Differences in the Valuing of Power Among Team Members: a Contingency Approach Toward Examining the Effects of Power Values Diversity and Relationship Conflict

Purpose

The purpose of this study was to investigate the conditional effects of power values diversity and relationship conflict.

Design/Methodology/Approach

We utilized a time-lagged survey design and multilevel modeling to investigate 60 teams working on a project task over the course of 4 months.

Findings

When participative safety climate was high, the presence of high power values diversity was particularly helpful for reducing relationship conflict. In turn, decreased relationship conflict tended to increase team performance. Additionally, when workload sharing was low, high relationship conflict was especially harmful to team performance.

Implications

Results support the consideration of team participative safety climate to better understand the conditions under which power values diversity is likely to lessen relationship conflict and subsequently increase team performance. Findings also highlight the importance of avoiding low workload sharing, in the presence of prominent relationship conflict, to increase team performance.

Originality/Value

By examining relationship conflict as a mediator and participative safety climate as a moderator of power values diversity’s effects, we make a novel contribution to extant literature by helping to elucidate both how and under what conditions differences in power values, among team members, can influence team performance. Relatedly, we answer the call for more research that adopts a contingency approach toward examining the effects of values diversity and relationship conflict. In doing so, we help to identify the conditions under which power values diversity and relationship conflict are likely to differentially influence important team outcomes.

     

Examining Project Commitment in Cross-Functional Teams: Antecedents and Relationship with Team Performance

Purpose

The purpose of this study was to test a model positing both antecedents and consequences of project commitment for members of cross-functional teams. Signaling theory and previous research guided study hypotheses.

Design/Methodology/Approach

We collected primary data from 142 team members and 31 team leaders across 24 cross-functional product development teams nested within six manufacturing organizations in the US and Canada.

Findings

Findings suggest that project commitment among team members is an important driver of team performance as rated by the team leader. In addition, several factors contribute toward shaping project commitment among cross-functional team members, including team leaders’ encouragement of self-expectation, as well as team members’ perceptions of an organization’s support for the team project.

Implications

Cross-functional teams are often charged with completing projects critical to the profitability, growth, and even survival of a firm. Especially as we show that members’ project commitment is a meaningful predictor of team performance, managers may draw insight from study results as to what actions may be taken to promote the development of this important psychological state among members of cross-functional teams.

Originality/Value

Use of cross-functional teams for accomplishing a wide variety of firm objectives is becoming commonplace in organizations. Although theorized as an important construct in cross-functional team settings, empirical examinations of the nature and implications of project commitment have been limited. By examining both antecedents and potential team performance consequences of project commitment in multiple organizations, we contribute toward filling this gap.     

The Influence of Change-Oriented Leadership and Psychological Safety on Team Learning in Healthcare Teams

Purpose

Researchers have identified team learning as an important predictor of team performance. In healthcare organizations, it is especially critical for care quality and hospital performance that teams engage in learning behaviors to reduce errors and improve service effectiveness. The main objective of this study is to examine the role of change-oriented leadership in the learning process and outcomes of healthcare teams.

Design/Methodology/Approach

The sample comprises a total of 698 healthcare professionals working in 107 teams at different public hospitals throughout Spain. Members of teams were invited to participate voluntarily by completing an anonymous individual questionnaire.

Findings

The results show a mediating effect of team learning on the relationship between change-oriented leadership and team performance and psychological safety and team performance.

Originality/Value

Our study contributes to the literature by investigating the role of change-oriented leadership in facilitating team learning behaviors. Moreover, this study advances our understanding of the mediators of the relationship between team leadership and outcomes by testing to assess whether specific change-oriented leader behaviors nurture psychological safety, team learning and, therefore, performance.

     

Reflection Toward Creativity: Team Reflexivity as a Linking Mechanism Between Team Goal Orientation and Team Creative Performance

Purpose

This study aims at testing the mediating role of team reflexivity in the relationships between team learning, performance-prove, and performance-avoid goal orientations and team creative performance and assessing the relative importance of the three types of team goal orientation in team reflexivity and creative performance.

Methodology

We conducted Study 1 on 68 student teams by using a two-wave time-lagged design. In Study 2, we carried out a cross-sectional field study on 108 intact work teams in diverse Korean companies.

Findings

Team learning goal orientation was significantly associated with team creative performance. While team learning and performance-prove goal orientations were equally influential in predicting team reflexivity, team performance-avoid goal orientation had no relationship with team reflexivity and creative performance. Team reflexivity mediated the relationships between team learning and performance-prove goal orientations and team creative performance.

Implications

By revealing that team learning and performance-prove goal orientations can contribute to team creative performance through the facilitation of team reflective process, this study provides practitioners with insight into critical antecedents and team process that are conducive to the creative performance of work teams.

Originality/Value

This is one of the first studies to explore a mediating mechanism between team goal orientation and creative performance. This study attends to the role of team reflexivity as a key team-regulatory process that underlies the relationship between team goal orientation and team performance. Furthermore, the use of multiple studies in different contexts strengthens the robustness of the study findings.

     

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.     

Exploring the Effects of Value Diversity on Team Effectiveness

Purpose

The goal of the present study was to explore the potential impact of within-team value diversity with respect to both team processes and task performance.

Design/Methodology/Approach

We explored value diversity within a comprehensive framework such that all components of basic human values were examined. A sample of 306 participants randomly assigned to 60 teams, performed a complex hands-on task, demanding high interdependence among team members, and completed different measures of values and team processes.

Findings

Results indicated that value diversity among team members had no significant impact on task performance. However, diversity with respect to several value dimensions had a significant unique effect on team process criteria. Results were consistent with respect to the nature of the impact of value diversity on team process outcomes. Specifically, the impact of team value diversity was such that less diversity was positively related to process outcomes (i.e., more similarity resulted in more team cohesion and efficacy and less conflict).

Implications

The results indicated that disparity among teammates in many of these values may have important implications on subsequent team-level phenomena. We suggest team leaders and facilitators of teambuilding efforts could consider adding to their agendas a session with team members to analyze and discuss the combined value profiles of their team.

Originality/Value

This is the first study to highlight the unique impact of many unexamined, specific components of team diversity with respect to values on team effectiveness criteria.     

Team Creative Environment as a Mediator Between CWX and R&D Team Performance and Moderating Boundary Conditions

Purpose

The purpose of this study was to investigate how high-quality dyadic co-worker relationships (CWXs) favour or hinder team performance. Specifically, we examine the role played by CWX, team creative environment, job complexity and task interdependence to achieve higher levels of team performance.

Design/Methodology/Approach

We analyse data from 410 individuals belonging to 81 R&D teams in technology sciences to examine the quality of the dyadic relationships between team members under the same supervisor (co-workers) and team performance measured by the number of publications as their research output.

Findings

Higher levels of team average CWX relationships are positively related to the establishment of a favourable creative team environment, ending into higher levels of team performance. Specifically, the role played by team average CWX in such relationship is stronger when job complexity and task interdependence are also high.

Implications

Team’s output not only depends on the leader and his/her relationships with subordinates but also on quality relationships among team members. CWXs contribute to creative team environments, but they are essential where jobs are complex and tasks are highly dependent.

Originality/Value

This study provides evidence of the important role played by CWXs in determining a creative environment, irrespective of their leaders. Previous research has provided information about how leader’s role affects team outcomes, but the role of dyadic co-worker relationships in a team remains still relatively unknown. Considering job complexity and task interdependence variables, the study provides with a better understanding about how and when high-quality CWXs should be promoted to achieve higher team performance.

     

Innovation and Effectiveness of Co-Founded Ventures: A Process Model

Purpose

We propose a process model relating innovative climates to effectiveness in co-founded ventures. Specifically, we argue that co-founders’ inputs relate to venture effectiveness via processes of team member exchange (TMX), team learning, and collective efficacy.

Design/Methodology/Approach

To study a population that is difficult to access, we use a computerized simulation in which 202 individuals act as new venture co-founders.

Findings

Results of our research support the hypothesized input-process-outcome model such that the intra-team processes of TMX, team learning, and collective efficacy fully mediate the relationship between the input of co-founding team climate for innovation and the outcome of co-founded venture effectiveness.

Implications

This study advances theory regarding processes that link team climates for innovation to collective outcomes. While we focus on this relationship in co-founded ventures, our findings have implications for team-level innovation research by clarifying how innovation relates to effectiveness. Beyond advancing theory, knowledge of this relationship may be of benefit to practice by identifying mediating mechanisms that can be reinforced in training and used as indicators of venture success by potential investors. Further, we contribute to the understanding of an important but understudied population of co-founded ventures and answer calls to utilize simulations to address team-based organizational questions.

Originality/Value

Our study answers calls to both clarify the processes that relate innovative climates to business outcomes and utilize computer simulations in organizational research while also addressing an important population of co-founded ventures that lacks a significant body of research.     

Understanding the Development of Team Identification: A Qualitative Study in UN Peacebuilding Teams

Purpose

The goal of our study was to scrutinize the psychological processes that occur in individuals when developing identification with a highly diverse team.

Design/Methodology/Approach

A qualitative, theory-generating approach following the principles of grounded theory was chosen as research design. Data were obtained from 63 personal interviews with members of seven UN peacebuilding teams in Liberia and Haiti. These teams were particularly well suited for analyzing the dynamics of identification processes as they constitute extreme cases with respect to team members’ identity diversity.

Findings

Our analysis reveals four different processes that occur as individuals develop team identification (TI): enacting a salient identity, sensemaking about team experience, evaluating collective team outcomes, and converging identity.

Implications

We can show that team members engage in both individual- and collective-directed sensemaking processes during TI development, thereby using internal (i.e., other team members) and external points of reference (i.e., team-external actors) for ingroup/outgroup comparisons. Moreover, our study reveals different modes of identity convergence (i.e., active, reactive, and withdrawal) which are associated with different types of TI (i.e., deep-structured TI, situated TI, and disidentification).

Originality/Value

Although team members’ identification with their workgroup has long been considered important for effective team functioning, knowledge about its development has remained limited and largely without empirical footing from a real-world team context. Our study represents the first empirical attempt to inductively identify the processes that occur in individuals as they develop TI.

     

Exploring the Effects of Job Autonomy on Engagement and Creativity: The Moderating Role of Performance Pressure and Learning Goal Orientation

Purpose

The 21st century work environment calls for team members to be more engaged in their work and exhibit more creativity in completing their job tasks. The purpose of this study was to examine whether team performance pressure and individual goal orientation would moderate the relationships between individual autonomy in teams and individual engagement and creativity.

Design/Methodology/Approach

A sample consisting of 209 team members and 45 team managers from 45 work teams in 14 companies completed survey measures. To test our hypotheses, we used multilevel modeling with random intercepts and slopes because the individual-level data were nested within the team-level data.

Findings

Hierarchical linear modeling showed that team-level performance pressure attenuated the positive relations between job autonomy and three dimensions of engagement. There were also 3-way interactions between job autonomy, psychological performance pressure, and learning goal orientation in predicting three dimensions of engagement and creativity.

Implications

This study highlights the importance of exploring the moderating effect of team-level task characteristics and individual differences on the relationships between job autonomy and individual engagement and creativity. Organizations need to carefully consider both individual learning goals and performance pressure when empowering team members with job autonomy.

Originality/Value

This is one of the first studies to explore the association between individual job autonomy in teams and individual outcomes in a contingency model. We first introduced team performance pressure as a moderator of job autonomy and examined the 3-way interaction effects of performance pressure, individual job autonomy, and learning goal orientation.

     

Role Definition as a Moderator of the Relationship Between Safety Climate and Organizational Citizenship Behavior Among Hospital Nurses

Purpose

This field study investigated the moderating influence of role definitions on the association between safety climate and employees’ organizational citizenship behavior (OCB).

Design/Methodology

Data were obtained from 94 hospital nurse dyads. Focal nurses and their peers completed paper surveys. All predictor measures were self-reported; whereas the OCB ratings were provided by nurses’ peers.

Findings

Nurses’ perceptions of job requirements regarding OCB (i.e., OCB-specific role definitions) moderated the relationship between psychological safety climate and peer-rated OCB. The correlation between psychological safety climate and OCB was significant when nurses’ role definitions were narrow but non-existent when role definitions were broad.

Implications

This study links managerial commitment to safety to nurses’ pro-social behavior and identifies an important boundary condition.

Originality-Value

The link between safety climate and safety compliance has been firmly established. We investigated a less well-researched association between safety and OCB and proposed a theoretical foundation for this positive association.     

Team–Member Exchange and Work Engagement: Does Personality Make a Difference?

Purpose

Adopting a person–situation interactionist framework, this study examined the joint effects of employee personality (i.e., extraversion, neuroticism, and conscientiousness) and social exchange relationships with peers (i.e., team–member exchange; TMX) in predicting work engagement.

Methodology

This study is based on survey responses from 235 Chinese employees collected at two time points with 3 months in between. We conducted moderated regression analyses to test the hypotheses that employees higher in extraversion or conscientiousness or lower in neuroticism would demonstrate a stronger TMX–work engagement relation.

Findings

Results from this study showed that the three focal personality traits moderated the TMX–engagement relation simultaneously. Specifically, the positive TMX–engagement relation was stronger for employees with higher extraversion or lower neuroticism than that for their counterparts. Interestingly, the TMX–engagement relation was positive for employees lower in conscientiousness but negative for those higher in conscientiousness.

Implications

These findings support the notion that lateral social exchange relationships in the workplace (i.e., TMX) are an important antecedent of work engagement and, more importantly, their beneficial effects on work engagement are contingent on certain types and/or levels of personality traits.

Originality/Value

This study not only advances our understanding of presumed antecedents of work engagement but also opens a new door for future research on work engagement by highlighting the importance of a person–situation interactionist framework.     

Individual Employees’ Responses to Group Incentives: The Moderating Role of Innovation

Purpose

This study examined the mediating role of perceived organizational support (POS) in the relationship between group-incentive participation and organizational commitment. The study also investigated the moderating role of innovation in the relationship between group-incentive participation and POS and the relationship between group-incentive participation and organizational commitment.

Design/Methodology/Approach

The proposed hypotheses were tested by hierarchical linear modeling by means of survey data that were collected in South Korea in 2008.

Findings

The results showed that the relationship between group-incentive participation and organizational commitment was fully mediated by POS. Cross-level analyses revealed that group-incentive participation had stronger relationships with POS and organizational commitment in more innovative companies than in less innovative companies.

Implications

These findings contribute to the literature by identifying the characteristics of organizations in which group-incentive participation is more effective. In particular, innovative companies could benefit from adopting group-incentive practices because these practices are more strongly related to POS and organizational commitment in more innovative companies.

Originality/Value

Whereas previous studies on group incentives have mainly focused on the effects of group incentives at the organizational level, this study bridged the gap between macro- and microapproaches through multilevel analyses. This study is unique in that it examined the vertical fit between group incentives and organizational characteristics while focusing on individual employees’ perceptions and attitudes.     

Running on Empty: The Effects of Aggregate Travel Stress on Team Performance

Purpose

In this study, we explore the effects of travel on performance at the team level using conservation of resources (COR) theory as an explanatory mechanism. We investigate the effects of aggregate travel stress, which we define as the accumulated strain experienced by a team when traveling, on key components of team functioning and performance including team task performance, team concentration level, and counterproductive work behaviors (CWB).

Design/Methodology/Approach

We analyze 3054 games played in the National Football League across six seasons using multilevel structural equation modeling. Replicating our findings, we also analyzed an additional 11,802 games played in the National Basketball Association across five seasons.

Findings

Aggregate travel stress, as a latent construct, negatively impacts team task performance and team concentration level. Team concentration partially mediates the relationship between aggregate travel stress and CWB.

Implications

Findings suggest that travel has a deleterious effect on various forms of team functioning and performance. As a result, organizations and leaders need to be aware of the potential side effects of travel, and researchers need to further incorporate travel into models and examinations of workplace stress.

Originality/Value

This is the first study to provide a theoretically driven investigation of the effects of business travel on team outcomes and to apply COR theory to team-level phenomena. Results put forth offer a more nuanced understanding of the effects of travel as well as open up new avenues of exploration for COR theory.

     

Outcomes of Peak,Typical, and Variability in Performance of College Football Teams

Purpose

The purpose of this study was to investigate the typical, peak, and variability in performance of both the offensive and defensive units of college football teams over the course of a season in predicting three objective team-level outcomes (win percentage, fan home game attendance, and bowl game payout).

Design/Methodology/Approach

Data were obtained from an archival sports database for 193 Bowl Subdivision college football teams for three separate seasons.

Findings

When all three types of performance were considered simultaneously, only typical performance significantly predicted win percentage and bowl game payout outcomes, and it explained between 19 % (for bowl game payout) and 49 % (for record) of the variance. All interactions between typical performance and performance variability were non-significant.

Implications

These null results point to a boundary condition in the relationship between performance variability and outcomes: whether the outcome is subject to evaluator attributional processes (e.g., raises, performance evaluations) or is more objective in nature. Although null, the present results question a sometimes implicit assumption that performance inconsistency is detrimental to organizational functioning.

Originality/Value

This is one of the first studies to examine outcomes of peak performance, typical performance, and performance variability at the team level. Additionally, most studies examining the outcomes of such performance use subjective outcomes such as performance ratings, whereas this study provides one of the first examinations using objective outcomes such as bowl game payout.     

Altering the Effects of Work and Family Conflict on Exhaustion: Telework During Traditional and Nontraditional Work Hours

Purpose

The current study investigates the impact of time and strain-based work-to-family conflict (WFC) and family-to-work conflict (FWC) on exhaustion, by considering the moderating effect of telework conducted during traditional and non-traditional work hours.

Design/Methodology/Approach

Data were obtained from professionals in a large computer company using survey methodology (N?=?316).

Findings

Results from this study suggest that time and strain-based WFC and FWC were associated with more exhaustion, and that exhaustion associated with high WFC was worse for individuals with more extensive telework during traditional and non-traditional work hours.

Implications

This study provides managers with findings to more carefully design telework programs, showing evidence that the adverse impact of WFC/FWC on exhaustion may depend on the type of telework and level of conflict experienced. This suggests that managers may need to be more aware of the full range of characteristics which encapsulate the teleworker??s work practices before making decisions about how telework is implemented.

Originality/Value

By differentiating the timing of telework and its role on the WFC/FWC??exhaustion relationship, this study delves deeper into the contingent nature of telework and suggests that the extent of telework conducted during traditional and nontraditional work hours may play an influential role. In addition, these considerations are investigated in light of the bi-directional time-based and strain-based nature of WFC and FWC, helping to unravel some of telework??s complexities.     

Impact of Organizational Identification and Psychological Safety on Initial Perceptions of Coworker Trustworthiness

Purpose

Initial trustworthiness perceptions serve as anchored reference points for subsequent trust perceptions and associated behavioral choices in organizations. Examining the relationship between the employee and the organization is an underexplored influence on such perceptions. This study is an investigation of how perceived psychological safety (PS) in the work environment and level of organizational identification (OI) influence initial perceptions of others?? trustworthiness.

Design/Methodology/Approach

Data were obtained through survey and scenario methods from a sample of high-potential managers (n?=?155) during participation in a leadership development training course.

Findings

Results demonstrate that both disposition to trust and PS have positive relationships with initial perceptions of others?? trustworthiness. There is also a significant negative moderating effect of OI on the relationship between psychology safety and perceived trustworthiness. PS has a strong positive significant relationship with initial perceptions of others?? trustworthiness when OI is low. This relationship is non-significant when OI is high.

Implications

This study provides evidence that the relationship between the employee and the organization can influence individual perceptions of initial trustworthiness in others.

Originality/Value

Aspects of the relationship between the trustor and the organization have not previously been considered as influences on initial trustworthiness perceptions. PS, often investigated as a direct influence on learning and performance, has not been previously examined as a socialized influence on trustworthiness perceptions.     

Job Design and the Employee Innovation Process: The Mediating Role of Learning Strategies

Purpose

The purpose of this article is to examine whether employee learning strategies is a mechanism through which job design affects the employee innovation process. In particular, we test whether work-based learning strategies mediate the relationship between job design characteristics (job control and problem demand) and key components of the innovation process (idea generation, idea promotion, and idea implementation).

Design/Methodology/Approach

Data were collected from a survey of 327 employees in a UK manufacturing organization.

Findings

Structural equation modeling confirmed the mediating role of learning strategies in the relationship between job design and idea generation. The effects of job control on idea generation were mediated by work-based learning strategies and the effects of problem demand on idea generation were partially mediated by work-based learning strategies. Problem demand also had a direct relationship with idea generation and idea promotion. The findings provide support for the general idea that learning is a mechanism thorough which job design affects outcomes.

Implications

The results of the study show practitioners that creating jobs with high control or high problem demand can help to promote the employee innovation process; and that this is partly due to the role that such jobs play in stimulating the use of learning strategies at work.

Originality/Value

This article develops and tests a new theoretical model that explains how learning is a route through which job design influences employee innovation.     

Examining the Outcomes of Having a Calling: Does Context Matter?

Purpose

The purpose of this study was to examine the cognitive, affective, and behavioral outcomes of calling. Further, the study examined the conditions under which individuals with a calling thrive, specifically focusing on the moderating role of work discretion and participative decision making.

Design/Methodology/Approach

Data were collected using surveys from 298 teachers and aides working in 68 child care centers.

Implications

The study results demonstrate that having a strong work calling is beneficial for both individuals and organizations. Results show that individuals who have a strong work calling are more committed to their organizations, have less emotional exhaustion and exhibit higher levels of contextual performance. Thus, in order to reap positive outcomes from their work individuals should engage in work that enables them to pursue their calling. Also, organizations will have increased work outcomes by hiring individuals who have a strong work calling. Further, organizations will benefit greatly by creating conditions that enable individuals to pursue their calling. Findings indicate that individuals with a high calling thrive in organizations that have more participative decision-making practices and which offer high work discretion.

Originality/Value

The study significantly contributes to the scant literature on calling by examining the affective, cognitive, and behavioral outcomes of calling. The study also responds to calls for research on the conditions under which calling leads to positive individual and work outcomes and identifies the conditions under which workers with a strong calling thrive.

     

A Meta-Analytic Review of the Consequences Associated with Work–Family Enrichment

Purpose

This study investigated the relationship between work-to-family enrichment (WFE) and family-to-work enrichment (FWE) with work-related, non work-related, and health-related consequences using meta-analysis.

Design/methodology/approach

We conducted a meta-analytic review of 21 studies (54 correlations) for WFE and 25 studies (57 correlations) for FWE.

Findings

We found that both WFE and FWE were positively related to job satisfaction, affective commitment, and family satisfaction but not turnover intentions. WFE was more strongly related to work-related variables, whereas FWE was more strongly related to non work-related variables. We also found that both WFE and FWE were positively related to physical and mental health. Additionally, relationships appear to depend on moderating variables including the proportion of women in the sample as well as the construct label (e.g., enrichment, facilitation, positive spillover).

Implications

Our work indicates that organizations need to consider ways to not only reduce conflict, but also increase enrichment, which will drive many important outcome variables.

Originality/value

This is the first meta-analysis on the positive side of the work–family interface.