Minority status,access to information,and individual performance

With growing nationality diversity in organizations, the question under which circumstances differences in nationality background between team members affect individual performance increases in importance. Research showed that dissimilarity may negatively affect individual performance and that the status difference between nationality majority and nationality minority moderates this effect. We take this analysis an important step further by recognizing that not all nationality minorities are low status and propose that status differences among nationality minority groups influence the extent to which nationality minority background affects individual performance. We identify the elaboration of distributed information in the team as a mediator and process accountability as a moderator in this effect. Results of a multilevel team experiment in which we manipulated team nationality composition and process accountability supported our hypotheses, testifying to the value of status-based distinctions between minority groups in the study of relational demography effects. The mediating role of the elaboration of distributed information also provides an important bridge to team diversity research inviting further conceptual integration.     

A Case Study of a Consultation Using the Two-Circles Method With a Junior High School Teacher1

To resolve various problems in schools, a “school as a team” approach for teachers to cooperate with other professionals as well as other teachers has been introduced in Japan. Consultations are one method school counselors use to support teachers as a team. This study examines a consultation case using the two-circles method based on narrative therapy and discusses the possibilities and challenges when using this method in Japan. Using a case study analysis, the author found that the two-circles method contributed positively to the consultation by externalizing the problem, gathering local knowledge, visualizing the participants' narratives, and applying scaffolding to develop the consultee's story. The results suggest that this method could be useful for achieving the “school as a team” approach because it combines teachers' narratives to resolve problems in schools.     

Effectiveness in top management group meetings: The role of goal clarity,focused communication,and learning behavior

Bang, H., Fuglesang, S. L., Ovesen, M. R. & Eilertsen, D. E. (2010). Effectiveness in top management group meetings: The role of goal clarity, focused communication, and learning behavior. Scandinavian Journal of Psychology, 51, 253–261. To explore the relationship between goal clarity, focused communication, learning behavior, and team effectiveness (i.e., task performance, relationship quality, and member satisfaction), self‐report and observer data from eight top management groups that processed 56 agenda items during meetings were analyzed. We found that goal clarity and focused communication was positively related to team effectiveness. The effect of goal clarity on team effectiveness was partially mediated by focused communication. Speaking up when a goal was unclear increased focused communication, task performance and relationship quality. Speaking up when the discussion was off track was not related to task performance and member satisfaction, and was negatively related to relationship quality. These findings have implications for how to conduct an effective management meeting.     

Scenario Planning: The Basics

This article covers the basics of scenario planning: Why scenarios? What are scenarios? How do you develop scenarios? After covering the preliminaries—the constitution of the scenario team; interviews; research; the identification of a focal issue; set and setting for a scenario workshop; staffing; the trajectory of a scenario planning project—the article moves on to describe several methods for identifying a finite set of diverse scenario logics. After a set of scenarios has been developed, there are several different routes from scenarios to strategy. Early indicators can help identify which of several scenarios is in fact unfolding.     

Distance de pouvoir et auto-évaluation de l’efficacité d’une équipe de travail

We introduce a study concerning relation between power and the evaluation of the effectiveness of working teams (Savoie & Brunet, 2000). The power model of Mulder lead to postulate a relation between power distance in the team and the evaluation of the effectiveness. We collected a series of measurements in working teams composed of students engineers. Results allow proving such relation.     

Team adaptability and task cohesion as resources to the non-linear dynamics of workload and sickness absenteeism in firefighter teams

ABSTRACT

The current study builds on the non-linear Dynamic Systems (NDS) perspective to test the assumption that change in sickness absenteeism is non-linear, and that such change is due to workload, team adaptability and task cohesion. Participants were 37 firefighter teams (n = 250 individuals) from a main European capital city. The research hypotheses were tested using SPSS and the “cusp” package, in the statistical software R. The results suggest that change in sickness absenteeism behaviours over time is non-linear, with the cusp catastrophe model predicting such behaviours better than the linear and logistic models. In our model, task cohesion functions as an asymmetry factor (i.e., the independent variable that determines the strength and discrepancy between the two stable states of the dependent variable) leading to a linear change in sickness absenteeism. Interestingly, both workload and team adaptability function as bifurcation (i.e., the independent variable that determines the change between the two stable states of the order parameter) and asymmetry factors leading to non-linear and linear change in sickness absenteeism over time. This study contributes to the growing evidence that incorporating the NDS perspective enables a better understanding of action teams, namely those working in extreme environments.