交互记忆系统研究回顾与展望

交互记忆系统是团队成员之间形成的一种彼此依赖的,用以编码、储存和提取不同领域知识的合作分工系统。其研究有助于发现高效工作团队如何处理解决问题所需要的信息,解释团队成员怎样通过发挥各自的专长去解决团队面临的问题。它是解释团队知识处理过程的一个机制。相关研究已有近20年的历史。文章从交互记忆系统的形成和维护、测量、影响因素及其对团队有效性的作用等几个方面对已有研究进行回顾,并指出其对管理研究和管理实践的借鉴意义及未来可能的研究方向     

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.     

团队共享心智模型的影响因素与效果

采用两种测量方法对团队共享心智模型的影响因素与影响效果进行探讨。多元回归和层次回归分析的结果表明,团队成员沟通得越好,就越有利于形成共享心智模型;如果团队中存在搭便车的行为越严重,就越不利于形成共享心智模型;共享心智模型有利于团队有效运作,取得好的绩效;有共享心智模型的团队,成员的满意度比较高,群体效能感较高,并且团队成员之间的密切关系会延续到工作之外;共享心智模型在团队运行过程变量和团队有效性之间起到中介作用。     

高技术工作团队的交互记忆系统及其效果

交互记忆系统近来被认为是影响工作团队绩效的重要特性之一。以往的研究局限于实验室样本或者由学生组成的临时团队,该研究从高技术企业中选取190个工作团队作为样本,考查了团队的交互记忆系统与团队中的其它现象之间的关系。研究除了发现Lewis的量表中有两个题目不理想外,还发现交互记忆系统与团队成员之间的信任、合作性目标导向具有显著的正相关,同时交互记忆系统与团队的工作绩效和凝聚力也具有显著的关系。该文在检验团队层次的现象时,通过计算团队成员在相应变量上得分的一致性(rwg)来检查加总分析的合理性,这是从事团队层次的研究中需要遵循的方法     

The role of decision influence and team performance in member self-efficacy, withdrawal, satisfaction with the leader, and willingness to return

This study examines team performance as a moderator of the relationship between decision influence and outcomes relevant to team effectiveness in hierarchical teams with distributed ex pertise. In this type of team staff members have unique roles and make recommendations to the team leader, who ultimately makes the team's final decisions. It is suggested that the positive rela tionship between decision influence and favorable outcomes (e.g., satisfaction) consistently described in the literature is dependent on team performance in this type of team. Specifically, team effec tiveness outcomes are proposed to be consistently more favorable in higher performing than in lower performing teams. Decision influence is proposed to relate positively to member satisfaction with the leader, willingness to return, and self-efficacy and to relate negatively to withdrawal in higher performing teams. The opposite pattern of relationships is expected in lower performing teams. A laboratory study was conducted with 228 undergradu ates performing a computer task as subordinates in 76 four-person teams with a confederate leader. The results generally support the hypotheses and illustrate a dilemma for leaders attempting to manage team effectiveness.     

Making Teamwork Work: Team Knowledge for Team Effectiveness

This study examined the impact of two types of team knowledge on team effectiveness. The study assessed the impact of taskwork knowledge and teamwork knowledge on team satisfaction and performance. A longitudinal study was conducted with 27 service-management teams involving 178 students in a real-life restaurant setting. Teamwork knowledge was found to impact both team outcomes. Furthermore, team learning behavior was found to mediate the relationships between teamwork knowledge and team outcomes. Educators and managers should therefore ensure these types of knowledge are developed in teams along with learning behavior for maximum effectiveness.     

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.     

Computer-assisted communication and team decision-making performance: the moderating effect of openness to experience

This study examined the effects of computer-assisted communication on team decision-making performance as a function of the team's openness to experience. Seventy-nine teams performing a multiple-cue probability learning task were randomly assigned to 1 of 2 experimental conditions: (a) verbal communication or (b) computer-assisted communication (which combined verbal and computerized communication). The results indicated that access to computer-assisted communication improved the decision-making performance of teams, but only when the teams were high in openness to experience. This effect was observed using both global openness and more specific openness facets, as well as a variety of team-level aggregation strategies. Moreover, the beneficial effects of openness in computer-assisted conditions were mediated by the efficiency with which teams integrated verbal and computerized forms of communication.     

Demographic faultlines: a meta-analysis of the literature

We propose and test a theoretical model focusing on antecedents and consequences of demographic faultlines. We also posit contingencies that affect overall team dynamics in the context of demographic faultlines, such as the study setting and performance measurement. Using meta-analysis structural equation modeling with a final data set consisting of 311 data points (i.e., k [predictor-criterion relationships]), from 39 studies that were obtained from 36 papers with a total sample size of 24,388 individuals in 4,366 teams, we found that sex and racial diversity increased demographic faultline strength more than did diversity on the attributes of functional background, educational background, age, and tenure. Demographic faultline strength was found to increase task and relationship conflict as well as decrease team cohesion. Furthermore, although demographic faultline strength decreased both team satisfaction and team performance, there was a stronger decrease in team performance than in team satisfaction. The strength of these relationships increased when the study was conducted in the lab rather than in the field. We describe the theoretical and practical implications of these findings for advancing the study of faultlines.     

The external leadership of self-managing teams: intervening in the context of novel and disruptive events

Relatively little empirical research has been conducted on external leaders of self-managing teams. The integration of functional leadership theory with research on team routines suggests that leaders can intervene in teams in several different ways, and the effectiveness of this intervention depends on the nature of the events the team encounters. External team leaders from 3 organizations first described a series of events (N=117), and leaders and team members then completed surveys to quantitatively describe the events. Results indicated that leader preparation and supportive coaching were positively related to team perceptions of leader effectiveness, with preparation becoming more strongly related to effectiveness as event novelty increased. More active leader intervention activities (active coaching and sense making) were negatively related to satisfaction with leadership yet were positively related to effectiveness as events became more disruptive.     

Team Performance and Satisfaction: A Link to Cognitive Style Within a Process Framework

Effective teamwork is becoming increasingly important to organizational success. Advances in network and communication technology have allowed companies to widen their potential team member base, however we still need to better understand how to structure top-performing teams. This paper proposes forming teams based on their cognitive style, rather than personality, within a process framework. An experiment was conducted to investigate the innovative performance of problem solving groups with three different blends of cognitive styles. As predicted, groups with a heterogeneous blend of styles outperformed groups with completely or partially homogeneous blends. On the other hand, team members' satisfaction scores were lower for heterogeneous teams than either the completely or partially homogeneous teams. There was preliminary evidence that among groups with heterogeneous blends, those with smaller style dispersions might be expected to outperform those with larger style dispersions. There was also room for some speculation that a curvilinear relationship might exist for team members' satisfaction as a function of diversity in team member cognitive style. Implications of these finding are discussed.     

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.     

Team adaptation and postchange performance: effects of team composition in terms of members' cognitive ability and personality

The present study extended research on relationships between individual differences and individual-level adaptation (J. A. LePine. J. A. Colquitt, & A. Erez, 2000). This study focused on team-level relationships (N = 73 teams) and demonstrated that after an unforeseen change in the task context, performance was superior for teams with members who had higher cognitive ability, achievement, and openness and who had lower dependability. These relationships were mediated by a measure of role structure adaptation (i.e., the effectiveness with which teams adapted their role structure when faced with an unforeseen change in their task context). Members' individual differences did not explain variance in team performance prior to the unforeseen change in the task context. Overall, results suggest differential relationships for team composition across routine and changing task contexts.     

Leader Network Centrality and Team Performance: Team Size as Moderator and Collaboration as Mediator

The social network perspective provides a valuable lens to understand the effectiveness of team leaders. In understanding leadership impact in team networks, an important question concerns the structural influence of leader centrality in advice-giving networks on team performance. Taking the inconsistent evidence for the positive relationship of network centrality and leadership effectiveness as a starting point, we suggest that the positive impact of leader centrality in advice-giving networks is contingent on team needs for leadership to meet communication and coordination challenges, which we argue are larger in larger teams. Developing our analysis, we examine the mediating role of member collaboration in the relationship of leader network centrality and team performance as moderated by team size. Based on a multi-source dataset of 542 employees and 71 team leaders, we found that leader centrality in advice-giving networks related positively to team performance in larger teams but negatively in smaller teams. Results supported the mediated moderation model via member collaboration in smaller teams, but not in larger teams.

     

Team roles: Their relationships to character strengths and job satisfaction

Well-functioning teamwork has frequently been linked to increased work satisfaction and performance. However, there is a paucity of research on the different types of roles in teams. Recently, a new model of role behavior in teams was proposed (comprising seven such team roles: Idea creator, information gatherer, decision-maker, implementer, influencer, energizer, and relationship manager), but an assessment instrument was lacking so far. The present study describes the construction of an instrument for the assessment of these roles in two samples (N = 291 and 274) and examines their relationships with character strengths and job satisfaction. Results show that the team roles are positively related to job satisfaction and most character strengths. The findings support the important role of character strengths in work-related settings and lay ground for further studies on team roles.     

团队学习行为对团队有效性的影响

团队逐渐成为现代企业最基本的工作单元,团队学习水平决定着整个组织学习和适应的能力水平。研究一在杭州的6家企业的多个工作团队中,抽取400名员工,以半结构访谈和问卷调查为研究手段,对团队学习行为的理论结构进行探索性分析和验证性分析;研究二在对30多家企业101个工作团队中500多名员工进行问卷调查,进一步检验团队学习行为对团队绩效的影响效果。研究结果表明,企业中团队成员的学习行为包括两类,即互动性团队学习行为和反思性团队学习行为;互动性团队学习行为对团队有效性具有较好的预测效果,反思性团队学习仅对团队成员满意感具有较好的预测效果,对团队任务绩效则没有预测效果。     

Phase-specific relationships between team learning processes and transactive memory development

With this study we seek to contribute to the research on the emergence of transactive memory, that is, the knowledge of “who knows what”, as part of the structural component of transactive memory systems (TMSs). Based on our theoretical model of team learning and transactive memory development, we analyse the relationships among different team learning behaviours and transactive memory during various phases of team development. We use a longitudinal design with three points of measurement at the beginning, in the middle, and at the end of a semester, to examine real student project teams over their full life cycle. The results support our presumptions of phase-specific influences of team learning behaviours on transactive memory development. This shows that knowledge-based processes (storage and retrieval) play a more important role during early stages of project-based teamwork, followed by a shift to a higher relevance of communication-based processes (reflection and co-construction) in later stages. Implications for further research and team management phenomena are discussed.     

Trust within teams: The relation with performance effectiveness

The acknowledgement that trust is important for the functioning of organizations has increased the demand for research showing how this importance is reflected on the behaviour of its members. In this article we focus on trust within teams and explore the relation with performance effectiveness. A model was tested relating trust with perceived task performance, team satisfaction, relationship commitment, and stress. In this model trust is presented as a multi-component variable with distinct but related dimensions. These include propensity to trust, perceived trustworthiness, cooperative and monitoring behaviours. Data from 112 teams collected in three social care institutions in The Netherlands were analysed with structural equation modelling to test the model. The results are supportive of the multi-component structure of trust and confirmed the importance of trust for the functioning of teams in organizations. The results suggest that trust is positively related with perceived task performance, team satisfaction, and relationship commitment, and negatively related with stress. In addition, perceived task performance was positively related with team satisfaction.     

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.