Energy's role in the extraversion (dis)advantage: How energy ties and task conflict help clarify the relationship between extraversion and proactive performance

While academic and practitioner literatures have proposed that extraverts are at an advantage in team‐based work, it remains unclear exactly what that advantage might be, how extraverts attain such an advantage, and under which conditions. Theory highlighting the importance of energy in the coordination of team efforts helps to answer these questions. We propose that extraverted individuals are able to develop more energizing relationships with their teammates and as a result are seen as proactively contributing to their team. However, problems in coordination (i.e., team task conflict) can reverse this extraversion advantage. We studied 27 project‐based teams at their formation, peak performance, and after disbandment. Results suggest that when team task conflict is low, extraverts energize their teammates and are viewed by others as proactively contributing to the team. However, when team task conflict is high, extraverts develop energizing relationships with fewer of their teammates and are not viewed as proactively contributing to the team. Our findings regarding energizing relationships and team task conflict clarify why extraversion is related to proactive performance and in what way, how, and when extraverts may be at a (dis)advantage in team‐based work. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Conflict management between and within teams for trusting relationships and performance in China

Trusting relationships are increasingly considered vital for making teams productive. We propose that cooperative management of conflict can help team members to be convinced that their teammates are trustworthy. Results from 102 organizations in China support the theorizing that how teams to manage conflict with each other affects within‐team conflict management. Specifically, cooperative conflict between teams helps teams to manage their internal conflicts cooperatively that strengthens trust that in turn facilitates team performance. Results provide support for managing conflict cooperatively as a foundation for trusting, productive relationships in China as well as in the West. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

We're all in this together…except for you: The effects of workload,performance feedback,and racial distance on helping behavior in teams

We draw from social categorization theory and the actor–observer hypothesis to extend previous research regarding receiving high levels of help from team members. Specifically, we explore how a team member's performance feedback on how they handled a disproportionately heavy share of the team's workload and how their racial distance from the rest of their teammates affect the amount of helping that person receives from their teammates. Results from a laboratory study in which 79 teams worked on a computerized, decision‐making task demonstrated a three‐way interaction between workload, performance feedback, and the racial distance between the feedback recipient and the rest of their teammates. Racially distant negative feedback recipients who had a disproportionately heavy share of their team's workload received less help from teammates than their racially similar counterparts. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

He thought,she thought: The importance of subjective patterns to understanding team processes

Teams are often described using the mean and variance of their member's characteristics. Recently, research has advanced this paradigm by beginning to explore the importance of patterns of team member perceptions regarding themselves, their teammates, and their teams. We highlight this work and suggest several directions for future research. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Teams as boundaries: How intra‐team and inter‐team brokerage influence network changes in knowledge‐seeking networks

What role does an ego's brokerage location—within a team (intra‐team) or outside the team (inter‐team)—play in the evolution of an instrumental knowledge‐seeking network in terms of both proximal (i.e., within the team) and distal (i.e., outside the team) tie formation and tie decay? We address this question by drawing on literature about social networks, brokerage, and teams. We use temporally separated data from 302 students embedded in 97 teams to test our hypotheses about the impacts of intra‐team and inter‐team brokerage on proximal and distal network evolution, specifically on four network changes in knowledge‐seeking networks: proximal tie formation, proximal tie decay, distal tie formation, and distal tie decay. We find that these four changes depend on individual network brokerage location even after controlling for personality and task characteristics. Specifically, inter‐team brokers change their networks both within and outside their teams, whereas intra‐team brokers curtail their network changes. We argue that these opposite effects occur because inter‐team brokers have greater autonomy than intra‐team brokers. This study adds to the ongoing dialog about network evolution in social network literature and to the conversations about brokerage and its location in the context of team‐based work.     

Emergent network structure and initial group performance: The moderating role of pre‐existing relationships

Organization restructurings often put groups of employees into new teams and roles, and it is not unusual for some of these new teammates to have pre‐existing work and friendship relationships. While there has been much theorizing on the impact of existing social network structures on group performance, there has been less research on how pre‐existing relationships help or hinder initial group performance, especially in teams with interdependent roles and tasks. We explore several hypotheses in a competitive management simulation involving 42 teams and find that (1) the density of pre‐existing work and friendship relationships are directly associated with higher initial group performance, and (2) pre‐existing work network density moderates the relationship between emergent work network density and initial group performance. In other words, the degree to which emergent work ties are based on pre‐existing work relationships (i.e., former co‐workers actually work together in their new roles) also contributes to higher initial group productivity. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Influencing diversity beliefs through a personal testimonial,promotion-focused approach

Although researchers have highlighted the importance of diversity beliefs (i.e., team members' perceived value of diversity) for the elaboration of information in teams, little attention has been paid to whether and how diversity beliefs can be shaped. Drawing on theory and research on team diversity beliefs, we propose that diversity beliefs are more effectively influenced by interventions using a promotion (compared with a prevention) focus toward diversity and personal testimonial (compared with factual) knowledge. Results from an experiment conducted with 175 teams revealed that both a promotion focus and personal testimonial knowledge independently contributed to more positive diversity beliefs and consequently increased team elaboration of task-relevant information as well as integration of different perspectives. Our results reveal key factors that can influence diversity beliefs and underscore the pivotal role of diversity beliefs in improving the extent to which team members elaborate information and integrate diverse perspectives.     

A multilevel review of stressor research in teams

The contemporary work environment is characterized by an ongoing trend to embed employees in teams because of their expected abilities for handling complex tasks and integrating diverse sets of knowledge and skills. However, leveraging this potential is endangered by stimuli within and outside of teams that take a toll on cohesion and teamwork among team members. Understanding the role that stressors and demands play in the work-related functioning of teams and their members is therefore an increasingly important challenge in the organizational behavior literature. Whereas research on stressors and demands has primarily focused on the individual level, we expand the research scope by considering these phenomena to be multilevel. We perform an interdisciplinary review of the literature on these stimuli in teams and show how related research, such as that on destructive leadership, may benefit from a more balanced account and integration of frameworks on stressors. Our multilevel review is informative for the literature on stressors and demands at the individual and team levels, as it offers an important conceptual grounding for how and why various stimuli in this social environment differentially influence both the collective entity and its individual team members.     

How team helping influences abusive and empowering leadership: The roles of team affective tone and performance

Leaders' perceptions of their teams are critical sources of contextual social information influencing leadership behaviors. In this paper, we extend affect-as-social-information theory to understand how and why team helping behaviors predict leaders' mistreatment of their teams in the form of abusive supervision and positive leader behavior in the form of empowering leadership, both through leaders' perceptions of team positive affective tone. In addition, based on social information processing, we examine the cue of leaders' perceptions of team task performance as a factor that helps us understand when the relationship between positive affective tone and leadership behaviors may be attenuated. In two text-based scenario studies, a video-based scenario study, and a multisource field study, we found evidence that team helping behavior is antecedent to abusive and empowering leadership behaviors and that this relationship is fully mediated by leaders' perceptions of team positive affective tone. Moreover, our results support team task performance as a factor that decreases the degree to which affective tone is related to abusive supervision. We discuss our findings as a caution to scholars' assumptions about the directionality of leader-team influence, emphasizing the need to acknowledge upward effects in workplace mistreatment research in the leader–team relationship.     

Differential treatment within sports teams,leader–member (coach–player) exchange quality,team atmosphere,and team performance

Using the leader–member exchange (LMX) theory as a theoretical framework, the present study focused on the occurrence of differential treatment by leaders on social and task‐related issues within teams. It was investigated whether team members' perceptions of the frequency and degree of social and task‐related differential treatment by the leader were associated with their evaluation of team atmosphere and team performance, in addition to the effects of the quality of their own working relationship with the leader (LMX quality). The context of this study consisted of interdependent sports teams. The participants were 605 players belonging to 69 amateur sports teams playing various team sports such as soccer, hockey, and basketball. Social differential treatment was negatively associated with team atmosphere and unrelated to team performance. In addition, it was found that the two forms of task‐related differential treatment included in this study were unrelated to team atmosphere and were differently associated with team performance. The results are discussed with reference to the existing leadership literature. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

To reflect or not to reflect: Prior team performance as a boundary condition of the effects of reflexivity on learning and final team performance

A small but growing body of literature adds to our understanding of the role of team reflexivity (i.e., reflecting upon team functioning) in predicting team performance. Although many studies conclude that reflexivity is an asset for teams, the contingencies of team reflexivity have received far less research attention. In this respect, we argue that team reflexivity may be especially helpful for teams with relatively low performance. Teams that are reflexive tend to learn from previous mistakes, errors, and group processes, which in turn will improve the performance of the team. We propose that this relationship will most likely positively affect learning and final team performance under conditions of relatively poor prior performance. When a team is doing relatively well, the relationship between reflexivity and final team performance will be less clear, as reflexivity and learning is less needed. In a longitudinal study (N = 73 teams), we found support for this idea. As predicted, results indicated that this interaction between team reflexivity and initial team performance on future performance was mediated by team learning. We outline how these findings are important for our understanding of the contingencies of team reflexivity and team performance dynamics. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

The role of positive affectivity in team effectiveness during crises

Organizational efforts to improve team effectiveness in crisis situations primarily have focused on team training initiatives and, to a lesser degree, on staffing teams with respect to members' ability, experience, and functional backgrounds. Largely neglected in these efforts is the emotional component of crises and, correspondingly, the notion of staffing teams with consideration for their affective makeup. To address this void, we examined the impact of team member dispositional positive affect (PA) on team crisis effectiveness and the role of felt negative emotion in transmitting that influence. A study of 21 nuclear power plant crews engaged in crisis training simulations revealed that homogeneity in PA, but not mean‐level PA, was associated with greater team effectiveness. Mediation analysis suggested that homogeneity in PA leads to greater team effectiveness by reducing the amount of negative emotions that team members experience during crises. Furthermore, homogeneity in PA compensated for lower mean‐level PA in predicting effectiveness. Discussion focuses on the implications of these findings for understanding and further exploring the importance of affective factors and especially team affective composition in team crisis performance. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

The consequences of (not) seeing eye-to-eye about the past: The role of supervisor–team fit in past temporal focus for supervisors' leadership behavior

This study seeks to advance our understanding of the leadership consequences that may ensue when supervisors and their teams have similar versus differing orientations toward the past. Integrating a leader–team fit perspective with functional leadership theory, we cast incongruence between supervisor and team past temporal focus as a key antecedent of supervisors' active (i.e., task-oriented and relationship-oriented) and passive (i.e., laissez-faire) leadership behaviors toward the team. We tested our hypotheses in a team-level study that included a field sample of 84 supervisors and their teams using polynomial regression and response surface analyses. Results illustrated that supervisors demonstrated more task-oriented and relationship-oriented leadership when supervisors' and their team's past temporal focus were incongruent rather than aligned. Furthermore, in situations of supervisor–team congruence, supervisors engaged in less task-oriented and relationship-oriented leadership and more laissez-faire leadership with higher (rather than lower) levels of supervisor and team past temporal focus. In sum, these findings support a complex (mis)fit model such that supervisors' attention to the past may hinder their productive leadership behaviors in some team contexts but not in others. Hence, this research advances a novel, multiple-stakeholder perspective on the role of both supervisors' and their team's past temporal focus for important leadership behaviors.     

Diversity and team outcomes: the moderating effects of outcome interdependence and group longevity and the mediating effect of reflexivity

Reflexivity—the extent to which teams reflect upon and modify their functioning—has been identified as a possible key factor in the effectiveness of work teams. We examined the extent to which team composition affected team process (i.e., reflexivity) and in turn team outcomes (i.e., satisfaction, commitment, and performance). The results of diversity research thus far have been inconclusive in terms of positive or negative effects of team composition on team process and outcomes. In the current research, group longevity and outcome interdependence were expected to moderate the relationship between diversity on the one hand and reflexivity and team outcomes on the other hand. Reflexivity was expected to mediate these interaction effects. The current field study was conducted among 54 work teams from 13 different organizations. As predicted, few main effects were found. Instead, analyses showed interaction effects of diversity and outcome interdependence on the measures of reflexivity, satisfaction, and performance. As predicted, interaction effects were also found for diversity and group longevity on the measures of reflexivity, satisfaction, and performance. Three‐way interactions were found for satisfaction and commitment. Also, reflexivity was shown to mediate these relationships, indicating that the moderating effects of outcome interdependence and group longevity on the relation between diversity and team outcomes are due to the effects on process. Copyright © 2003 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Putting first things first: Outcome and process focus in knowledge work teams

This paper presents a new perspective on the management of outcomes and processes in a knowledge team's work. Knowledge teams frequently face complex, open‐ended tasks for which the a priori specification of goals and work processes is not possible. Such teams must define these work elements themselves; emphasizing one over the other can lead a team to become either outcome‐or process‐focused, with implications for the level at which they identify their activities and the flexibility with which they conduct work. A survey study of student teams and a field study of organizational teams test the effects of outcome versus process focus on performance. Consistent with prior findings, the first study demonstrates that outcome focus is positively related to performance on complex, open‐ended tasks and that team members' level of action identification mediates the effects of outcome and process focus on performance. Action research conducted as part of the second study demonstrates the importance of early events in a team's life cycle and the challenge for managers who hope to influence their teams to have a greater degree of focus on outcomes over process. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

An examination of shared leadership configurations and their effectiveness in teams

A key challenge in the shared leadership literature has been a limited understanding of how multiple leadership activities are shared across team members and roles. We address this issue by conceptualizing and operationalizing shared leadership using both its content (i.e., what leadership roles are shared) and distribution (i.e., how leadership is shared across members and roles). In an exploratory study comprised of 129 work teams, we use latent profile analysis (LPA) to identify multiple shared leadership configurations that vary in the extent of sharing. Our second study of 103 MBA teams supports these findings and further (a) considers what shared leadership configurations have the greatest influence on team effectiveness, (b) examines the mediating role of teamwork processes, and (c) investigates the moderating role of temporal dispersion. We advance current research by demonstrating that shared leadership typically manifests in collective (i.e., members share all leadership roles) and distributed configurations (i.e., members hold one leadership role while other members hold other leadership roles), which has implications for team processes and effectiveness. Specifically, we show that collective configurations have higher team effectiveness (compared to distributed configurations) owing to improved teamwork processes and observe that these effects are more pronounced when temporal dispersion is high.     

Team mental models and their potential to improve teamwork and safety: A review and implications for future research in healthcare

The importance of team mental models (TMMs) - team members’ shared and organized understanding of relevant knowledge - for teamwork and team-performance, particularly in high-risk industries, has been recognized for almost two decades. In healthcare, however, systematic investigations on the influence of TMM on teamwork and team-performance had yet to be conducted at the time of this review, despite many authors considering the concept to be useful for medical teams. The lack of measurement procedures appropriate for settings as complex and dynamic as, for example, the operating room, represents a major obstacle for empirical research in healthcare. We systematically reviewed empirical studies on TMMs aiming to identify methods that could be applied in healthcare. In particular, we analyzed the methods used, and situations in which TMMs have been investigated. The reviewed studies were sorted according to task and team characteristics. We discuss the results of this review with regard to characteristics of healthcare teams including anaesthesia teams and teams of ward nurses. Each of these examples represents a distinct teamwork setting (e.g. long- vs. short-lived teams) and hence requires a different approach to TMM measurement (e.g. focus on task-model vs. focus on team-model). Implications for study design, feasible measurement approaches, and questions for future research on TMMs in healthcare are discussed. In sum, our findings highlight the possible significance of TMM research in healthcare and its potential benefits for team-performance and, ultimately, patient safety.     

Managing relationship conflict and the effectiveness of organizational teams

Past research has revealed that team effectiveness and satisfaction suffer when teams experience relationship conflict—conflict related to interpersonal issues, political norms and values, and personal taste. This study examined how teams should respond to these conflicts. Three types of conflict responses were studied: collaborating responses, contending responses, and avoiding responses. A field study involving a heterogeneous sample of teams performing complex, non‐routine task showed that collaborating and contending responses to relationship conflict negatively relate to team functioning (i.e., voice, compliance, helping behavior) and overall team effectiveness, while avoiding responses were associated with high team functioning and effectiveness. It is suggested that collaborating and contending responses to relationship conflict distract team members from their tasks, while avoiding responses appear more functional in that they allow team members to pursue task performance. Copyright © 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

A review of perceived diversity in teams: Does how members perceive their team's composition affect team processes and outcomes?

In this paper, we review the growing literature on perceived diversity in teams. We aim to clarify the construct of perceived diversity and organize the findings in this emergent line of research. To do so, we develop a framework integrating research emerging on perceived diversity from across several different research fields. We propose that the nature of perceived diversity and its effects can be best understood by identifying the focal point of the diversity perceptions being studied: perceptions of self‐to‐team dissimilarity, of subgroup splits, and of group heterogeneity. Our review concludes that perceived self‐to‐team dissimilarity and perceived subgroup splits mostly have been linked to negative effects for individuals and groups, whereas perceived group heterogeneity has been shown to exert both positive and negative effects on group outcomes. Our review also draws attention to the problem that research on perceived diversity varies not only in definitions and conceptualizations, but also in the methodological approaches towards operationalizing perceived diversity. We conclude by discussing potential areas for future research. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Employees' self‐efficacy and perception of individual learning in teams: The cross‐level moderating role of team‐learning behavior

Despite the importance of employee learning for organizational effectiveness, scholars have yet to identify the factors that influence employees' perception of individual learning. This paper identified employees' self‐efficacy as a potential antecedent to their perception of individual learning in the context of teamwork. We also hypothesized that team‐learning behavior had a moderating effect on the relationship between employees' self‐efficacy and their perception of individual learning. We conducted a study of 236 teams working in a retail firm, comprising 236 team supervisors and 1397 employees, and analyzed the data using hierarchical linear modeling. This study revealed that employees' individual‐level self‐efficacy was positively associated with their perception of individual learning in teams. Additionally, team‐learning behaviors moderated the positive relationship between employees' self‐efficacy and the perception of individual learning. This study has theoretical and practical implications for a more nuanced understanding of the perception of individual learning in the context of teamwork. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.