Does witnessing multitasking impact turnover and conflict? The influence of employee dark core

This paper explores the dark core's role in an employee's evaluations of coworkers electronic multitasking behaviors. Using an experimental vignette design collected via Amazon's Mechanical Turk (N = 485), we demonstrate that employees high in the dark core report higher turnover intentions and more interpersonal conflict, regardless of the multitasking behavior relevance. A three-way interaction between multitasking relevance, perceived intentionality, and the dark core when predicting turnover intentions emerged. Perceived coworker intentions played the largest role in impacting turnover and interpersonal conflict. Implications for theory and practice are discussed below.

A Multilevel Review of Curvilinear Effects on the Creative Work of Teams

Their positive potential often diminishes or even turns negative when antecedents of creativity are taken too far. Despite empirical evidence supporting such curvilinear effects on important outcomes of creative work at the individual and team levels, their theorizing remains rather incomplete, with more attention being paid to explaining the curves’ upward rather than downward slopes. By developing a multilevel antecedent-benefit-cost (ABC) framework that synthesizes 120 quantitative-empirical studies on curvilinear effects, this review guides creativity and innovation literature toward conceptual clarity and methodological precision across levels. This is important because the cost-related mechanisms of certain antecedents are still not well understood.

Empowering leadership and team innovation: The mediating effects of team processes and team engagement

This study explored the mediating effects of team processes and team engagement on the relationship between empowering leadership and team innovation using a time-lagged research design and two-source data, where the supervisors’ team innovation rating was measured after a 3-month lag. Structural equation modeling was used to test the hypotheses. The findings showed that (1) team processes fully mediated the positive relationship between empowering leadership and team innovation, (2) team engagement fully mediated the positive relationship between empowering leadership and team innovation, and (3) the positive covariance of both team processes and team engagement contributed to stimulating the positive effect of empowering leadership on team innovation. Theoretical implications, practical implications, and directions for future research were also discussed.

Knowledge-oriented leadership and technology standard innovation: a temporary-team perspective

Purpose

This study aims to investigate the relevance of knowledge-oriented leadership (KOL) to technology standard innovation (TSI) from a temporary-team perspective. The mediating and moderating effect on knowledge integration (KI) and leader–member exchange (LMX) is emphasized.

Design/methodology/approach

The conceptual model is built based on an exhaustive literature review and is empirically tested in terms of a sample of 341 Chinese individuals with TSI experience. Quantitative analysis was performed using a questionnaire with the bootstrapping method used to demonstrate the mediating effect of KI.

Findings

The empirical results of this study prove that KI mediates the relationship between KOL and TSI. The authors deduce that LMX moderates the positive relation between KOL and KI.

Originality/value

Few studies have investigated the innovation activities of technology standards from a temporary-team perspective. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first study to look into the underlying mechanism of KOL in TSI. This research deepens the analysis by introducing LMX’s moderating role in the innovation process of technology standards, thereby providing valuable insights for leaders of innovation activities of technology standards and illuminating new aspects of knowledge-intensive temporary-team management.

Is Negative Group Affective Tone Always Bad For Team Creativity? Team Trait Learning Goal Orientation as the Boundary Condition

Although previous studies have found that positive group affective tone is generally good for team creativity, the reported effects of negative group affective tone (NGAT) are mixed. Drawing on the team goal orientation composition literature, we propose that team trait learning goal orientation (TTLGO; aggregated level of team members’ trait learning goal orientation) will moderate the relationship between NGAT and team creativity. Specifically, NGAT will be positively related to team creativity when TTLGO is high but becomes negative when TTLGO is low. We further theorize that team information exchange accounts for this moderating effect. Employing a multiple-source and time-lag design, we conducted two studies to test the hypotheses. In Study 1, we collected data from 270 information technology engineers working in 62 R&D teams in a software development company and examined the moderating effect of TTLGO on the NGAT-team creativity relationship. In Study 2, we replicated the findings of Study 1 and further tested the mediating role of team information exchange (i.e., Hypothesis 2) using data from 237 members of 43 diversified teams (e.g., R&D, advertising and marketing, technical services, and quality improvement). The results of these two studies support our hypotheses. Theoretical and practical implications for group affect and creativity literature are further discussed.

Competitive Revenue Strategies in the Medical Consumables Industry: Evidence from Human Resources, Research and Development Expenses and Industry Life Cycle

This study attempted to explore the competitive advantage strategies of the medical consumables industry (MCI) from the perspectives of human resources, research and development (R&D) and the industry life cycle. As one of the essential branches of modern medical device industry, the MCI has developed rapidly in recent years as global demand for medical consumables has shown continual growth, but it also faces market uncertainty. This study took Taiwan's small/medium medical consumables enterprises (SMMCEs) as a sample, and used the translog revenue function to study the competitive advantage of the MCI through human resource and R&D investment strategies and the stage characteristics of the industry life cycle curve. The results showed that the various human resources and R&D expenses of the small/medium medical consumables industry (SMMCI) can interact with each other to influence total revenue and that the SMMCI needs more varied types of human resources to enhance its competitive advantage. The total revenue of the SMMCI decreased as education inputs rose, but it increased along with increases in the number of employee and R&D inputs. Observed from the life cycle curve of the SMMCI, total revenue increased rapidly during the startup and growth stages, increased slowly during the maturity stage, and decreased during the decline stage. Finally, we put forward competitive advantage strategies and management suggestions for medical consumables enterprises (MCEs). We are the first to document the life cycle curve and competitive advantage strategies of the MCI, thereby contributing to the related literature.

Is Electronic Multitasking Always Viewed as a Counterproductive Meeting Behavior? Understanding the Nature of the Secondary Task

This project explored social evaluations of electronic multitasking during work meetings, including factors that may affect whether it is seen as a counterproductive meeting behavior. We used an experimental vignette design to test whether social evaluations (norm violating, agency, and communalism) of a hypothetical coworker's electronic multitasking differed by whether the secondary task was relevant to the meeting (Study 1; N = 274) or ambiguous (Study 2; N = 188). Observers evaluated task-irrelevant multitasking as more of a norm violation and less communal compared to task-relevant multitasking, and work-related tasks were evaluated as more agentic than nonwork-related tasks. Ambiguous tasks were also rated as more agentic than task-irrelevant multitasking. Taken together, our results show that the nature of the secondary task reduces negative perceptions of coworkers' electronic multitasking behavior during meetings. However, electronic multitasking for any purpose, even if relevant, was generally judged negatively consistent with expectations for a counterproductive meeting behavior.

Entrepreneurial orientation and the interaction of top management team background characteristics

The current study draws on the upper echelons theory to examine the nature of the relationship between top management team (TMT) tenure and a firm's level of entrepreneurial orientation (EO). We find evidence of an inverted-U relationship between TMT tenure and EO using data from firms across three industries with varied industry dynamics. We further introduce a contingency element by demonstrating that TMT industry background heterogeneity moderates the relationship between TMT tenure and EO, where the inverted U-shaped relationship will be more pronounced when the heterogeneity is low and will flatten when the heterogeneity is high. The findings demonstrate the complexity CEOs and governing bodies face while shaping a diverse TMT that can affect EO.

Age and tenure diversity on the work floor

Purpose

Past research on how to compose a team is ambiguous, especially with respect to diversity dimensions. The authors argue that previous inconsistencies in results have arisen for two main reasons. First, there is a lack of clarity about the concept of age diversity, as age separation, age variety and age disparity are frequently used synonymously, but capture very different aspects of diversity. Second, in many research settings, age and tenure diversity have been intertwined. When staffing teams, many staff managers ask for staffing advise concerning staff diversity in order to enhance efficiency. This staffing problem is mainly a question how homogeneous and heterogeneous teams should be composed. In this paper, the authors capture both – age and tenure diversity – as well as their interaction and argue that age separation and tenure variety are most likely to affect team performance in a routine task. The paper aims to discuss these issues.

Design/methodology/approach

The authors are testing the hypothesis using rich quantitative field data from a steel company.

Findings

The results show that age separation decreases performance while tenure variety increases performance. Moreover, the beneficial effects of tenure variety cannot arise when age separation is too large.

Research limitations/implications

The authors show that diversity research is very sensitive to the operationalization of diversity.

Practical implications

Managers can benefit from the study by learning how to optimally staff teams: while age diversity should be low, tenure diversity can be high.

Originality/value

Due to the unique data set, the authors can separate the influence of tenure and age diversity.

How Humble Leadership Influences the Innovation of Technology Standards: A Moderated Mediation Model

Management researchers have paid increasing attention to the role of humble leadership in innovation activities. The underlying mechanisms through which leader humility influences team innovation and outcomes, however, remain unclear. We aim to investigate the impact of humble leadership on the innovation of technology standards via knowledge exchange and combination and job complexity. We apply the Structural Equation Modelling (SEM) to the survey data from 354 individuals who participated in technology standard innovation activities in China. Our empirical results show that knowledge exchange and combination play a mediating role between humble leadership behavior and the innovation of technology standards. Particularly, we find that job complexity moderates the positive relationship between knowledge exchange and combination and the innovation of technology standards in a nonlinear way. This is the first time that the latent mechanisms of humble leadership have been identified in the innovation of technology standards based on knowledge-based theory.

Promoting Innovative Performance in Multidisciplinary Teams: The Roles of Paradoxical Leadership and Team Perspective Taking

Although many researches recognize the role of team expertise diversity in providing different ideas, it remains unclear how and under which conditions these various ideas are elaborated and integrated to fuel team innovation. To address this question, we develop a model theorizing that paradoxical leadership helps diverse teams overcome the differentiating-integrating paradox to promote innovation. Moreover, we further theorize that paradoxical leadership will cultivate perspective taking among team members. Analyses of the multi-time and multi-source data from 98 teams suggest that teams with expertise diversity exhibit better innovative performance when paradoxical leadership is prevalent. Furthermore, team perspective taking mediates the positive moderating effects of paradoxical leadership on the relationship between expertise diversity and innovative performance. Through these analyses, this study not only addresses the innovation paradox of expertise diverse teams from the perspective of leader influence, but also enriches the understanding of the effects of paradoxical leadership.

Transforming collective knowledge into team intelligence: the role of collective teaching

Purpose

The purpose of this study is to explore the pivotal role that collective teaching plays in knowledge transfer between new product development teams. This study develops a theoretical model of collective teaching, where team intelligence is its consequence and learning orientation cognitive skills are moderators.

Design/methodology/approach

Based on a questionnaire survey of 156 pairs of new product development project teams of information technology firms, the authors used partial least squares to test the study’s hypotheses.

Findings

The findings reveal that the use of collective teaching is positively related to team intelligence of recipient teams. In addition, T-shaped skills of source teams exert positive moderating influence on this relationship and so does a learning orientation of recipient teams.

Research limitations/implications

First, the sample firms used in the study are from the IT industry, which is characterized by extremely short product life cycles, thereby limiting the generalizability of the study’s findings. Second, the authors did not examine whether the effect of T-shaped skills is different at various NPD stages; the contributions of each functional expertise may vary depending on the NPD stage (e.g. the idea generation or pre-launch stage). Third, the use of cross-sectional design precludes a causal inference. The role of focal constructs and moderators and their consequent effects would benefit from more stringent, longitudinal research. Finally, the authors controlled for only a limited set of factors of team intelligence because other potential antecedents of this variable still await identification by future studies.

Practical implications

This study suggests that the implementation of collective teaching can enhance the capacity of a project team as a whole to manage and innovate information, namely, team intelligence. The study’s findings also suggest that the management must recognize the significance of teams’ learning orientation and thereby proactively develop teams’ learning culture by redesigning work, reward systems or performance evaluation to promote learning. Additionally, it is prudent for managers to reconsider their recruitment criteria to incorporate T-shaped skills.

Originality/value

This study represents the first step in developing an empirically grounded framework linking collective teaching with team intelligence. Additionally, the authors confirm that team intelligence is a four-dimensional construct.

Team-bonding and team-bridging social capital: conceptualization and implications

Purpose

The paper aims to propose a conceptualization of two types of team social capital: team-bonding and team-bridging social capital. Throughout the conceptual effort, the paper provides suggestions for future research avenues that link team social capital, as a distinct team-level construct, with other team research topics.

Design/methodology/approach

The conceptualization of team social capital is based on a review and synthesis of prior research about social networks. The propositions about the relationships of team social capital with other team process and effectiveness variables are developed within the classical input-mediator-output framework.

Findings

The conceptualizations of team-bonding and team-bridging social capital and the common measures for each are provided. Moreover, a series of testable propositions regarding the associations between team social capital and team process, the influence of team social capital on team effectiveness and the antecedents of team social capital are made.

Research limitations/implications

Because of the chosen research approach, the research results may lack generalizability. Therefore, researchers are encouraged to test the proposed propositions further.

Originality/value

This paper elaborates the concept of team social capital and specifies its implications to various team phenomena. With this conceptual effort, this paper has advanced our knowledge about the nature and role of team social capital in team research.

The curvilinear relationship between team familiarity and team innovation: A secondary data analysis

Paradoxical arguments and mixed empirical evidence coexist in the current literature concerning the relationship between team familiarity and team innovation. To resolve this contradiction, we apply habitual routines theory to propose that team familiarity and team innovation have an inverted U-shaped relationship. Using a data set of 68,933 R&D teams in the electrical engineering industry, our results support a nonlinear relationship between team familiarity and team innovation, and suggest that the best innovative performance is produced by moderately familiar teams. Furthermore, we find that external learning can moderate this curvilinear relationship. Theoretical contributions and future implications are discussed.

Developing an empirical typology of diversity-oriented human resource management practices

Purpose

The significance of human resource management in managing workforce diversity has been emphasized by researchers and various practices have been identified and prescribed in literature. However, there is lack of HR typologies to understand different diversity management alternatives. Hence, the purpose of this paper is to develop a typology of diversity-oriented human resource management (DHRM) practices for clear understanding.

Design/methodology/approach

The study employs factor analysis approach for developing typology. In total, 31 human resource management practices covering the five functions of HR, i.e. recruitment, selection, performance evaluation, compensation and training were identified from literature. These practices were analyzed to investigate whether and how these 31 practices cluster into higher order DHRM practices categories.

Findings

From factor analysis, seven categories of DHRM practices emerged. The findings showed marked differences in these seven DHRM practices categories aimed at managing diversity.

Research limitations/implications

Future, survey researchers can use this typology of DHRM practices to design instruments that allow a more in-depth and differentiating analysis of role of HRM in managing diversity than those that have been carried out in previous research.

Practical implications

Managers can use the seven types of DHRM practices identified as criteria to choose an adequate pattern for HRM practices to manage diversity.

Originality/value

The typology developed in the study has foundations in specific diversity-related HRM practices rather than based on generic HRM typologies.

Team Innovation

Team innovation is of growing importance in research in organizational psychology and organizational behavior as well as organizational practice. I review the empirical literature in team innovation to draw integrative conclusions about the state of the science and to provide a research agenda to move the field forward. The review identifies two main perspectives in team innovation research, the knowledge integration perspective and the team climate perspective. Key conclusions focus on the need to integrate these perspectives to develop an integrative contingency model of the factors providing teams with diverse informational resources and the factors influencing the extent to which teams integrate these resources in a process of information exchange and integration. As part of these integrative efforts, construct consolidation efforts are important to reverse the tendency for proliferation of substantially overlapping moderators and mediators proposed. The review also identifies the contingencies of the relationship between idea development and idea implementation as the most important understudied issue in team innovation research.

Harnessing demographic differences in organizations: What moderates the effects of workplace diversity?

To account for the double-edged nature of demographic workplace diversity (i.e,. relational demography, work group diversity, and organizational diversity) effects on social integration, performance, and well-being-related variables, research has moved away from simple main effect approaches and started examining variables that moderate these effects. While there is no shortage of primary studies of the conditions under which diversity leads to positive or negative outcomes, it remains unclear which contingency factors make it work. Using the Categorization-Elaboration Model as our theoretical lens, we review variables moderating the effects of workplace diversity on social integration, performance, and well-being outcomes, focusing on factors that organizations and managers have control over (i.e., strategy, unit design, human resource, leadership, climate/culture, and individual differences). We point out avenues for future research and conclude with practical implications. © 2015 The Authors. Journal of Organizational Behavior published by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Diversity and creativity in cross-national teams: The role of team knowledge sharing and inclusive climate

Diversity literature has demonstrated negative effects of surface-level diversity and positive effects of deep-level diversity. How do two types of diversity among cross national team members influence team knowledge sharing and team creativity? The purpose of this study is to explore conditions that leverage the positive and restrain the negative effects of team diversity on team knowledge sharing, which leads to team creativity. We expect inclusive climate as the significant condition and knowledge sharing as the profound intervening mechanism between team diversity and team creativity relationship. We tested the hypotheses with data from a sample of 60 cross-national research teams from several universities in China. The results support the hypothesized relationships among inclusive climate, team knowledge sharing, and team creativity. Our findings contribute to the advancement of team diversity and team creativity literature, and their theoretical and practical implications are discussed.

Would you please stop that!?

Purpose

– Meetings are ubiquitous in organizational life and are a great source of frustration and annoyance to many employees in the workplace, in part due to counterproductive meeting behaviors (CMBs). CMBs include engaging in irrelevant discussion, complaining about other attendees, arriving to the meeting late, and other similar, disruptive behaviors. Consistent with conservation of resources theory, the purpose of this paper is to examine the potential resource draining effect of CMBs on two key workplace attitudes/behaviors, employee voice, and coworker trust.

Design/methodology/approach

– The authors used Amazon’s MTurk service to recruit a sample of full-time working adults from a variety of industries who regularly attend meetings. Participants completed a survey with items relating to CMBs, trust, voice, and meeting load.

Findings

– The authors found that CMBs were indeed negatively related to both employee voice and coworker trust. Further, both of these relationships were even more negative for those who had fewer meetings (i.e. meeting load as a moderator).

Research limitations/implications

– The results of this study suggest that behavior in meetings may spill over and impact employees in other areas of their work life, perhaps harming other important work-related outcomes (e.g. performance). The cross-sectional nature of the sampling strategy is a limitation that provides opportunities for future research as discussed.

Practical implications

– The practical implications are rather straightforward and poignant. Managers and meetings leaders should seek ways to reduce CMBs and promote good meeting processes generally.

Originality/value

– The current study is the first to overtly investigate CMBs in workplace meetings and connect them to meaningful, non-meeting-related, outcomes. Further, the study shows the usefulness of conservation resources theory for explaining the dynamic processes that occur for meeting attendees.

Functional diversity appropriateness

Purpose

– The purpose of this paper is to investigate how perceptions of team performance and teamwork processes relate to functional diversity appropriateness perceptions (FDAP), that is, whether one believes that the right functions are represented in a team. Thereby, the authors distinguish between perceptions of team managers and team members.

Design/methodology/approach

– The study involved a cross-sectional survey study among 48 sourcing teams from 12 multinational companies, all from different industries.

Findings

– Members’ and managers’ congruent perceptions of performance showed differential relationships with their perceptions of the team’s functional diversity appropriateness. For managers, perceptions of team performance and functional diversity appropriateness were directly and positively related. For team members, this relationship was moderated by teamwork behavior. Moreover, unlike team members, purchasing managers did not consider functionally diverse teams to be more suitable for executing sourcing tasks.

Research limitations/implications

– This study identified teamwork behavior as a critical element for explaining the differences in FDAP of members and managers of sourcing teams.

Practical implications

– Rather than homogenizing team structures, managers should stimulate good teamwork behavior that allows for an the integration of interests and insights from different functional areas.

Originality/value

– This study adds to functional diversity literature as well as perceptual distance literature by revealing how different team effectiveness criteria shape managers’ and members’ perceptions of functional diversity appropriateness.

Contextual Distance and the International Strategic Alliance Performance: A Conceptual Framework and a Partial Meta-analytic Test

We propose an integrative model on how contextual distance influences the learning process and performance of international strategic alliances (ISAs). We argue that contextual distance increases knowledge diversity but decreases knowledge exchange between the alliance partners, which has implications for the alliance's knowledge creation and performance. A meta-analysis of 46 empirical studies published between 1990 and 2013 dealing with Sino-foreign collaborations in China revealed that contextual distance showed an inverted U-shaped relationship with alliance performance. Proxies for partners’ contextual experience, for example, the length of an alliance's operation in China, the foreign partners’ in-country experiences, and ISAs’ location in a more developed Chinese region, moderate the learning processes. Implications and directions for future research are discussed.

The ABC for Studying the Too-Much-of-a-Good-Thing Effect

The too-much-of-a-good-thing (TMGT) effect occurs when an initially positive relation between an antecedent and a desirable outcome variable turns negative when the underlying ordinarily beneficial antecedent is taken too far, such that the overall relation becomes nonmonotonic. The presence of the TMGT effect incites serious concerns about the validity of linearly specified empirical models. Recent research posited that the TMGT effect is omnipresent, due to an overarching meta-theoretical principle. Drawing on the competitive mediation approach, the authors of the present study suggest an antecedent-benefit-cost (ABC) framework that explains the TMGT effect as a frequent but not omnipresent issue in empirical research and integrates a variety of linear and nonlinear relationships. The ABC framework clarifies important conceptual and empirical issues surrounding the TMGT effect and facilitates the choice between linear and curvilinear models. To avoid serious methodological pitfalls, future studies with desirable outcome variables such as, for example, task performance, job performance, firm performance, satisfaction, team innovation, leadership effectiveness, or individual creativity should consider the ABC framework.

Organizational Tenure and Employee Performance

Previous research has investigated the relationship between organizational tenure and performance by focusing primarily on organizational tenure of the individual employee. We propose that this approach is limited because organizational tenure should be conceptualized as relating to multiple entities including teams and their leaders. As predicted, analysis of two objective performance indicators of 1,753 employees working with 250 leaders of natural work teams in a financial services company revealed that, beyond employee organizational tenure, team leader organizational tenure and team organizational tenure diversity had positive incremental effects on employee performance. Moreover, the positive impact of employee organizational tenure was less pronounced in teams with high rather than low tenure diversity. Our findings suggest that organizations’ capacity to promote performance will be limited if they focus on organizational tenure of an individual, while neglecting the ways in which performance is shaped by organizational tenure related to multiple entities within a team.

Leadership and Organizational Tenure Diversity as Determinants of Project Team Effectiveness

The present study reveals how leadership effectiveness in project teams is dependent on the level of organizational tenure diversity. Data from 34 project teams showed that transformational leadership is related to organizational commitment, creative behavior, and job satisfaction, but only in teams with high organizational tenure diversity. By contrast, participative leadership has no impact on team innovativeness, team performance, and team conflict in teams with high organizational tenure diversity, yet is beneficial with respect to the same outcomes in teams that are low in organizational tenure diversity. Theoretical and practical implications for leading project teams and future research in this area are discussed.

Team processes for adaptive and innovative outcomes

Purpose

– The aim of this paper is to consider how exploitative and exploratory team processes contribute to adaptive and innovative outcomes. The paper integrates the team learning and team adaptation literature and examines factors that stimulate and support exploitative and exploratory processes in interdisciplinary and homogeneous teams. This has implications for team learning research and facilitation that fosters adaptation and innovation.

Design/methodology/approach

– The paper reviews how teams learn to be exploitative and exploratory and the extent to which adaptive and innovative outcomes ensue. The paper suggests the value of teams understanding how different conditions (environment, leadership, member characteristics, and team composition) affect team members' interactions as they learn and apply exploitative and exploratory processes to produce adaptive and/or innovative outcomes.

Findings

– Teams learn frames of reference for being exploitative and exploratory influenced by environmental conditions, leadership, particularly leadership that creates psychological safety, and team member characteristics and team. Interdisciplinary team composition and resulting possible subgroup formation pose challenges for exploitative and exploratory teams.

Research limitations/implications

– Future research should study teams over time to observe subgroup formation and integration, and facilitation by leaders, team members, and group dynamics professionals to support exploratory and exploitative frames and the emergence of adaptations and innovations.

Practical implications

– Teams may be more successful in implementing innovations when they have learned how to weave between exploratory and exploitative frames of behavior.

Originality/value

– The paper applies exploitative and exploratory processes to teams to increase their capacity to produce adaptive and innovative outcomes.

Mechanisms Linking Transformational Leadership and Team Performance

Extending previous research on transformational leadership (TFL), the present study explores the mechanisms that explain the relationship between TFL and team performance. Drawing on the three-stage model of TFL (Conger & Kanungo, 1998), we theorize that TFL predicts high levels of team performance through shaping team goal orientation and group affective tone. To test the hypotheses, we use data collected from managers and members of 61 research and development teams and use the partial least squares analysis to test hypotheses. The results show that TFL positively predicts positive group affective tone through team learning goal orientation but negatively predicts negative group affective tone via team avoiding goal orientation. Finally, we find that positive group affective tone is positively associated with team performance, whereas negative group affective tone is negatively associated with team performance.

Knowledge Sharing in Teams

Sharing knowledge among team members is critical to accomplishing innovation. However, there are motivation and communication barriers to sharing knowledge in teams. In this study of 219 work teams, two mechanisms that have potential for encouraging knowledge sharing (social capital and extrinsic incentives) are examined as they relate to tacit knowledge sharing, explicit knowledge sharing, and team innovation. Tacit knowledge sharing mediated the relationships between cognitive social capital and team innovation as well as between explicit knowledge sharing and team innovation. Explicit knowledge sharing mediated the relationship between relational social capital and team innovation, while both forms of knowledge sharing mediated the relationship between extrinsic incentives for knowledge sharing and team innovation.

A heuristic model for explaining diversity's paradox

Purpose

– The purpose of this paper is to present a heuristic model to better understand the inherently paradoxical and concomitant positive and negative organizational outcomes associated with demographic diversity and value congruence in organizations. It further illustrates the resultant organizational dynamics that result from shifting levels of diversity and value congruence.

Design/methodology/approach

– This paper adopts the supply and demand heuristic from the economics discipline and further develops the diversity and similarity curves (DSC) model proposed by Ofori-Dankwa and Julian. Further, this analysis is carried out from both short-run (static) and long-run (dynamic) perspectives.

Findings

– This study illustrates how different levels of organizational diversity and value congruence (reflected by diversity and similarity curves respectively) could concurrently result in both positive and negative levels of organizational creativity and competitiveness.

Research limitations/implications

– As a heuristic, this study's model is a simplistic representation of the inherently complex set of relationships and outcomes that are associated with paradox in a social setting.

Practical implications

– This model has managerial utility for explaining how different levels of diversity in an organizational setting could potentially have different positive and negative outcomes.

Originality/value

– This study unpacks the implications of different levels of diversity in an organizational setting and sheds original light on the dynamic nature of virtuous and vicious organizational cycles associated with diversity.

Too Close or Too Far Hurts

Groups encounter difficulties in becoming better than their individual members. This study assesses the nature of the relationship between cognitive distance (operationalized as the extent to which the best performing individual is detached from the rest of the group) and two types of group synergy: weak cognitive synergy (collective performance is better than average individual performance) and strong cognitive synergy (collective performance exceeds the performance of the best individual in the group). We hypothesized that the relationship between cognitive distance and group cognitive synergy has an inverted U shape and we test this curvilinear relationship in two studies using judgmental and decision-making tasks. The first study shows that cognitive distance is beneficial for both weak and strong group cognitive synergy up to a point and then it becomes detrimental. A second study replicates the findings only for weak and not for strong synergy in a task that evaluates individual and collective rationality in decision making.

What makes grassroots conservation organizations resilient? An empirical analysis of diversity, organizational memory, and the number of leaders

Conservation Area Management Committees (CAMCs)-the functional decision-making units consisting entirely of local villagers-are grassroots organizations legally established to manage the Annapurna Conservation Area (ACA) in Nepal. These committees suffered due to the decade-long Maoist insurgency, but they survived. The paper attempts to test what factors contributed to their resiliency. For this, I surveyed 30 CAMCs during the summer of 2007 and conducted semi-structured interviews of 190 executive members of the CAMCs and 13 park officials who closely monitor the CAMCs. Regression results showed that the number of leaders (b = 0.44, t = 2.38, P = .027) was the most critical variable for building the resilience of CAMCs to the Maoist insurgency, i.e., retaining the same function, structure, and identity of the committees. As there were no reported conflicts among leaders and they were involved in negotiations and devising contingency plans, CAMCs actually benefited from having more leaders. Of the three diversity indices, the quadratic terms of age diversity (b = -5.42, t = 1.95, P = .064) and ethnic diversity (b = -4.05, t = 1.78, P = .075) had a negative impact on the CAMCs' resilience. Skill diversity and organizational memory had no significant influence on the CAMCs' resilience (t < 1.48, P > .10). These results have important implications for building resilience in community-based conservation.

International Collaboration for Academic Publication

In this study, the authors examine factors that explain international scholars’ success in publishing in North American management journals through collaboration. Drawing on the international entry mode literature, the authors propose that international collaboration teams are more successful when they increase complementary resources and reduce transaction costs. A sample of 364 articles from 10 North American management journals shows that teams published in higher impact management journals when they had U.S. or Canadian collaborators, higher proportions of assistant professors, and less gender diversity. Combining additional findings from 23 semistructured interviews, the authors provide a research model to explain the resources and costs embedded in international collaboration teams as well as mechanisms that help transform costs into resources.

The Treatment of the Relationship Between Groups and Their Environments

Despite the recognized importance of groups’ external contexts to their functioning, there is little research that fully explicates the relationship between groups and their environments. Instead, much extant research treats groups as closed systems. To advance the field’s understanding, we explore the treatment of the relationship between groups and their environments in existing literature by reviewing research that incorporates groups in naturally varying environments. We identify three predominant characterizations in the literature: the environment as a resource pool, as an impetus for change, and as a target. We offer a summary of the assumptions in these characterizations, a critical examination of each characterization, and develop a future research agenda that extends each characterization and challenges its key assumptions in an effort to explore the relationship between groups and their external environments.

Predicting post‐meeting work activity in software development projects

Purpose

This study seeks to determine factors that encourage post‐meeting work activity in a software development group by assessing attendee diversity (functional, staffing and tenure), meeting size, and meeting history.

Design/methodology/approach

One year's worth of meeting data from a software development group in a US‐based financial services company were collected and analyzed. A binary logistic regression analysis was utilized to determine the impact of diversity, meeting size, and meeting history on the likelihood of post‐meeting work activity.

Findings

Tenure diversity and meeting history for each meeting event significantly contribute to the likelihood of post‐meeting work activity.

Research limitations/implications

A lack of variance in the data does not allow for the examination of staffing diversity. Further, generalizability of findings is limited since data come entirely from one organization. Findings suggest that meeting characteristics, specifically tenure diversity and meeting history, can improve the likelihood of post‐meeting work activity occurring.

Practical implications

Findings illustrate that management can leverage tenure diversity and meeting history within a software development group to encourage post‐meeting work activity.

Originality/value

All organizations employ meetings, and research that clarifies how to extract maximum value from meeting events is critical. This study provides a first step in uncovering specific meeting characteristics which are most likely to impact post‐meeting work activity.

Leading Generative Groups

This article presents a conceptual model of leadership in generative groups. Generative groups have diverse team members who are expected to develop innovative solutions to complex, unstructured problems. The challenge for leaders of generative groups is to balance (a) establishing shared goals with recognizing members’ vested interests, (b) maintaining control with empowering members, (c) encouraging exploration with conceptualizing meaning, and (d) taking action with making time for reflection. Propositions suggest how members’ metacognitive skills, member diversity, and electronic modes of interaction influence leadership strategies to maintain balance, develop elements of group-level social cognition, and produce generative outcomes. The article concludes with directions for research and practice.