

How Subordinates Evaluate and Respond to the Legitimacy of Leader-Member Exchange Differentiation

Drawing on legitimacy framework and equity theory, this paper examines subordinates’ evaluating process of leader-member exchange differentiation (LMXD) legitimacy and their subsequent responses. Specifically, we use LMXD deservingness (i.e., subordinates’ perception that those who develop high-quality relationships with leaders make high contributions to their group) to capture subordinates’ legitimacy judgments of LMXD. And we propose that LMXD deservingness will mediate the relationships of LMXD with subordinates’ in-role performance and interpersonal helping. Furthermore, we expect that the cross-level effects of LMXD will be moderated by the characteristic of team context, that is, perceived team competition. Using surveys from 207 leaders and 1163 subordinates, we found support that LMXD deservingness mediated the effect of LMXD on subordinates’ in-role performance but not on subordinates’ interpersonal helping. In addition, LMXD’s direct impact on LMXD deservingness and indirect impact on subordinates’ in-role performance via LMXD deservingness were more negative when perceived team competition is high rather than low. Theoretical implications and future research directions are discussed.

Collaborative Persuasion Tactics in Advancing Technological Ideas

This article examines how idea selling is practiced in three different team contexts of innovative work. With idea selling, we refer to practices that aim at affecting decision maker’s attention to and understanding of relevant issues in idea development efforts with the intention of gaining support and resources for the issue at hand. Based on qualitative data, our results show that all three teams use collaborative tactics as a means of subtle issue selling, which enabled them to blur boundaries between seller-customer roles as well as status quo and novelty.

How Job Design Shapes Effective Communication for Relational Coordination in Remote Work.

The theory of relational coordination proposes that frequent, timely, accurate and problem solving communication foster relationships of mutual respect, shared goals and shared knowledge, and vice versa, and that these dimensions support effective work coordination. With increasing numbers of employees working remotely, Advanced Communication Technologies (ACTs) play a crucial role for fostering communication necessary for relational coordination. Analysing data on user-ACT-interaction from semi-structured interviews, we find that the same material features of an ACT can lead to contrasting affordances or constraints, explaining employees’ varying ability to maintain frequent, timely, accurate and problem solving communication. The HR practice of job design influences, which affordances or constraints users’ perceive by shaping physical, task and relational characteristics of a job. Specifically, the early introduction of a comprehensive ACT that integrates various features into one technology, the existence of interdependent tasks that require frequent and ad hoc exchanges, the embeddedness in larger cross-departmental networks and a team context valuing face-to-face interactions foster the perception of affordances underlying effective communication.

Leader humility, leader authenticity and informal learning: how humble team leaders model everyday workplace learning

PurposeThis study aims to empirically examine the relationship between the leader characteristic of humility and the informal learning of team members. It also evaluates the role of leader authenticity in mediating that relationship.Design/methodology/approachData were collected on 518 salespeople reporting to 66 managers in a time-lagged study of a financial services firm. Generalized structural equation modeling was used to analyze the data and test a multi-hierarchical mediation model.FindingsLeader humility has a significant positive direct and indirect effect on individual informal learning in team contexts, and leader authenticity partially mediates this relationship.Research limitations/implicationsThis study advances research on how leaders can help transform learning from a risky endeavor to a daily practice. It shows the impact of the leadership characteristic of humility and explains how humble behaviors provide a model for individual learning in team contexts. It also reveals that leader authenticity is a key mechanism through which leader humility comes to influence employees’ informal learning within work teams.Originality/valueThis study provides empirical support for the importance of leader humility in engendering the trust required for employees to engage in everyday workplace learning. It integrates social information processing theory with social learning theory to show that humble leaders provide critical information about the value, cost and methods of individual informal learning in team contexts. Leader humility increases employees’ beliefs that they can and do learn from working in teams because employees perceive the humble leader’s behaviors as representing the leader’s true intentions.

A review and theoretical framework for understanding external team contexts.

This paper introduces a theoretical framework intended to define the nature, structure, and function of external team contexts. The external team context is defined as the resources, stimuli, elements, and features that are part of a broader multilevel system but exist outside the team's boundaries and that influence (and are influenced by) the team in temporally dynamic ways. The proposed framework seeks to understand all such contexts in terms of three continuous dimensions. First, munificence is the portfolio of resources that exist in the external team context and is composed of the quantity, quality, and interconnectedness of resources. Second, temporal dynamism is the manner in which resources in the external team context change over time and is composed of valence, rate of change, and continuity. Third, spatial variability is the span of levels at which resources exist within the broader system and is composed of origins, systemic distance, and bond strength. Contextual complexity is thus a function of munificence, temporal dynamism, and spatial variability. The framework posits that nearly all discrete contextual stimuli, events, and features can be understood in terms of these dimensions and subdimensions. In doing so, the framework integrates and reconciles several diverse strands of research, spanning different levels and disciplines, in a way that is parsimonious, precise, and falsifiable. The framework offers many insights for theory, empirical research, and practice and helps complement and advance existing theories and frameworks. A preliminary measure of context is also provided to help researchers apply and test the framework. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).

The impact of multidisciplinary team decision-making in locally advanced and recurrent rectal cancer.

Appropriate patient selection within the context of a multidisciplinary team (MDT) is key to good clinical outcomes. The current evidence base for factors that guide the decision-making process in locally advanced rectal cancer (LARC) and locally recurrent rectal cancer (LRRC) is limited to anatomical factors. A registry-based, prospective cohort study was undertaken of patients referred to our specialist MDT between 2015 and 2019. Data were collected on patients and disease characteristics including performance status, Charlson Comorbidity Index, the English Index of Multiple Deprivation quintiles and MDT treatment decision. Curative treatment was defined as neoadjuvant treatment and surgical resection that would achieve a R0 resection, and/or complete treatment of distant metastatic disease. Palliative treatment was defined as non-surgical treatment. In total, 325 patients were identified; 72.7% of patients with LARC and 63.6% of patients with LRRC were offered treatment with curative intent (p=0.08). Patients with poor performance status (PS>2; p<0.001), severe comorbidity (p<0.001), socio-economic deprivation (p=0.004), a positive predictive circumferential resection margin (p=0.005) and metastatic disease (p<0.001) were associated with palliative treatment. Overall survival in the curative cohort was 49 months (95% confidence interval [CI] 32.4-65.5) compared with 12 months (95% CI 9.1-14.9) in the palliative cohort (p<0.001). The presence of metastatic disease was identified as a prognostic factor for patients undergoing curative treatment (p=0.05). The only prognostic factor identified in patients treated palliatively was performance status (p<0.001). Our study identifies a number of preoperative, prognostic factors that affect MDT decision-making and overall survival.