Leveraging global recombinant capabilities for green technologies: the role of ethnic diversity in MNEs’ dynamics

The growing environmental pressure and the parallel policy push on eco-innovations are making the generation of green technologies more and more profitable, given the expansion of existing markets and the creation of new ones. MNEs may show a competitive advantage in this context because of their global knowledge sourcing strategies that increase heterogeneity and variety in firms’ innovation processes. We accordingly argue that the inventors’ teams involving higher ethnic diversity are more likely to successfully generate green inventions due to their idiosyncratic experiences and diversified knowledge bases. We rely on USPTO data from an ethnic patenting database covering US-based MNEs from 1980–2009. We find that R&D teams featured by higher levels of ethnic diversity among the US-based inventors correlate with a higher probability of green patenting, but the relationship follows a non-linear pattern. Also, ethnic diversity is found to moderate the effect of recombinant capabilities on the generation of new green technologies. Our results bring implications for the strategic management of inventors’ teams by multinationals willing to run the green patent race and policymakers facing the climate change challenges.

Into the fray: Adaptive approaches to studying novel teamwork forms

Novel forms of teamwork—created by rapid change and growing diversity among collaborators—are increasingly common, and they present substantial methodological challenges for research. We highlight two aspects of new team forms that challenge conventional methods. Factors pertaining to change (e.g., in membership) create entitativity challenges such as whom to count as team members, while factors pertaining to difference (e.g., in expertise) create concordance challenges such as how to interpret disagreement in groups. We review research methods that are well-suited to each of these specific challenges. We identify the particular challenges of studying teams that exhibit high difference and change simultaneously and call for adaptive methods that enable insight into how they work. Clarity about the dimensions of deviation from ideal team forms, along with shared terminology, will help researchers make and discuss tough methodological choices and assist reviewers in evaluating them.

In or Out? Exploring the Inconsistency and Permeability of Team Boundaries

Despite the fundamental relevance of team boundaries for team research, scholars have rarely explored their origins and characteristics. Instead, team research commonly assumes the existence of formally defined, stable team boundaries. We challenge this assumption by asserting that beyond formal assignment, team members’ individual perceptions of a team’s boundaries are driven by individual-level categorization processes and team-level task dynamism. Building on multiple team members’ mental representations of team boundaries, we propose that team boundaries are likely mutually inconsistent and vary in their degree of permeability. This permeability and inconsistency serve to clarify how membership change and overlap can induce cognitive and emotional spillovers across teams. The proposed conceptual model links the origins of boundary emergence with their characteristics by explaining how membership structure and dynamics drive the characteristics of team boundaries. This account offers a new perspective on how individual perceptions of work affiliations can shape a team’s boundaries.

Autonomous team members’ expectations for top-leader involvement

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to examine incongruities between autonomous team members’ expectations for top-leader involvement with teams and their perceptions of top-leader involvement actually encountered in their own team experiences.

Design/methodology/approach

Interview feedback was sought from three participants from each of six autonomous teams to capture explanations of their lived experiences from team participation. Transcribed data were examined through thematic analysis, from which patterned responses and meanings relevant to the research inquiry were identified.

Findings

To foster a team environment and shape the organizational context to align with autonomous team members’ expectations, organizational leaders should give significant attention to all-inclusive recruitment; frequent, face-to-face communication between themselves and team members; and an unwavering resource allocation.

Originality/value

This study addresses a unique realm of team research in addressing the need for top leaders to understand team members’ expectations for their involvement in shaping an organizational context most conducive to team effectiveness.

Cultural intelligence and employees’ creative performance: The moderating role of team conflict in interorganizational teams

Recently, an increasing number of organizations conduct collaborative innovation by establishing interorganizational teams comprising employees from different organizations. Given that employees face immense challenges because of organizational culture differences in interorganizational teams, this study focused considerably on cultural intelligence in the interorganizational context. This cultural intelligence refers to the ability of individuals to deal effectively with organizational culture differences. Our research particularly explored the effect of employees’ cultural intelligence on their creative performance and the moderating effects of two types of team conflicts through hierarchical linear modeling. The sample was obtained from 54 interorganizational teams that included 275 employees. Results confirmed a positive relationship between employees’ cultural intelligence and their creative performance and the positive relationship will be stronger in higher relationship conflicts and lower task conflicts. The theoretical and practical implications of this study were also discussed.

Collective Team Identification and External Learning

To further develop extant knowledge about the drivers of and conditions affecting team external learning, we studied the relationship between collective team identification and external learning and the moderating effect of psychological safety on this relationship. The results from a field study involving 61 teams show that collective team identification had a positive influence on external learning and that this relationship was moderated by psychological safety. We found an ∩-shaped relationship between collective team identification and external learning in groups with low levels of psychological safety. Excessive collective team identification actually repressed external learning instead of increasing it. The theoretical and practical implications of these results are discussed.

Transnational organizing: Issue professionals in environmental sustainability networks

An ongoing question for institutional theory is how organizing occurs transnationally, where institution building occurs in a highly ambiguous environment. This article suggests that at the core of transnational organizing is competition and coordination within professional and organizational networks over who controls issues. Transnational issues are commonly organized through professional battles over how issues are treated and what tasks are involved. These professional struggles are often more important than what organization has a formal mandate over an issue. We highlight how ‘issue professionals’ operate in two-level professional and organizational networks to control issues. This two-level network provides the context for action in which professionals do their institutional work. The two-level network carries information about professional incentives and also norms about how issues should be treated and governed by organizations. Using network and career sequences methods, we provide a case of transnational organizing through professionals who attempt issue control and network management on transnational environmental sustainability certification. The article questions how transnational organizing happens, and how we can best identify attempts at issue control.