Does diversity in team members’ agreeableness benefit creative teams?

Although deep-level diversity among team members are often discussed as important catalysts of team creativity, little is currently understood about the impact of diversity in team members’ personality on team creativity and team satisfaction. We propose that diversity in team members’ agreeableness would reduce the effectiveness of creative teams through its impact on team conflict experienced. To test our hypotheses, we recruited 93 student teams to participate in a laboratory study where each member had their personality traits assessed before engaging in a team creativity task. We found that diversity in team members’ agreeableness was positively associated with team task conflict experienced which, in turn, was negatively associated with team creativity. Additionally, we found that diversity in team members’ agreeableness was positively associated with team relationship conflict, which, in turn, was negatively associated with team satisfaction. Implications and future directions are discussed.     

团队后援行为及其相关因素

团队后援行为指成员间的作业互助行为,使团队能动态地调整分配资源和能力,从而提高团队绩效。文章首先介绍后援与组织公民行为、关系绩效等概念的异同。然后介绍影响后援行为的三大类因素：个体因素、团队因素、组织因素。再介绍后援行为的两种测量方法：非判断性测量和判断性测量法。最后对今后的研究提出几点启示。     

团队权力分布差异对团队冲突的影响：程序公平和合法性的作用

近年来团队权力分布差异与团队冲突间关系受到了学界较大关注, 但相关研究结果仍存在分歧。通过对70个工作团队的调查, 探讨了团队权力分布差异对团队冲突(任务冲突、关系冲突)作用的边界条件。结果发现, 程序公平调节了两者间关系：当程序公平较高时, 团队权力分布差异与任务冲突、关系冲突负相关; 当程序公平较低时, 团队权力分布差异与任务冲突、关系冲突正相关。此外, 被中介的调节模型分析显示, 团队合法性感知中介了程序公平的上述调节作用。     

Cultural Intelligence and Language Competence: Synergistic Effects on Avoidance,Task Performance,and Voice Behaviors in Multicultural Teams

Avoidance of culturally diverse peers undermines the benefits of multicultural teams. Using uncertainty reduction theory, we argue that team members’ cultural intelligence (CQ; the capability to work effectively in culturally diverse settings) and language competence (the ability to communicate in a language) exert main and synergistic effects on avoidance behaviors. We further propose that avoidance negatively predicts individuals’ task performance (behaviors that contribute to team outcomes) and voice behaviors (giving suggestions to improve the status quo). Put together, we test a moderated mediation model where the mediating role of avoidance between CQ and outcomes of task performance and voice behaviors is moderated by language competence. Our results, based on data collected from multicultural team members at three time points, showed no main effects of CQ and language competence on avoidance. Instead, we found synergistic effects such that CQ was negatively related to avoidance only when language competence was high. Avoidance was negatively related to peer-rated task performance and voice behaviors. Conditional process analyses supported our moderated mediation hypothesis, suggesting that avoidance explains why people with higher CQ and higher language competence have higher task performance and voice behaviors.     

Team situation awareness within the context of human-autonomy teaming

Effective team communication, a fundamental part of team coordination, is crucial for both effective Team Situation Awareness (TSA) and team performance. In this study, we looked at the role that team interaction (i.e., more specifically team verbal behaviors) played in TSA and team performance in order to better understand Human-Autonomy Teaming (HAT). We first analyzed team verbal behaviors (i.e., pushing and pulling information) across conditions of human-autonomy teams and human-human teams, and then analyzed their relationship with TSA and team performance via Growth Curve Modelling (GCM). Good teamwork involves anticipating the needs of teammates and that means pushing information before it is requested. Therefore, if things are going well, there should be little need for pulling information. In this study’s task, participants were instructed to push information to others, and over time master the specific timing of information sharing to the intended recipient. Findings indicate that pushing information was positively associated with TSA and team performance, and human-autonomy teams had lower levels of both pushing and pulling information than all-human teams. Through this study, we have learned that anticipation of other team member behaviors and information requirements in human-autonomy teams are important for effective TSA and team performance. In order to make HAT more effective in terms of teamwork, we need to develop mechanisms to enhance pushing information within HAT.     

The Effects of Team Context on Peer Ratings of Task and Citizenship Performance

Recent trends indicate that organizations will continue their strategic pursuit of teamwork for the foreseeable future, which will create a need for accurate assessments of individuals’ performance in teams. Although individual behaviors can be perceived and assessed by fellow team members (i.e., peers), the extent to which the team shapes perceivers’ judgments versus the target’s behavior is unclear. We conducted two studies to understand how and why team context influences peer ratings of individual performance. In study 1, we conducted cross-classified modeling on a sample of 7160 performance observations of 568 targets made by 567 perceivers, who were each members of four separate teams. Results indicated that team membership accounted for a substantially higher proportion of perceiver, relative to target, variance. In study 2, we conducted social relations modeling with a sample of 679 performance observations collected from 217 individuals nested in 46 teams to test the effects of psychological safety on perceiver, target, and team variance components. Perceptions of psychological safety accounted for proportionally larger perceiver, relative to target, variance in OCB, and task performance ratings. Altogether, team context appears to affect perceivers’ judgments of behavior more than the target’s behavior itself, implying that peer ratings sourced from different teams may not be comparable. We consider the implications for the collection and interpretation of peer performance ratings in teams and the potential implications for social cognitive theory, such that certain aspects of the team context, including psychological safety, may act as a cognitive heuristic by molding perceiver judgments of targets.

     

Personality in teams: Its relationship to social cohesion,task cohesion,and team performance

This study continued past research on the relationship between personality composition in teams and social cohesion and team performance (Barrick, Stewart, Neubert, & Mount, 1998). Results from the Barrick et al. sample (N = 50) were compared with data from two new samples, one comprising drilling teams in the US (N = 24), and the other comprising student teams in The Netherlands (N = 25). Furthermore, this study examined the relationship between personality composition and task cohesion, usually considered to be a stronger predictor of team performance than social cohesion. Results partly confirmed the relationships between personality composition, cohesion, and team performance that were found previously. Minimum levels of conscientiousness and agreeableness contributed positively to both task cohesion and team performance. High mean levels of extraversion and emotional stability contributed positively to social cohesion. Some results differed across the three samples, stressing the importance of task characteristics as a factor influencing relationships between team personality, team processes, and team performance. Although significant relationships were found between social cohesion, task cohesion, and performance, cohesion measures did not mediate relationships between personality composition and team performance.     

Meeting the need or falling in line? The effect of laissez-faire formal leaders on informal leadership

We consider the utility of two contrasting theoretical perspectives in explaining how laissez-faire formal leaders and team member motivation to lead (MTL) influences informal leadership and team task performance. The first perspective, functional leadership theory, is the dominant lens used currently to understand informal leadership. However, we suggest that social learning theory offers a compelling alternative account. In a multiwave survey study of 344 members of 72 work teams, we find support for the social learning theory predictions that laissez-faire formal leaders are perceived by team members to engage in less modeling of effective leadership and as a result are negatively associated with informal leadership and team task performance. We do not find support for the functional leadership theory predictions that laissez-faire formal leaders are positively associated with team members’ informal leadership and team task performance, which would be due to an increased perceived need for leadership. The social learning effects are stronger for teams that are lower in member MTL and weaker for teams that are higher in member MTL. These results suggest social learning theory may be preferable to functional leadership theory for understanding informal leadership in teams.     

网络协作过程中团队成员信任机制的实验研究

本文采用情景模拟实验的方法,以大学生为研究对象,通过模拟现实环境中虚拟团队的工作方式,考察了虚拟团队协作过程中个体信任六个因子（风险、利益、实用价值、影响力、兴趣以及努力程度）的发展。实验历时两个月,共进行三次问卷调查,收集了不同阶段各个团队个体信任六个因子变化发展的数据。本研究运用蜘蛛图和平衡秤模型分析了积极团队和消极团队个体信任发展的差异。研究结果表明,在虚拟团队发展的早期,个人利益和兴趣是影响个体信任的主要因子,随着团队任务的进展,实用价值成为后期主要的影响因素之一;在虚拟团队发展早期,成员间可能会发生较为激烈的人际和任务冲突,并对兴趣和努力等因子产生消极的影响;相对于消极团队,积极团队更专注于团队任务,成员更乐于参与团队协作并提高自身的影响力。     

Goal orientation: effects on backing up behavior, performance, efficacy, and commitment in teams

The author examined the predictive validity of goal orientation in teams on both team process and outcome variables. Results indicate that when mean goal orientation scores were used as a way of describing team members' inputs, learning orientation was related to backing up behavior, efficacy, and commitment. The relationships between performance orientation and efficacy and commitment, however, were more complex and were clarified when task performance was also taken into account. Performance orientation had a negative effect on efficacy when task performance was low and a positive effect on commitment when task performance was high. The implications of these findings for theory and research on goal orientation in teams and team staffing are discussed.     

Examining the “Pros” and “Cons” of Team Conflict: A Team-Level Meta-Analysis of Task,Relationship, and Process Conflict

Jehn (e.g., 1997) offered three distinct types of team conflict, namely, task conflict, relationship conflict, and process conflict. Despite existing meta-analyses, there remain important and ongoing issues that warrant further meta-analytic investigation. Our contribution is threefold. First, we report novel meta-analytic findings involving moderators of the conflict–team performance relationship. Second, we report on meta-analytic correlations involving all three conflict types and team innovation. Third, we report on the relations involving task conflict and relationship conflict with previously unexamined, but critical, teamwork variables: team potency, cooperative behaviors, competitive behaviors, and avoidance behaviors. Input for the current meta-analysis included 89 independent samples, 6,122 teams, and approximately 28,000 team members.     

Type A Personality Characteristics and the Effect on Individual and Team Academic Performance

Type A personality has been conceptualized in part as high need for achievement combined with aggression, hostility, and self-esteem issues. In teams of undergraduate business students, high levels of Type A personality significantly correlated with high levels of depression and high levels of social monitoring; and negatively correlated with social desirability, communality, and individual performance across time. In team settings, the more Type A's were balanced in a team with low Type A's, the more there was team commitment and the more team synergy behaviors; while if teams had a greater number of Type A's, there was more individualistic behavior, and team project scores were lower.     

Resilience in Virtual Teams: Developing the Capacity to Bounce Back

Resilience, or the capacity to bounce back from adversity strengthened and more resourceful, can be considered an important quality of virtual teams in the contemporary working world. A team is the basic organizational unit many modern firms are composed of—and, the virtual ones are those conducting teamwork over distance using a combination of telecommunications and information technologies to accomplish an organizational task. Yet, we know little about how these teams with members who rarely meet in person can build resilience. We develop further the notion of resilience from the traditional focus on significant adversity to also include mundane yet crucial events that can become key for building resilience in virtual teams. Our study focuses on team dynamics and builds on an experimental research setting using a longitudinal, qualitative and interpretative research design to examine five anatomically similar, well-performing virtually working teams over their life cycle. Our findings show that team members in two out of the five teams engaged in specific reflection and action mechanisms—self-reflective practices, regulation of emotional expression, and engagement in concrete actions promoting team inclusion—that in turn helped these teams become more robust and prepared to face new adversities. Implications for practice and research are discussed.     

Transactive memory system links work team characteristics and performance

Teamwork and coordination of expertise among team members with different backgrounds are increasingly recognized as important for team effectiveness. Recently, researchers have examined how team members rely on transactive memory system (TMS; D. M. Wegner, 1987) to share their distributed knowledge and expertise. To establish the ecological validity and generality of TMS research findings, this study sampled 104 work teams from a variety of organizational settings in China and examined the relationships between team characteristics, TMS, and team performance. The results suggest that task interdependence, cooperative goal interdependence, and support for innovation are positively related to work teams' TMS and that TMS is related to team performance; moreover, structural equation analysis indicates that TMS mediates the team characteristics-performance links. Findings have implications both for team leaders to manage their work teams effectively and for team members to improve their team performance.     

Effects of guided reflexivity and team feedback on team performance improvement: The role of team regulatory processes and cognitive emergent states

The effectiveness of decision-making teams depends largely on the quality of information processing. Prior research has shown that guided team reflexivity and team feedback are important means of advancing team information processing and outcomes. However, the nature of the relationships, and how these relate to team regulatory processes, cognitive emergent states, and ultimately team performance, is currently poorly understood. Drawing on reflexivity and team information-processing theory, we proposed and found that teams that received guided team reflexivity or a combination of both guided reflexivity and feedback showed higher levels of actual reflection than teams that received neither a reflexivity intervention nor feedback. Conditional process analysis showed that the effects of team reflection on team performance improvement were mediated by a path from shared team mental models to shared task mental models and to adaptation. Finally, we also expected that team reflection would be lower in virtual teams than in face-to-face teams. These hypotheses were tested experimentally among 98 student teams that communicated either face-to-face or virtual (via chat) while completing a collective decision-making task. The information distribution among team members constituted a hidden profile. The results supported all our hypotheses, except for the one relating to virtuality.     

冲突对绩效的影响：个体、团队宜人性的调节作用

以往个体和团队冲突研究主要考察了个人特征或团队特征对冲突结果的影响, 而尚未充分关注冲突管理过程中个体特征与团队特征间的交互效应。基于个人-团队匹配理论, 本研究探讨了个体层面宜人性与团队层面宜人性异质性对团队中个体冲突(关系冲突、任务冲突)和工作绩效间关系的影响。基于来自64个银行服务团队(包含339名下属和64名主管)的多来源、多时点纵向数据, 本研究所得结果显示：(1)关系冲突显著负向影响工作绩效, 任务冲突对工作绩效的影响不显著。(2)个体宜人性能够显著减弱关系冲突对工作绩效的负面影响, 而增强任务冲突对工作绩效的正向影响。(3)关系/任务冲突、个体宜人性和团队宜人性异质性间存在着三重交互效应, 共同影响工作绩效。具体而言, 当团队宜人性异质性水平较低时, 个体宜人性对关系/任务冲突与工作绩效间关系的调节作用更加显著。     

Shared Leadership and Innovation: The Role of Vertical Leadership and Employee Integrity

Purpose

The purpose of this study was to investigate the relationship between shared leadership, as a collective within-team leadership, and innovative behavior, as well as antecedents of shared leadership in terms of team composition and vertical transformational and empowering leadership.

Design/Methodology/Approach

Data were obtained from a field sample of 43 work teams, comprising 184 team members and their team leaders from two different companies. Team leaders rated the teams’ innovative behavior and their own leadership; team members provided information on their personality and their teams’ shared leadership.

Findings

Shared and vertical leadership, but not team composition, was positively associated with the teams’ level of innovative behavior. Vertical transformational and empowering leadership and team composition in terms of integrity were positively related to shared leadership.

Implications

Understanding how organizations can enhance their own innovation is crucial for the organizations’ competitiveness and survival. Furthermore, the increasing prevalence of teams, as work arrangements in organizations, raises the question of how to successfully manage teams. This study suggests that organizations should facilitate shared leadership which has a positive association with innovation.

Originality/Value

This is one of the first studies to provide evidence of the relationship between shared leadership and innovative behavior, an important organizational outcome. In addition, the study explores two important predictors of shared leadership, transformational and empowering leadership, and the team composition in respect to integrity. While researchers and practitioners agree that shared leadership is important, knowledge on its antecedents is still in its infancy.     

团队人格组成、团队过程对团队有效性的作用

由于团队对组织的重要性,团队有效性的研究倍受关注。通过对342个大学生短期团队完成决策任务的研究,旨在探讨团队人格组成与团队中间过程对团队有效性的作用机制。研究以自陈式问卷调查收集数据,采用层次回归与结构方程模型进行统计分析。研究结果表明：团队过程变量（协作、信念、凝聚力）在团队人格组成（外向性、宜人性、神经质）与团队有效性之间起中介作用,横断研究的I-P-O整体模型得到验证     

不胜任专家对团队互动模式的影响:团队成员补偿效应

团队中专家的作用日益受到关注,而不胜任专家对于团队互动模式的影响鲜有研究。采用实验室任务团队,通过对专家胜任力进行精确操纵,研究发现不胜任专家团队条件下出现了明显的"成员补偿效应"。即普通成员的主导行为和功能性行为显著增加;影响力水平显著提升。同时,普通成员影响力水平受到领导开放性的调节。只有在高领导开放性的团队中,普通成员对不胜任专家的补偿效应才能发挥作用。     

Élaboration d’une représentation des comportements contre-productifs dans les équipes dirigeantes d’organisations

Despite the important role top management teams play in the success of organizations, counterproductive behaviors taking place in those teams remain unrepresented in literature. This qualitative, inductive, and exploratory study aims to develop a representation of potentially harmful behavior to top management team functioning. Interview has been conducted with eight retreated top management team members. Following a thematic analysis, counterproductive behaviors were identified and organized in seven distinct patterns of behaviors. This study offers a representation of counterproductive behavior specific to top management teams, which was lacking in scientific and professional literature. Interventions from the top management teams’ leaders and consultants are discussed.