Team Level Of Analysis Research Articles

An Opportunity for Mutual Learning between Organizational Learning and Global Strategy Researchers: Transactive Memory Systems

The concept of transactive memory systems affords an opportunity for organizational learning and global strategy researchers to learn from each other to their mutual benefit. A transactive memory system is a collective system for encoding, storing, and retrieving information. Teams with well‐developed transactive memory systems have been found to perform better on a variety of tasks than teams lacking such memory systems. The preponderance of research on transactive memory systems has been at the team level of analysis. I argue that extending the concept of transactive memory to the organizational level and studying the concept in global firms would advance knowledge about transactive memory systems as well as increase our understanding of global strategy.

Measuring team cohesion: observations from the science.

The aim of this study was to review literature relevant to cohesion measurement, explore developing measurement approaches, and provide theoretical and practical recommendations for optimizing cohesion measurement. Cohesion is essential for team effectiveness and performance, leading researchers to focus attention on understanding how to enhance it. However, cohesion is inconsistently defined and measured, making it difficult to compare findings across studies and limiting the ability to advance science and practice. We reviewed empirical research through which we uncovered specific information about cohesion's conceptualization, measurement, and relationships with performance, culminating in a set of current trends from which we provide suggestions and possible solutions to guide future efforts and help the field converge toward greater consistency. Cohesion demonstrates more significant relationships with performance when conceptualized using social and task (but not other) dimensions and when analyses are performed at the team level. Cohesion is inherently temporal, yet researchers rarely measure cohesion at multiple points during the life of a team. Finally, cohesion matters in large, dynamic collectives, complicating measurement. However, innovative and unobtrusive methodologies are being used, which we highlight. Practitioners and researchers are encouraged to define cohesion with task and social subdimensions and to measure with behavioral and attitudinal operationalizations. Individual and team-oriented items are recommended, though team-level analyses are most effective. Innovative/unobtrusive methods should be further researched to enable cohesion measurement longitudinally and in large, dynamic collectives. By applying our findings and conclusions, researchers and practitioners will be more likely to find consistent, reliable, and significant cohesion-to-performance relationships.

Building trust and cohesion in virtual teams: the developmental approach

Purpose – Using the developmental process of interpersonal relationships as a metaphor, the purpose of this paper is to examine the mediating effects of trust and cohesion on the links between psychosocial factors and work outcomes among Chinese employees. Design/methodology/approach – A three-wave survey method was used to collect data from 388 full-time employees working in virtual teams in diverse industries in Taiwan. Findings – Structural equation modeling confirmed that trust and cohesion were two key psychological mechanisms linking up team psychosocial factors (i.e. psychological similarity, shared activities) and work outcomes (i.e. job satisfaction, team performance). Practical implications – This study examined virtual teams, which are increasingly prevalent in cloud computing applications, from a largely overlooked social psychological perspective. The results clearly demonstrated that the development and functioning of work teams is similar to the formation and functioning of social relationships. Thus, psychology in general, social psychology in particular, should have a lot to contribute to the better understanding of the rich dynamism of work teams, virtual and face-to-face. Originality/value – This is the first study testing a comprehensive model of the process of attraction-identification-trust-performance in the virtual team context with a non-western sample. The unique individual-level analysis underlining the human factors complements more often taken approach of organization- and/or team-level analysis of virtuality tackling structural and strategic issues.

A global perspective on diversity and inclusion in work organisations

This Academy of Management, Human Resources Division, Ambassadors' Programme special issue presents a collection of empirical papers examining workplace diversity and inclusion in a global context. We introduce this topic raising three overarching challenges: to develop more context-specific definitions of diversity and inclusion; to include dimensions pertinent to a global context in the definition of diversity and inclusion; and to consider the impact of diversity and inclusion practices on performance outcomes across countries as well as within multinational corporations. We explore these challenges through three diversity and inclusion lenses – gender, age and nationality – exploring global perspectives at the national, organisational and team levels of analysis. In conclusion, we present an agenda for future research.

Feeling Good Makes Us Stronger: How Team Resilience Mediates the Effect of Positive Emotions on Team Performance

This study investigated the relationship between collective positive emotions at work and team resilience, expanding on the Broaden and Build theory of Fredrickson (Rev Gen Psychol 2:300–319, 1998; Am Psychol 56:218–226, 2001) at the collective (i.e., work teams) level of analysis. Through the aggregate scores of 1,076 employees (61 % men), grouped into 216 teams and belonging to 40 companies, five collective positive emotions were evaluated (i.e., enthusiasm, optimism, satisfaction, comfort, and relaxation) as well as team resilience. Additionally, ratings of the 216 supervisors of the teams were used to assess team performance (i.e., in- and extra-role performance). Structural equation modeling at the team level of analysis indicated that team resilience mediates the relationship between collective positive emotions and team performance, both in- and extra-role. The results highlight the importance of developing collective positive emotions to help teams to foster team resilience and improve their performance. The article concludes with practical strategies aimed at developing collective positive emotions, together with limitations and suggestions for future research.

The Mediating Effect of Ethical Climate on the Relationship Between Paternalistic Leadership and Team Identification: A Team-Level Analysis in the Chinese Context

The aim of this paper is to explore the role of ethical climate on the relationship between the paternalistic leadership and team identification at the team level. In contrast to the prior studies which tended to focus on ethical climate as a whole dimension, this paper further classified the domain of construct into the categories of egoism, benevolence, and principle using a sample from 143 teams in Mainland China and Taiwan. Hierarchical regression results showed that the average paternalistic leadership had a significant impact on the team identification at the team level. Moreover, the results indicated that the ethical climate of benevolence fully mediated while the ethical climate of egoism partially mediated the relationship between authoritarian leadership and team identification. Also, the ethical climates of benevolence and principle had a partial mediating effect on the relationship between benevolent leadership and team identification as well as moral leadership and team identification, respectively, but the ethical climate of egoism did not play a significant role. The major findings, theoretical contributions, practical implications, and the limitations were discussed.

A Multilevel Analysis of Problem-Based Learning Design Characteristics

The increasing use of experience-centered approaches like problem-based learning (PBL) by learning and development practitioners and management educators has raised interest in how to design, implement and evaluate PBL in that field. Of particular interest is how to evaluate the relative impact of design characteristics that exist at the individual and team levels of analysis. This study proposes and tests a multilevel model of PBL design characteristics. Participant perceptions of PBL design characteristics are used to examine PBL reactions and perceived learning outcomes. Findings affirm the importance of problem design characteristics and effective team facilitation, while raising new questions about team-level characteristics such as goal orientation diversity.

Working together versus working autonomously: a new power-dependence perspective on the individual-level of analysis.

Recent studies have indicated that it is important to investigate the interaction between task interdependence and task autonomy because this interaction can affect team effectiveness. However, only a limited number of studies have been conducted and those studies focused solely on the team level of analysis. Moreover, there has also been a dearth of theoretical development. Therefore, this study develops and tests an alternative theoretical perspective in an attempt to understand if, and if so why, this interaction is important at the individual level of analysis. Based on interdependence theory and power-dependence theory, we expected that highly task-interdependent individuals who reported high task autonomy would be more powerful and better performers. In contrast, we expected that similarly high task-interdependent individuals who reported less task autonomy would be less powerful and would be weaker performers. These expectations were supported by multi-level and bootstrapping analyses performed on a multi-source dataset (self-, peer-, manager-ratings) comprised of 182 employees drawn from 37 teams. More specifically, the interaction between task interdependence and task autonomy was γ =.128, p <.05 for power and γ =.166, p <.05 for individual performance. The 95% bootstrap interval ranged from .0038 to .0686.

Adapting Across Levels: Empirical Advancements in Performance Adaptation Theory

In this symposium, we present the latest advancements in empirical tests of how performance adaptation occurs within and across various levels of analysis. These papers represent cutting- edge research by junior scholars whose work informs the field with boundary conditions and notable elaborations on performance adaptation theory. Symposium participants will build on the considerable work that has been done so far to understand adaptation at the individual level (e.g. Pulakos, Arad, Donovan, & Plamondon, 2000) and team levels of analysis (e.g. Entin & Serfaty, 1999) by either incorporating multiple levels of analysis in a single study, or developing comparisons of mechanisms and boundary conditions across independent studies. Self-regulation: A Driver of Adaptive Performance Over Time Presenter: Samantha K. Baard; Michigan State U. Presenter: Steve W. J. Kozlowski; Michigan State U. A Phenomenology of Learning to Adaptively Coordinate With Leaders and Across Levels Presenter: John Paul Stephens; Case Western Reserve U. Presenter: Njoke K. Thomas; Case Western Reserve U. Aspirations in the Prisoner’s Dilemma: A Computational Simulation of Performance Adaptation Presenter: Corinne Coen; Case Western Reserve U.

Antecedents of Individuals' Interteam Coordination: Broad Functional Experiences as a Mixed Blessing

This manuscript investigates the role of individual team members' breadth of functional experience for their interteam coordination behavior. Integrating personal construct and social identity theories, we examine interpersonal cognitive complexity as a mediating variable and organizational identification as a moderator. We test our hypotheses across two independent field studies, comprising an international peace support training mission (Study 1) and a municipality administration (Study 2). Corroborating our predictions, interpersonal cognitive complexity appeared as a conditional mediating variable that can translate an individual's breadth of functional experience into interteam coordination. The strength and direction of this indirect relationship, however, depended on the individual's identification with the organization as a whole. Moreover, on the team level of analysis, we found members' overall interteam coordination to positively relate with team performance in Study 2. All in all, this paper advances new knowledge on the antecedents, mechanisms, contingency factors, and team-level consequences of members' boundary spanning.

Advancing Our Understanding of Team Motivation

Although research on team motivation has been one of the fastest growing research domains in organizational science, progress in this domain has been hampered by a lack of integrative reviews. Thus, we develop a theoretical framework in this article to summarize and discuss different conceptual approaches to team motivation for the following six content areas: team design, team needs, team goals, team self-regulation, team efficacy, and team affect. Our framework organizes previous research according to two dimensions. First, we assess the degree of interdependence between team members’ motivational states, differentiating between models that conceptualize team motivation as functionally equivalent to individual level motivation and models that conceptualize team motivation as a truly collective phenomenon. Second, we assess the extent to which research conceptualizes team motivation as a dynamic phenomenon that evolves over time, with static models of team motivation and dynamic models of team motivation demarcating the opposite ends of this continuum. With this framework, we show that previous research on team motivation has overemphasized conceptual similarities between motivation constructs at the individual and team levels of analysis. We address this shortcoming by developing a theory of interdependent regulatory dynamics. This theory emphasizes the interdependent and dynamic nature of team motivation. It depicts the processes in which team members decide how to allocate their efforts and resources between individual goals and team goals, and it identifies the multiple pathways through which teams coordinate and regulate their collective efforts over time.

Regulatory Focus in Work Teams: Antecedents and Consequences of Team Prevention and Promotion Foci

In spite of increasing importance of teams¡¯ performance strategies due to task complexity and competition, scant attention has been paid to the role of collective regulatory focus in team contexts. To fill this gap, this study attempts to explore team-level antecedents and outcomes of team prevention and promotion foci. Team-level analyses conducted on the leaders and members of 90 work teams in Korean companies revealed that internal process and open system team cultures significantly predicted team prevention and promotion foci, respectively. In addition, team prevention focus partially mediated the relationship between internal process culture and team task performance, whereas team promotion focus partially mediated the relationship between open system culture and team creative performance. Instead of having direct effects, transactional and transformational leadership were related to the two regulatory foci through their indirect effects through team cultures. The present framework and empirical results offer new insights regarding team culture, collective regulatory focus, and team performance in organizational settings.

Transformational leadership, job satisfaction, and team performance: A multilevel mediation model of trust

In spite of calls for deliberate differentiation between individual and team levels of analysis, leadership research based on well-grounded theory referring to multiple levels is scarce. We seek to fill this gap by analyzing the relations between transformational leadership, trust in supervisor and team, job satisfaction, and team performance via multilevel analysis. Results are based on a sample of 360 employees from 39 academic teams. Transformational leadership was positively related to followers' job satisfaction at individual as well as team levels of analysis and to objective team performance. The relation between individual perceptions of supervisors' transformational leadership and job satisfaction was mediated by trust in the supervisor as well as trust in the team. Yet, trust in the team did not mediate the relationship between team perceptions of supervisors' transformational leadership and team performance. Implications for theory and research of leadership at multiple levels as well as for practice are discussed.

Are authentic leaders associated with more virtuous, committed and potent teams?

Through a team-level analysis, the study shows how authentic leadership (AL) predicts team potency both directly and through the mediating role of team virtuousness and team affective commitment. Data about AL and team virtuousness were collected two months before data collection on team affective commitment and team potency. Fifty-one teams were selected for testing the hypotheses. The main findings are the following: (a) AL predicts team affective commitment through the mediating role of team virtuousness; (b) team virtuousness predicts team potency through the mediating role of team affective commitment; (c) AL predicts team potency through the mediating role of team virtuousness and team affective commitment. By focusing on two positive constructs (AL and team virtuousness), for which interrelations have rarely been explored, the study contributes to the Positive Organizational Scholarship movement, and suggests that AL and virtuousness are good in themselves and also potential facilitators of team success.

Work engagement supports nurse workforce stability and quality of care: nursing team‐level analysis in psychiatric hospitals

Research in healthcare settings reveals important links between work environment factors, burnout and organizational outcomes. Recently, research focuses on work engagement, the opposite (positive) pole from burnout. The current study investigated the relationship of nurse practice environment aspects and work engagement (vigour, dedication and absorption) to job outcomes and nurse-reported quality of care variables within teams using a multilevel design in psychiatric inpatient settings. Validated survey instruments were used in a cross-sectional design. Team-level analyses were performed with staff members (n = 357) from 32 clinical units in two psychiatric hospitals in Belgium. Favourable nurse practice environment aspects were associated with work engagement dimensions, and in turn work engagement was associated with job satisfaction, intention to stay in the profession and favourable nurse-reported quality of care variables. The strongest multivariate models suggested that dedication predicted positive job outcomes whereas nurse management predicted perceptions of quality of care. In addition, reports of quality of care by the interdisciplinary team were predicted by dedication, absorption, nurse-physician relations and nurse management. The study findings suggest that differences in vigour, dedication and absorption across teams associated with practice environment characteristics impact nurse job satisfaction, intention to stay and perceptions of quality of care.

¿Qué hace a los equipos ser más innovadores? El liderazgo desde una perspectiva de multidominio

The present uses a team level and multi-domain analysis to offer a better understanding about how could leadership and climate combine to make teams more innovative. Data from 98 teams show the effects for different leadership domains — related to the leader, to the followers, and to the relationships between leader, team members and co-workers — on the generation of a climate for innovation. Specifically our results show a positive relationship between innovative expectations and the quality of the relationships and the generation of a climate for innovation. At the same time, we also show that a climate for innovation facilitates higher innovative team outputs. Additionally, theoretical and practical implications for differences between individual and team level effects are discussed.

Managing demographic change and diversity in organizations: how feedback from coworkers moderates the relationship between age and innovative work behavior

In a field study of 211 employees of a midsized German high-tech company, useful feedback from coworkers was examined as a moderator of the relationship between age and supervisor ratings of radical innovative work behavior. When employees perceived higher levels of useful feedback from their coworkers, the relationship between age and radical innovative work behavior followed an inverted U-shape. This inverted U-shaped relationship was decreasingly manifested as the level of perceived useful feedback from coworkers dropped. Given demographic change and the aging of the workforce of many organizations, this finding broadens the still fragmentary knowledge of the conditions under which aging is likely to have more or less positive effects on innovative work behavior. The authors discuss the theoretical and practical implications of these results on both the individual and the team level of analysis.

Structure and Function of Team Learning Emergence

The aim of this study is to examine how learning emerges in terms of structure and function to transform from an individual to a collective (team) phenomenon. Drawing on learning theory and multilevel thinking, the authors developed and validated measures for the basic team learning processes (i.e., intuition, interpretation, integration, and codification) in three independent field studies of innovation project teams and employed multilevel structural equation modeling to test relationships across the individual and team levels of analysis. Their results confirm the hypothesis that team learning originates in individual intuitions, is amplified through interpretation and integration, and manifests itself at the team level via the codification of collective cognition and action. Across the three studies, team learning was found to significantly affect team performance. The authors’ approach contributes to a conceptualization and measurement of team learning as a multilevel phenomenon.

Team personality composition, affective ties and knowledge sharing: a team-level analysis

As knowledge has become the most valuable asset for organizations in the knowledge economy age, the related issue of knowledge management has attracted increasing attention. In particular, the concept of knowledge sharing, a necessary process for organisations seeking fruitful knowledge transfer and creation can help organisations gain and sustain a competitive advantage. In this study, we investigate the issue of knowledge sharing based on the input-process-output (IPO) model at the team level. Fifty-three teams composed of 205 employees participated in this exploration of the relationships among team personality composition (based on a five-factor personality model), team process (affective ties) and team outcomes (knowledge sharing). With respect to team personality composition, higher team mean levels of conscientiousness, agreeableness, openness to experience and extroversion corresponded with higher levels of knowledge sharing. Agreeableness and extroversion also were associated with knowledge sharing through intra-team affective ties.

Linking perceived external prestige and collective identification to collaborative behaviors in R&D teams

Research efforts have long been directed at understanding variations in collaborative behaviors among work teams with burgeoning interest in teams operating in knowledge-intensive settings. One of the largely unexplained issues is how does team image and collective identification facilitate collaborative behaviors. Here, survey data were collected from nineteen highly technical work teams engaging in software development in an R&D division of a multinational NASDAQ firm involved in multimedia communications and information processing technology. The relationships between perceived external prestige, collective team identification and team collaborative behaviors were examined. The results of the team-level analyses suggest that perceived external prestige augments collective team identification (measured at Time 1), which in turn engenders a high degree of collaboration and interaction within the team (measured at Time 2). When past team performance was controlled for, the results consistently supported the hypothesized model.