Individual autonomy in work teams: The role of team autonomy,self-efficacy,and social support

Task autonomy is long recognized as a means to improve functioning of individuals and teams. Taking a multilevel approach, we unravelled the constructs of team and individual autonomy and studied the interplay between team autonomy, self-efficacy, and social support in determining individual autonomy of team members. Hierarchical regression results of a survey among 733 members of 76 health care teams showed that individual autonomy was related not only to the level of team autonomy, but also to self-efficacy and social support. Moreover, results suggested that social support moderates the extent to which team autonomy is incorporated into the individual tasks of team members. In highly autonomous teams, individuals experiencing moderate support from co-workers and supervisors reported higher individual autonomy than members experiencing either low or very high support.     

A Puzzle Concerning Gratitude and Accountability

P.F. Strawson’s account of moral responsibility in “Freedom and Resentment” has been widely influential. In both that paper and in the contemporary literature, much attention has been paid to Strawson’s account of blame in terms of reactive attitudes like resentment and indignation. The Strawsonian view of praise in terms of gratitude has received comparatively little attention. Some, however, have noticed something puzzling about gratitude and accountability. We typically understand accountability in terms of moral demands and expectations. Yet gratitude does not express or enforce moral demands or expectations. So, how is it a way to hold an agent accountable? In a more general manner, we might ask if there is even sense to be made of the idea that agents can be accountable—i.e., “on the hook”—in a positive way. In this paper, I clarify the relationship between gratitude and moral accountability. I suggest that accountability is a matter of engaging with others in a way that is basically concerned with their feelings and attitudes rather than solely a matter of moral demands. Expressions of gratitude are a paradigmatic form of this concerned engagement. I conclude by defending my view from the objection that it leads to an overly generous conception of holding accountable and suggest in reply that moral responsibility skeptics may not help themselves to as many moral emotions as they might have thought.

     

Negotiation Teamwork: The Impact of Information Distribution and Accountability on Performance Depends on the Relationship among Team Members

We examined how the distribution of information among team members and accountability pressures affected the quality of negotiated settlements reached among teams of friends negotiating against teams of strangers. The main conclusions of the experiment may be summarized by the following findings: (1) Teams of strangers reaped a greater share of the joint profit than did teams of friends when teammates were accountable to a supervisor as opposed to negotiating strictly on their own behalf. (2) Teams of strangers also reaped a marginally greater share of the joint profit than did teams of friends when teammates possessed unique, as opposed to common, information about their own team's preferences. (3) Not surprisingly, teams of friends were more cohesive than were teams of strangers; however, teams of friends were also more concerned about maintaining their relationship than were teams of strangers. (4) Teams of friends felt least cohesive when they were accountable to a supervisor, whereas teams of strangers felt most cohesive when they were accountable. Similarly, friends indicated greater relationship concerns when having to deal with distributed information, whereas information distribution had no effect on the relationship concerns of strangers. (5) For teams of strangers, greater team cohesiveness was positively correlated with better performance. (6) Moreover, when teams of strangers felt more cohesive than their opponents, they earned more than teams of strangers who felt less cohesive.     

Taking the reins: the effects of new leader status and leadership style on team performance

New leaders face a challenging task when they take charge of their teams. They have to determine how best to guide the work process, and they must understand how their behaviors will affect the members of their team. This research examines how a newly assigned team leader's status moderates subordinates' reactions to different leadership styles to affect assessments of the leader's self-confidence and effectiveness, and how this impacts team performance. Across 2 experimental studies, results demonstrate that low-status leaders are rated as more effective when they use a directive style, whereas high-status leaders are viewed as more effective when they use a participative style, and this relationship is mediated by perceptions of self-confidence. In addition, teams whose leaders are viewed more favorably perform better on a complex group task. These findings imply that low-status individuals are able to enhance their level of personal power by drawing on whatever positional power they hold, whereas high-status individuals are better off relying solely on their personal power to influence others. This research also provides a clear demonstration that assessments of new leaders' behaviors are subject to an appraisal that is clouded by observers' status perceptions and attributions.     

Outcome interdependence shapes the effects of prevention focus on team processes and performance

Although the effects of regulatory focus on individual-level performance have often been studied, relatively little is yet known about team-level effects. Filling this void, we integrate the notion that promotion-focused individuals are concerned with progress and achievement, whereas prevention-focused individuals are concerned with security and vigilance, with the insight that team processes and performance depend on outcome interdependence (individual versus team rewards). The hypothesis that prevention-focused teams react more strongly than promotion-focused teams to differences in outcome interdependence was tested among 50 teams performing an interactive command-and-control simulation. Regulatory focus and outcome interdependence were both manipulated. The results showed that prevention-focused teams working for team rather than individual rewards reported higher work engagement and less error intolerance, coordinated more effectively, and performed better. Promotion-focused teams were not influenced by outcome interdependence. We discuss the implications of our results for theory and effective team management.     

A temporal common ground for learning: The moderating effect of shared mental models on the relation between team learning behaviours and performance improvement

In this longitudinal study, we integrated a team process and a learning curve perspective on team learning and empirically analysed whether team learning processes lead to performance improvement. In addition, we tested whether this relation is moderated by the similarity of team members’ task, team, and temporal mental models. We tested our model on a sample of 67 teams (314 individuals) competing in a management simulation over five consecutive time periods, using random coefficient modelling (RCM). Our findings suggest that team learning behaviours do not have a direct effect on the team learning curve, but temporal and task mental models are crucial for the translation of team learning behaviours into performance improvement. We found that when teams have similar task and temporal mental models, engaging in team learning processes is beneficial, whereas, when teams have dissimilar task and temporal mental models, it is detrimental to performance improvement. We did not find a significant effect for the moderating role of team mental model similarity. Our study emphasizes the importance of integrating different perspectives on team learning and provides support for the role of team cognition as a catalyst for team learning.     

Compunction,Second-Personal Morality,and Moral Reasons

In The Second-Person Standpoint and subsequent essays, Stephen Darwall develops an account of morality that is “second-personal” in virtue of holding that what we are morally obligated to do is what others can legitimately demand that we do, i.e., what they can hold us accountable for doing through moral reactive attitudes like blame. Similarly, what it would be wrong for us to do is what others can legitimately demand that we abstain from doing. As part of this account, Darwall argues for the proposition that we have a distinctive “second-personal reason” to fulfill all of our obligations and to avoid all wrong-actions, an “authority-regarding” reason that derives from the legitimate demands the “moral community” makes of us. I show that Darwall offers an insufficient case for this proposition. My criticism of this aspect of Darwall’s account turns in part on the fact that we have compunction-based or “compunctive” reasons to fulfill all of our obligations and to avoid all wrong actions, a type of reason that Darwall seemingly overlooks.     

The team halo effect: why teams are not blamed for their failures

In this study, the existence of the team halo effect, the phenomenon that teams tend not to be blamed for their failures, is documented. With 2 studies using both real teams and controlled scenarios, the authors found evidence that the nature of the causal attribution processes used to diagnose failure scenarios leads to individuals being more likely to be identified as the cause of team failure than the team as a collective. Team schema development, as indexed by team experience, influences this effect, with individuals who have more team experience being less likely to show the team halo effect     

Responsibility,Moral and Otherwise

Abstract

Philosophers frequently distinguish between causal responsibility and moral responsibility, but that distinction is either ambiguous or confused. We can distinguish between causal responsibility and a deeper kind of responsibility, that licenses reactive attitudes and judgments that a merely causal connection would not, and we can distinguish between holding people accountable for their moral qualities and holding people accountable for their nonmoral qualities. But, because we sometimes hold people deeply responsible for nonmoral qualities of behavior and character, these distinctions are not the same. A number of recent accounts of responsibility identify deep responsibility with moral responsibility and in consequence miss some key features of the concept of which they are trying to give an account. A view that distinguishes two levels of responsibility, according to which the conditions of attributability are weaker than the conditions of accountability, might seem to account for a kind of nonmoral responsibility while still conceiving of moral responsibility as involving a deeper kind of agency. This paper considers and rejects this view, suggesting that whether we are ever as deeply responsible for anything as we tend to presume can be as fruitfully asked about our nonmoral successes and failures as about our moral ones.     

Who's Responsible? Our Mutual Implication in Each Other's Suffering

In this paper, I examine the social and psychological roots of what I call neoliberal subjectivity, a version of contemporary subjectivity marked by a repudiation of vulnerability that has arisen from the social, economic, and political milieu of the past 30 years. The defense mechanisms involved in such a repudiation cause a decline in empathic capacities and in the capacity to experience ourselves as responsible and accountable for the suffering of others. I look at the way conflicts in the area of accountability and responsibility are lived both within our patients and within the interaction between patient and analyst. I argue that contemporary definitions of empathy normalize the repudiation of vulnerability and thereby foster an experience of empathy in which one can sustain a safe distance from the suffering other and not hold oneself accountable. A two-way version of empathy that counters neoliberal trends requires that we examine the ways we seek refuge in identifications that distance us from vulnerability, and it requires us to recognize the harm we inflict when we do so.     

Esprit de corps: the possibility for the best care a hospital can provide

What is best for the hospitalized patient? How do we increase the prospects that a patient will receive the best care a hospital can provide, and how is this accomplished? It has been argued that what is best for the patient is to be in the care of highly functioning collaborative teams, teams with certain unique qualities, teams that have esprit de corps. But how do we get there? In furtherance of this discussion, the author, in a Quintilian-like spirit, deliberates about "necessity" and "possibility" in what is best for the hospitalized patient and the challenges these teams must navigate: responsibility, accountability, team relationships, leadership, moral distress, dissent, and personal and professional risk.     

Team capability beliefs over time: Distinguishing between team potency,team outcome efficacy,and team process efficacy

Teams that have positive beliefs about their capability tend to perform more effectively. However, relatively little is known about the nature and change of different types of team capability beliefs. Team potency and team efficacy are two approaches to understanding team capability beliefs, but few studies have considered these beliefs simultaneously. We investigate their distinctiveness and relative predictive power. Additionally, we propose two types of team efficacy: team outcome efficacy and team process efficacy. In two longitudinal samples of executive MBA study teams (sample 1, N=213 individuals in 41 teams; sample 2, N=360 individuals in 89 teams), we showed that team potency, team outcome efficacy, and team process efficacy are factorially distinct and measure invariant at four time points over 7 months (except for high levels of team outcome efficacy for which factorial invariance emerged). We also show differential predictive validity. Team outcome efficacy was the strongest predictor of objective team performance, whereas team process efficacy was the best predictor of citizenship behaviours. Team potency predicted both outcomes, albeit more weakly. Collectively, the findings show the value of a more fine‐grained approach to teams' capability beliefs, including a new validated measure of team process efficacy.     

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.

     

Liminal Space,Sexuality, and the Language of #MeToo

#MeToo has advanced the way that we think and speak of sexual abuses of power by creating a powerful social platform in which victims can function as a group, symbolizing what as psychoanalysts we consider unthinkable, while also striking at the inherent paradox that sexuality poses – how to account for the vagaries of human sexuality and its transgressive nature while holding individual and collective abuses of power accountable? My essay addresses such questions by focusing on the way that language fails to hold and symbolize sexuality due to its affective excess and its driven and enigmatic qualities, and advances the idea that the sexual is metabolized in action with an other and not through words and language. Further, that the boundary between what is permissible and what is not is negotiated on both conscious and unconscious levels of knowing, which I refer to as the liminal area of sexuality. I develop these ideas within a post-Lacanian framework and suggest that psychoanalysis must interface with other disciplines in order to bring depth to our consideration of sexuality at its most transgressive as well as to help stretch the symbolic function of language.     

When opposites attract: a multi-sample demonstration of complementary person-team fit on extraversion

This study assessed the nature of the person-team fit relationships for extraversion on members' attraction toward their teams. Unlike most studies of personality-based fit, which emphasize similarity, we predicted that complementary fit on extraversion (i.e., high individual-low team or low individual-high team levels) would result in greater attraction to the team. Data from two independent samples of intact project teams were analyzed, including 324 MBA students comprising 64 case analysis teams and 217 members of 26 manufacturing teams. Using polynomial regression analysis and three-dimensional surface plots, our results supported the predicted relationship. In addition, the data indicated that individuals who were more attracted to their teams were also better performers, as judged by their peers and supervisors.     

Groups and Solos in Context: The Effects of Accountability on Team Negotiation

This study examines whether and how accountability to constituents affects the cognitions, performance, and outcomes of team and solo negotiators. Previous findings for solos were replicated here: solo negotiators respond competitively when they are accountable to constituents. For teams, however, accountability pressures were distributed across the members resulting in each team member experiencing little responsibility for outcomes. As a consequence, teams did not respond to accountability pressures by behaving contentiously as solos did. Analysis of negotiators' perceptions of advantage reveals that solos who negotiate under conditions of high accountability consider themselves to be at a disadvantage in the negotiation even before the negotiation begins. These perceptions may underlie the accountability/competitive relation that characterizes solo negotiation. Implications for negotiation research as well as the study of groups in organizations are discussed.     

Accountability and Community on the Internet: A Plea for Restorative Justice

In this article, I analyze norm enforcement on social media, specifically cases where an agent has committed a moral transgression online and is brought to account by an Internet mob with incongruously injurious results in their offline life. I argue that users problematically imagine that they are members of a particular kind of moral community where shaming behaviors are not only acceptable, but morally required to ‘take down’ those who appear to violate community norms. I then demonstrate the costs that are associated with this strategy; the most worrisome being those that distort the nature of moral dialog and the purpose and effectiveness of accountability practices online, creating a vitriolic and polarising online environment. Because of these negative consequences, I suggest that we ought to hold others accountable for restorative ends. I argue that restorative accountability practices can help us cultivate new norms online that rely less for their enforcement upon negative acts such as shame, and more upon positive acts that focus upon the most appropriate way to make amends to the victim(s) and the community. In this sense, restorative accountability incorporates important elements from the ethics of care, a relational ethics that values creating, promoting, and restoring good social and personal relationships. I conclude by arguing that accountability practices premised on the ethics of care produce better outcomes for the victim(s) of a moral violation, the transgressor, and the community.     

Bridging the Distance Between Us: How Initial Responses to Sales Team Conflict Help Shape Core Selling Team Outcomes

Intra-team conflict within core selling teams can shape team outcomes. Using congruency theory, we propose how conflict responses impact the relational distance between individuals in a core selling team, creating positive/negative team outcomes. Our framework suggests managers may improve team outcomes by monitoring sales team members' responses to conflict, encouraging internal cognitive voice behaviors, and intervening in teams not using internal cognitive voice behaviors when relational or process conflict exists. Our model helps explain the paradox in which an individual who is part of a “winning” team (one achieving its team goals) may still choose to exit the team.     

Substitutes for leadership in anaesthesia teams and their impact on leadership effectiveness

In this study we aim to increase our understanding of leadership in anaesthesia teams by investigating the relationship between substitutes for leadership, leadership behaviour, and team performance in situations with varying levels of routine and standardization. The present study relied on video recordings of 12 anaesthesia teams in a simulated setting with the occurrence of a nonroutine event. Clinical team performance was measured by the speed of adequate team reaction to this event. The leadership behaviours observed were coded either as content oriented (e.g., information transmission) or structuring (e.g., assigning tasks). Results showed that leadership behaviour changed depending upon the level of routine of a situation, the degree of standardization, and, to some extent, on the experience of team members. Leadership tends to be positively related to team performance during nonroutine and low standardized situations but negatively related to team performance in routine and highly standardized situations. Furthermore, leadership is only slightly related to team member experience. This study improves our understanding of influences of substitutes for leadership on successful leadership behaviour in anaesthesia teams. The findings also lead to suggestions for both further research and the enhancement of team leadership in critical care.     

Personality,Self-Efficacy and Functioning in Management Teams: A Contribution to Validation

The relationship between individual difference variables and the contribution to team functioning was examined in 58 members of management teams. Extraversion and self-efficacy for working in teams were related to attraction to the team, which in turn was related to a rating of team effectiveness. Extraversion was also related directly to team effectiveness. The relationship between conscientiousness and team functioning was not clear. The results are considered supportive for the validity of self-efficacy for teams and extraversion as indicators of the ability and propensity of individuals to contribute to the functioning of management teams.