The interactive effects of person-focused citizenship behaviour,task interdependence,and virtuality on team performance

A multifactorial between-groups experiment examined the effects of person-focused organizational citizenship behaviours (OCBP) on the performance of teams characterized by different levels of virtuality and task interdependence. Results reveal in low virtual teams the moderating effects of task interdependence on the OCBP–team performance relationship are positive; however, these effects are reversed in high virtual teams. Using social presence and task–technology fit theories, our results indicate that task context affects how OCBP impacts team performance, particularly across different levels of team virtuality. The implications for research on OCB and the management of virtual teams are discussed.     

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.     

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.     

A meta-analytic investigation of virtuality and information sharing in teams

We uncover new insights on the role of virtuality on team information sharing. A new two-dimensional conceptualization of information sharing (Mesmer-Magnus & DeChurch, 2009) enabled us to reconcile past inconsistencies in the virtual team literature. Recasting the findings of 94 studies (total number of groups = 5596; total N approximately = 19,702) into this framework reveals three key insights. First, virtuality improves the sharing of unique information, but hinders the openness of information sharing. Second, unique information sharing is more important to the performance of face-to-face teams than is open information sharing, whereas open information sharing is more important to the performance of virtual teams than is unique information sharing. Third, the effects of virtuality on information sharing are more curvilinear than linear – such that low levels of virtuality improve information sharing, but high levels hider it. Implications for research and practice are discussed.     

虚拟团队中交互记忆系统理论研究现状述评

交互记忆系统(Transactive Memory System,TMS),团队成员在交流的过程中形成的一种合作性分工系统,简单来说就是团队成员对于“谁知道什么”的一种共同认知.通过TMS,团队成员能够协调彼此的专长从而提高团队知识整合和共享水平.文章回顾了TMS和虚拟团队的相关概念,重点从虚拟团队中TMS的形成、效用以及虚拟性与TMS的关系三个角度对虚拟团队中TMS的相关研究进行了归纳,最后指出未来不仅需要深入研究团队输入、输出和调节因素的影响,还需考虑到不同的信息技术的影响以及研究方法和范围的完善.     

虚拟团队学习效能研究:社会认知因素的影响

本研究采用现场研究的方法,对21个虚拟团队学习的效能进行了实证研究。研究对社会认知因素中的效能感和目标取向对虚拟团队学习效能(技能改变、工作任务和团队健康水平)的影响进行了研究,并探讨了对虚拟团队的态度在中间所起的作用。研究发现,虚拟团队效能感和学习取向对虚拟团队的学习效能产生作用,而对虚拟团队学习的态度、团队信任对虚拟团队学习的效能起着中介或直接的作用。     

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.     

虚拟团队共享心理模型与团队效能的关系

通过对62个虚拟团队的调研,检验了虚拟团队认同式共享心理模型与分布式共享心理模型构思,并运用多层线性建模技术,对团队特征变量、共享心理模型与虚拟团队效能间的关系进行了分析。结果表明：两类共享心理模型与团队效能间存在显著正相关;团队时间会影响共享心理模型与虚拟团队任务效能间的关系,团队时间会削弱认同式共享心理模型对任务效能间的正向关系,但能加强分布式共享心理模型对任务效能的正面影响;团队规模则主要影响共享心理模型对合作效能的效应,团队规模增加会加强认同式共享心理模型与合作效能间的相关,却会削弱分布式共享心理模型与合作效能间的关系     

Does Teaming Obscure Low Performance? Exploring the Temporal Effects of Team Performance Diversity

Organizations are increasingly using team-based projects to achieve goals. As such, it is important to understand how team members (e.g., their differences) influence team outcomes such as effectiveness. In the present study, we examine performance diversity, differences in members’ past performance, as an antecedent to team effectiveness. In addition, we assessed the length of time the group performed together as a moderator and social loafing among members as a mediator of the performance diversity—team effectiveness relationship. Using multisource data for 673 individuals in 139 project teams, we found that performance diversity had an increasingly negative effect for groups that were together longer. Specifically, greater diversity resulted in more social loafing, thereby diminishing team satisfaction and supervisor-rated team performance.     

Learning and understanding in virtual teams.

There are sufficient reasons to conclude that virtual education is not just hype. There are, among others, economic motivations such as bringing one learning module to a larger audience of learners, and pragmatic reasons such as achieving flexibility in time and space for learning, which is especially important for adult learners. However, from a pedagogic point of view there are some doubts. Current technologies meant for learning and working in teams are often designed for functional collaboration (e.g., sharing documents, communicating), but fail to support learning, understanding and team forming (e.g., carrying out pedagogically adequate tasks, understanding each other's work and group dynamic processes) in virtual teams. In order to understand virtual teams, we need to know how we can study learning and understanding in virtual teams. Interesting research questions are: Which concepts are important in understanding virtual teams? How can we measure those concepts, and in what type of setting (e.g., experimental study, case study)? The aim of this special issue is to provide and discuss concepts and pragmatic insights in research on learning and understanding in virtual teams. The aim of this article is to set the stage for those articles.     

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。     

Effects of task interdependence and communication technologies synchrony on performance in virtual teams

Effects of task interdependence and communication technologies synchrony on performance in virtual teams. Survey results of 197 employees from 41 work groups in a large multinational software firm were used to investigate the effects of within-group task interdependence and the degree of communication synchrony on performance in virtual teams (VTs). The analyses revealed a moderating effect of task interdependence on the relationship between the degree of communications synchrony and performance in VT. We found that superior VTs performance is contingent on the fit between the nature of the task (i.e., task interdependence) and the choice of communications modality. This study complements previous research providing additional evidence of how task-technology interaction affects VTs performance, and extends previous findings obtained with ad-hoc groups in laboratory settings to natural, organizational teams.     

Shared leadership and team effectiveness: The examination of LMX differentiation and servant leadership on the emergence and consequences of shared leadership

This study examined the effects of leader–member exchange (LMX) differentiation on team-shared leadership and team effectiveness. Drawing on the group engagement model, we suggested that LMX differentiation negatively affects team-shared leadership and team effectiveness (i.e., team performance and team organizational citizenship behavior [OCB]). Servant leadership weakens the negative effects of LMX differentiation on shared leadership. We tested our predictions using data from a sample of 336 salespersons nested in 110 sales teams in China. We found that shared leadership mediated the relationships between LMX differentiation with both team performance and team OCB. In addition, servant leadership moderated the relationship between LMX differentiation and shared leadership and the indirect relationship between LMX differentiation with both team performance and team OCB.     

KNOWLEDGE WORKER TEAM EFFECTIVENESS: THE ROLE OF AUTONOMY, INTERDEPENDENCE, TEAM DEVELOPMENT, AND CONTEXTUAL SUPPORT VARIABLES

This study investigated how autonomy, interdependence, and team development, along with process and contextual support variables, were related to the effectiveness of teams of "knowledge workers." The sample included 231 knowledge workers from 27 work teams. Team members completed surveys measuring the design, process, and contextual factors. Effectiveness measures included multiple key stakeholder evaluations of team performance and self-report measures of attitudinal outcomes. The results suggest that interactions among design, process, and contextual support factors have important implications for team effectiveness. In particular, the positive relationship between team autonomy and team job motivation was reduced as teams worked under more interdependent conditions. This interaction effect also varied across the types of autonomy (e.g., planning-related, product-related, and people-related) the team was given. Results also demonstrated that the relationship between job motivation and team process behaviors (helping, sharing, and innovating) was more positive in teams who were developmental mature. Process behaviors were positively related to effectiveness, but those relationships became more positive in the presence of certain contextual factors (high-quality goals and efficient information transmission), and less positive in the presence of others (feedback and time pressure). Future research needs and practical implications of these results are discussed.     

If you feel bad, it's unfair: a quantitative synthesis of affect and organizational justice perceptions

Whereas research interest in both individual affect/temperament and organizational justice has grown substantially in recent years, affect's role in the perception of organizational justice has received scant attention. Here, the authors integrate these literatures and test bivariate relationships between state affect (e.g., moods), trait affect (e.g., affectivity), and organizational justice variables using meta-analytically aggregated effect sizes. Results indicated that state and trait positive and negative affect exhibit statistically significant relationships with perceptions of distributive, procedural, and interactional justice in the predicted directions, with mean population-level correlations ranging in absolute magnitude from M(rho) = .09 to M(rho) = .43. Correlations involving state affect generally were larger but not significantly different from those involving trait affect. Finally, the authors propose ideas for investigations at the primary-study level.     

PLATT: A flexible platform for experimental research on team performance in complex environments

The present article introduces PLATT, a recently developed task environment for controlled experimental research on team performance in complex environments. PLATT was developed to meet the research demands posed by the complexity that present-day teams face. It consists of a flexible, modular software architecture and research-specific scenarios. The scenarios can target various types of tasks (e.g., planning, problem solving, and decision making) in different operational contexts. Different software configurations can be used to investigate questions pertaining to team structure, team virtuality, and multiteam systems. We describe the software architecture, one of the scenarios, and the broad range of automated and embedded measurement possibilities that PLATT offers. To illustrate PLATT’s possibilities, in the present article, we describe a number of experiments that have used PLATT for a variety of research questions. We conclude that PLATT meets the formulated research demands and provides researchers with a flexible platform to investigate the complex issues that present-day teams face.     

The effects of cognitive style and media richness on commitment to telework and virtual teams

Telework (also known as telecommuting) and virtual teams (also known as virtual collaboration) are seen as strategic organizational innovations with potential benefits to individuals, business, and society. Despite the rapid growth of telework and virtual team innovations, very little empirical research has investigated factors associated with their success. Thus, practitioners can only speculate why they succeed or fail. This empirical study investigated telework and virtual team innovations drawing upon commitment, information richness, and cognitive style (mental self-government) theory. Results indicate that certain combinations of cognitive styles and media contribute to commitment to the telework function and to virtual teams. Consequently, specific recommendations are made for teleworker selection, development, and for the design of the telework environment.     

Klaus B: The success story of an entrepreneur - a case study

Interorganizational teams are rapidly becoming more prevalent as a means to improve organizations' responsiveness. To achieve their objective, interorganizational teams must engage in extensive amounts of boundary spanning activity. This study juxtaposed three structural variables, namely team informational diversity, team boundedness, and extrateam links, in an integrated model aimed at promoting our understanding of how to increase interorganizational team boundary spanning activity and its effectiveness. The model was tested with 49 health promotion teams. Our findings indicated that three types of boundary spanning—scouting, ambassadorial, and coordinating—were positively associated with interorganizational team effectiveness. In addition, for team informational diversity, team boundedness, and extrateam links, scouting and ambassadorial activities fully mediated their relationships with team effectiveness; for team boundedness, coordinating activity also fully mediated its relationship with team effectiveness. These findings highlight the importance of incorporating structural considerations into the management of interorganizational teams.     

领导职业支持对组织公民行为的影响:心理资本的作用

本研究探讨领导职业支持对工作团队成员组织公民行为的影响机制,研究采用问卷调查法,以10个地市的66个工作团队303名成员为调查对象,在控制被试的教育程度、工作经验及人口统计学变量之后,运用多层线性模型分析领导职业支持与团队成员心理资本及其组织公民行为的关系。结果发现：（1）领导职业支持对团队成员心理资本和组织公民行为有积极促进作用;（2）无论在团队层次还是员工层次,领导职业支持对成员组织公民行为有积极促进作用,成员心理资本在二者之间起完全中介作用。     

Twelve steps to heaven: Successfully managing change through developing innovative teams

In this article we propose that work teams implement many of the innovative changes required to enable organizations to respond appropriately to the external environment. We describe how, using an input?–?process?–?output model, we can identify the key elements necessary for developing team innovation. We propose that it is the implementation of ideas rather than their development that is crucial for enabling organizational change. Drawing on theory and relevant research, 12 steps to developing innovative teams are described covering key aspects of the team task, team composition, organizational context, and team processes.