Managing strategic contradictions in hybrid teams

Categorisation of organisation dualities using the Delphi technique

This paper presents the case of a non-traditional use of the Delphi method in order to explore organisational duality and reach a consensus on the 23 organisational dualities which allow for a classification into a three-tier organisational policy model (TTOP-model). The expert group was composed of seven experts from the field of management. The process ran for four rounds to reach the final consensus examining 25 dualities and eventually focusing them down to the final 23. In addition to their practical relevance of understanding the dualities, the findings also have implications for both the literature on strategic management and the paradox lens on organisational theory through an understanding of duality in terms of the TTOP model. This research not only advances conversations in strategic management but also helps to increase confidence when adopting the Delphi method for a wider recognition of the method within both interpretivist studies and paradox research.

Making sense of teamwork in mobile hybrid teams: a lexical analysis

Purpose

This study aims to investigate the ways mobile hybrid team members make sense of their teamwork.

Design/methodology/approach

Using surveys, this study examined 579 US-based mobile hybrid team members as they discussed their professional team activities. Leximancer software determined, through frequency and co-occurrence analysis of survey-resulting unstructured data sets, the themes mobile hybrid team members use to make sense of their teamwork.

Findings

Participants included the concepts Team, Technology, Communication, Context and Time relative to 25 specific content themes within their talk about teamwork. While thematic clusters such as Team and Communication were densely packed, Technology and Time co-occurred more widely in support of other content themes within the mobile hybrid team member data set. This suggests mobile technologies pervade mobile hybrid team members’ sensemaking about their work.

Originality/value

A first of its kind inquiry into how mobile hybrid team members make sense of work and performance within their teams, this study highlights the need to explore further how mobile hybrid team members frame and enact technological processes as integral to their organizational work and team outcomes.

Collaboration technology affordances from virtual collaboration in the time of COVID-19 and post-pandemic strategies

Purpose

This paper aims to explore key collaboration technology affordances from virtual collaboration and remote work during the time of COVID-19. The purpose of this exploration is to improve the understanding of technology-supported collaboration in order to achieve individual and organizational success with the adoption, use and implementation of virtual collaboration in a pandemic and post-pandemic world.

Design/methodology/approach

Qualitative data is collected from 55 graduate students during a time of work transition due to COVID-19. This paper distills key collaboration technology affordances identified from participant feedback.

Findings

This paper identifies topics of virtual collaboration success as well as challenges related to organizational transitions during COVID-19. The findings from this work relate to four collaboration technology affordances including: (1) flexibility and productivity, (2) social connectedness and organizational culture, (3) technology support and (4) management and leadership. Additionally, this research provides insight into the complexities of virtual collaboration in these areas while also making recommendations for the post-pandemic future.

Originality/value

This research makes a contribution through the analysis of a unique set of data elaborating on participant experiences during a global pandemic as well as through the exploration of future implications.

Paradox and the negotiation of tensions in globally distributed work

Tensions are a major source of communication problems, coordination issues, and conflict in globally distributed work. In this article, we argue that extant literature falls short of addressing tensions in globally distributed work at two levels. First, it fails to fully account for the intrinsic and entrenched nature of tensions in globally distributed work, suggesting instead that they can be resolved or made to disappear. Second, it does not examine the key interactions among different kinds of tensions. Drawing on qualitative data from a distributed finance organization and applying concepts from paradox theory, we show how globally distributed units negotiate knowledge, power, and identity tensions in collaborative work. The findings illuminate how a sequential enactment of both formal and informal solutions can better address tensions and generate collaborative opportunities in globally distributed work. Building on the findings, we develop a phasal model of tension evolution and management in globally distributed work which explains how tensions evolve from a phase of suppression through to a phase of attenuation. We demonstrate the interactions of knowledge–power–identity tensions against a background of defensive, interactive, and collaborative behaviors, and suggest several practical implications for globally distributed work practice.

Managerial challenges to realizing IT shared services in a public university

Purpose

Many governments and public organizations are turning to shared service arrangements to decrease costs while increasing service levels. This paper aims to elucidate the fine-grained challenges managers face as they adjust to working under a shared service arrangement.

Design/methodology/approach

A two-year longitudinal ethnographic field study followed the IT shared service transformation process at a large public university. Meeting observations, emails, documents and interviews were used in the qualitative analysis.

Findings

The research identifies 11 challenges faced by management undergoing a transition to shared services. The authors use a taxonomy of management challenges based on the organizational perspectives literature (Knol et al., 2014) to organize the challenges and relate them to prior literature.

Research limitations/implications

The novel findings include the importance of changing organizational culture, balancing dual interests of cost and customer focus, establishing a sense of urgency and achieving process standardization through practicing when adopting a shared service arrangement. The results from a single case study may not by generalizable to other organizations.

Originality/value

This study provides a nuanced and fine-grained understanding of the managerial challenges of adopting IT-shared services. This unique longitudinal data set describes in nuanced detail the challenges faced by frontline managers.

Paradoxical Virtual Leadership: Reconsidering Virtuality Through a Paradox Lens

This conceptual article moves the conversation about virtual leadership forward by blending extant knowledge on virtuality and on leadership. Drawing on paradox theory, we show that virtuality is a paradox; therefore, virtual leadership’s core function is to deal with paradox. Our paradoxical virtual leadership model introduces three distinct leadership styles: synergistic, selective, and stagnant. Synergistic leaders view virtuality through a both–and cognitive framework, integrate divergent forces into synergistic solutions, and engage in varied, even opposing, behaviors to synergize virtuality’s paradoxical tensions and leverage the power of paradox. In contrast, selective leaders view virtuality through an either–or framework, and attempt to either manage virtuality’s challenges, or to capitalize on its opportunities, thus failing to balance paradoxical tensions. Finally, stagnant leaders adopt an avoidant framework, ignoring or avoiding virtuality’s paradoxes, and fail to lead effective virtual teams. The practical implications of this model—especially as they relate to how virtual leaders can synergize paradoxical tensions—are discussed.