Top management teams within multinational corporations: Effects of cultural heterogeneity

This research examined the relationship of cultural heterogeneity with team and organizational performance, as mediated by selected aspects of group processes. The study was done with top management teams (TMTs) in international subsidiaries of multinational corporations (MNCs). It was found that cultural heterogeneity within the TMT is positively related to both the level of issue-based conflict the team experiences and to TMT performance. The TMT performance and the subsidiary's performance were positively related. Issue-based conflict affected negatively TMT performance but had a positive effect on subsidiary performance. The hypothesis that cultural heterogeneity would be negatively related to TMT cohesion was not supported. The results provide general support for the importance of cultural heterogeneity for the functioning of TMTs and their international subsidiaries.     

Consensual commitment: A grounded theory of the meso-level influence of organizational design on leadership and decision-making

This research examined the relationship between organizational design and leadership in decision-making teams. It used a grounded theory-based qualitative research design. The validity of the research was enhanced by data triangulation, wherein quantitative psychometric data augmented the qualitative data that are traditionally used. The research was based upon two organizations within the substantive setting of the knowledge industry. The higher order category of consensual commitment explained effective decision-making. At the meso-level of leadership modeling, organizational design influenced both leadership style and decision-making. Specifically, an organizational design that generated lateral job roles and a relational leadership orientation was found to enhance consensual commitment, and provided a level of assurance against dysfunctional team dynamics.     

6 Three Perspectives on Team Learning

Abstract

The emergence of a research literature on team learning has been driven by at least two factors. First, longstanding interest in what makes organizational work teams effective leads naturally to questions about how members of newly formed teams learn to work together and how existing teams improve or adapt. Second, some have argued that teams play a crucial role in organizational learning. These interests have produced a growing and heterogeneous literature. Empirical studies of learning by small groups or teams present a variety of terms, concepts, and methods. This heterogeneity is both generative and occasionally confusing. We identify three distinct areas of research that provide insight into how teams learn to stimulate cross-area discussion and future research. We find that scholars have made progress in understanding how teams in general learn, and propose that future work should develop more precise and context-specific theories to help guide research and practice in disparate task and industry domains.     

Team Microdynamics: Toward an Organizing Approach to Teamwork

ABSTRACT

Team researchers in the field of organizational behavior (OB) seem to be increasingly aware of the need to embrace the organizing nature of teams. In this article, we outline the limitations of the prevailing static collectivist explanations in team research and suggest how an increased emphasis on a microdynamics-oriented approach that takes into account the essentially relational and organizing nature of teams can provide new insights to our understanding of teamwork. We argue that a multilevel, multi-theoretical, and multi-period framework may help enhance our understanding of teams. To show the advancements of the field in this sense, we review the OB literature on teams and highlight exemplars of research that have started to emphasize the microdynamic nature of teams consistent with this general framework, and their contributions to our understanding of team phenomena. We conclude by outlining the opportunities and needs for a microdynamic insight into team and teamwork, providing guidance for scholars who are interested in adding a microdynamic perspective into their models of teamwork.     

The influence of cultural intelligence and emotional intelligence on conflict occurrence and performance in global virtual teams

The role of different types of intelligence in the occurrence of conflict in global virtual teams (GVTs) has largely been overlooked in the literature. As suggested by the theory of multiple intelligences, this study explores how cultural intelligence (CQ) and emotional intelligence (EQ) influence the occurrence of interpersonal, task and process conflicts in GVTs. Furthermore, by drawing on the contingency theory of task conflict and performance in groups and organisational teams, we examine the impact of these different types of conflict on the performance of GVTs. Utilising multilevel analysis, we tested the research model using a sample of 810 graduate and undergraduate business students from 38 different countries who worked in 232 GVTs. The results show that the CQ and EQ of the team members reduce the occurrence of the three different intragroup conflicts in GVTs. We also demonstrate that process conflict negatively affects GVT performance. We discuss the implications for research and practice.     

Toward a Systems Theory of Motivated Behavior in Work Teams

Work motivation theories and research have tended to focus either on individual motivation, ignoring contextual influences of team processes on individuals, or on team motivation, ignoring individual differences within the team. Redressing these limited, single-level views of motivation, we delineate a theoretical multilevel model of motivated behavior in teams. First, we conceptualize motivational processes at both the individual and team levels, highlighting the functional similarities in these processes across levels of analysis. We then delineate a set of theoretical propositions regarding the cross-level interplay between individual and team motivation, and antecedents and outcomes of individual and team motivation. Finally, we discuss the implications of our theoretical model for future research and managerial practices.     

Transactive Memory Systems 1985–2010: An Integrative Framework of Key Dimensions,Antecedents, and Consequences

Over two decades have passed since Wegner and his co-authors published the groundbreaking paper on transactive memory systems (TMS) in 1985. The concept attracted the interest of management, psychology, and communication scholars who have employed a variety of methods to examine the phenomenon. In this paper, we review 76 papers that examined transactive memory systems and summarize the findings in an integrative framework to show the antecedents and consequences of TMS. Our review also reveals important issues in the literature related to the measurement of TMS, its multidimensional nature, extending TMS from the team level to the organizational level, and the potential role of TMS in explaining the benefits of experience in existing organizations and new entrepreneurial ventures. We conclude by calling for future research to examine the dynamic evolution of TMS, TMS in virtual teams, TMS in entrepreneurial ventures, and TMS at the organizational level facilitated with information technologies.     

The forms and use of intuition in top management teams

Nascent research suggests that benefits of intuition use accrue not only to individuals but also to teams. These benefits may be especially important for top management teams (TMTs), who formulate strategic decisions for their firms. However, work on intuition use in strategic decision making (SDM) remains focused on the intuitions of chief executive officers (CEOs). Furthermore, the emerging literature on team intuition is very fragmented, leaving an unclear picture of how teams may develop and use intuition in their decision-making activities. To address these problems, we integrate team intuition and TMT research to propose four forms of TMT intuition, which differ based on the locus and integration of intuition. We describe the forms of TMT intuition, clarify the mechanisms that shape them, and discuss their relevance for TMTs' decision-making activities. Overall, we advocate for strategy research that focuses on the notion of “team” in team intuition.     

Bringing the cognitive revolution forward: What can team cognition contribute to our understanding of leadership?

Cognition is a central element of organizational behavior and leaders are seen as key shapers of organizational cognition. Leaders’ influence over organizations often occurs through their influence on the collectives or teams they are leading. Hence, leaders influence organizational outcomes by modeling team cognition. Despite the importance of this relationship for organizational outcomes, there is little integration currently between the leadership and team cognition literatures. To address this gap, we conduct an integrative review. First, we develop a model for leader and team influence based on organizational emergence and leadership complexity theories. Our model makes a distinction between the source of influence over cognition (leader → team, team → leader, reciprocal) and form of cognition emergence (variance reduction, variance enhancement); constraints that shape cognitions that vary in levels (within and between-level, contextual) and focus (individual, interindividual, collective); and leader behaviors (administrative, adaptive, enabling). We apply this model to review and analyze ninety-nine studies in the current literature and then discuss the limitations and future directions drawing on our findings and theoretical model. We contribute a unifying framework of leadership and team emergence that can be expanded and applied to other settings.     

How Leaders Affect Followers’ Work Engagement and Performance: Integrating Leader−Member Exchange and Crossover Theory

Drawing on leader?member exchange and crossover theory, this study examines how leaders’ work engagement can spread to followers, highlighting the role of leader?member exchange as an underlying explanatory process. Specifically, we investigate if leaders who are highly engaged in their work have better relationships with their followers, which in turn can explain elevated employee engagement. For this purpose, we surveyed 511 employees nested in 88 teams and their team leaders in a large service organization. Employees and supervisors provided data in this multi‐source design. Furthermore, we asked the employees to report their annual performance assessment. We tested our model using multilevel path analyses in Mplus. As hypothesized, leaders’ work engagement enhanced leader?member exchange quality, which in turn boosted employee engagement (mediation model). Moreover, employee engagement was positively linked to performance and negatively linked to turnover intentions. As such, our multilevel field study connects the dots between work engagement research and the leadership literature. We identify leaders’ work engagement as a key to positive leader?follower relationships and a means for promoting employee engagement and performance. Promoting work engagement at the managerial level may be a fruitful starting point for fostering an organizational culture of engagement.     

Leadership in the Plural

This paper reviews the literature on forms of leadership that in one way or other imply plurality: that is, the combined influence of multiple leaders in specific organizational situations. We identify four streams of scholarship on plural leadership, each focusing on somewhat different phenomena and adopting different epistemological and methodological assumptions. Specifically, these streams focus on sharing leadership in teams, on pooling leadership at the top of organizations, on spreading leadership across boundaries over time, and on producing leadership through interaction. The streams of research vary according to their representations of plural leadership as structured or emergent and as mutual or coalitional. We note tensions between perspectives that advocate pluralizing leadership in settings of concentrated authority and those concerned with channeling the forms of plurality naturally found in diffuse power settings such as professional organizations or inter-organizational partnerships. It is suggested that future research might pay more attention to social network perspectives, to the dynamics of plural leadership, to the role of power, and to critical perspectives on leadership discourse.     

The dysfunctions of power in teams: A review and emergent conflict perspective

We review the new and growing body of work on power in teams and use this review to develop an emergent theory of how power impacts team outcomes. Our paper offers three primary contributions. First, our review highlights potentially incorrect assumptions that have arisen around the topic of power in teams and documents the areas and findings that appear most robust in explaining the effects of power on teams. Second, we contrast the findings of this review with what is known about the effects of power on individuals and highlight the directionally oppositional effects of power that emerge across different levels of analysis. Third, we integrate findings across levels of analysis into an emergent theory which explains why and when the benefits of power for individuals may paradoxically explain the potentially negative effects of power on team outcomes. We elaborate on how individual social comparisons within teams where at least one member has power increase intra-team power sensitivity, which we define as a state in which team members are excessively perceptive of, affected by, and responsive to resources. We theorize that when power-sensitized teams experience resource threats (either stemming from external threats or personal threats within the team), these threats will ignite internal power sensitivities and set into play performance-detracting intra-team power struggles. This conflict account of power in teams integrates and organizes past findings in this area to explain why and when power negatively affects team-level outcomes, and opens the door for future research to better understand why and when power may benefit team outcomes when power’s dark side for teams is removed.     

地位冲突不对称与团队创造力的曲线关系研究

基于互动过程视角,构建地位冲突不对称对团队创造力的倒U形影响模型,并通过103个团队484份有效调查问卷进行实证检验。研究结果表明:地位冲突不对称对团队创造力呈现“过犹不及”的倒U形曲线效应,并且任务复杂性和任务互依性显著调节了上述关系,其中,当任务复杂性越高时,主效应倒U形曲线的拐点处于团队中拥有更多高地位冲突感知成员的结构下,且拐点位置更高;当任务互依性越高时,主效应倒U形曲线的拐点处于团队中拥有更少高地位冲突感知成员的结构下,且拐点位置更高。     

Transformational leadership,job satisfaction,and team performance: A multilevel mediation model of trust

In spite of calls for deliberate differentiation between individual and team levels of analysis, leadership research based on well-grounded theory referring to multiple levels is scarce. We seek to fill this gap by analyzing the relations between transformational leadership, trust in supervisor and team, job satisfaction, and team performance via multilevel analysis. Results are based on a sample of 360 employees from 39 academic teams. Transformational leadership was positively related to followers' job satisfaction at individual as well as team levels of analysis and to objective team performance. The relation between individual perceptions of supervisors' transformational leadership and job satisfaction was mediated by trust in the supervisor as well as trust in the team. Yet, trust in the team did not mediate the relationship between team perceptions of supervisors' transformational leadership and team performance. Implications for theory and research of leadership at multiple levels as well as for practice are discussed.     

Economic Liberalization and the Antecedents of Top Management Teams: Evidence From Turkish ‘Big’ Business

There has been an increased interest in the last two decades in top management teams (TMTs) of business firms. Much of the research, however, has been US‐based and concerned primarily with TMT effects on organizational outcomes. The present study aims to expand this literature by examining the antecedents of top team composition in the context of macro‐level economic change in a late‐industrializing country. The post‐1980 trade and market reforms in Turkey provided the empirical setting. Drawing upon the literatures on TMT and chief executive characteristics together with punctuated equilibrium models of change and institutional theory, the article develops the argument that which firm‐level factors affect which attributes of TMT formations varies across the early and late stages of economic liberalization. Results of the empirical investigation of 71 of the largest industrial firms in Turkey broadly supported the hypotheses derived from this premise. In the early stages of economic liberalization the average age and average organizational tenure of TMTs were related to the export orientation of firms, whereas in later stages, firm performance became a major predictor of these team attributes. Educational background characteristics of teams appeared to be under stronger institutional pressures, altering in different ways in the face of macro‐level change.     

Understanding the Antecedents of Effective Knowledge Management: The Importance of a Knowledge‐Centered Culture*

Within the context of knowledge management, little research has been conducted that identifies the antecedents of a knowledge‐centered culture—those organizational qualities that encourage knowledge creation and dissemination. In this study, the existing literature on organizational climate, job characteristics, and organizational learning (in the form of cooperative learning theory) are linked with the current thinking and research findings related to knowledge management to develop a theoretical model explaining the relationships among organizational climate, the level of cooperative learning that takes place between knowledge workers, and the resulting level of knowledge created and disseminated as measured by team performance and individual satisfaction levels. The study goes on to empirically test the proposed research model by investigating the climate of organizations, and seeks to understand the linkage between a set of organizational and individual characteristics and knowledge‐related activities found in cooperative learning groups and the resulting work outcomes. The hypothesized research model is tested using LISREL with data collected from 203 information systems (IS) professionals engaged in systems development activities. The paper concludes with a discussion of the implications the results have for future research and managerial practice.     

创业者个体学习、组织学习如何交互影响企业创新行为？——基于整合视角的纵向单案例研究

社会经济的不断发展促使分工愈发精细,对个人与组织间的技术隔离也愈加明显,亟待创业者个体及组织开展跨层次的交互学习以构建组织创新优势。基于此,本文援引学习理论与意义构建视角,从"行动"与"解释"出发,采用纵向单案例研究方法,基于"个体-组织"整合性分析框架,探究了不同创业阶段内跨层次行动主体间的学习互动模型,揭示了其对企业创新的影响路径。研究发现:创业者个体学习与组织学习间的互动,表现为渐变初期个体利用式学习经"自上而下"团队互动主导形成组织单环式行动;而在调整转变期,个体学习与组织学习发生交互影响,包含个体探索式学习经"横向协同式"团队互动主导形成组织双环式行动,以及组织双环式行动转换为单环式之后,经由持续反思与质询,刺激形成创业者个体利用式学习;最后,在发展突变期,个体利用式学习经"制度化统筹式"团队交互合作促成组织单环式行动,同时个体探索式学习经"跨越层次自主式"团队交互激活组织双环式学习。此外,在不同创业阶段,3种互动逻辑与意义构建框架下的创新决定机制呈现出以个体创意激发与扩散、信息整合与匹配以及平衡矛盾与冲突3种不同的影响路径展开的态势。本研究为创业学习理论和创业实践过程贡献了新的启示。     

Imprinting: Toward a Multilevel Theory

The concept of imprinting has attracted considerable interest in numerous fields—including organizational ecology, institutional theory, network analysis, and career research—and has been applied at several levels of analysis, from the industry to the individual. This article offers a critical review of this rich yet disparate literature and guides research toward a multilevel theory of imprinting. We start with a definition that captures the general features of imprinting across levels of analysis but is precise enough to remain distinct from seemingly similar concepts, such as path dependence and cohort effects. We then provide a framework to order and unite the splintered field of imprinting research at different levels of analysis. In doing so, we identify economic, technological, institutional, and individual influences that lead to imprints at the level of (a) organizational collectives, (b) single organizations, (c) organizational building blocks, and (d) individuals. Building on this framework, we develop a general model that points to major avenues for future research and charts new directions toward a multilevel theory of imprinting. This theory provides a distinct lens for organizational research that takes history seriously.     

Top management team diversity and ambidexterity: The contingent role of shared responsibility and CEO cognitive trust

Earlier research has suggested that diversity is a double-edged sword when achieving organizational ambidexterity. While it may contribute to the development of new combinations of exploration and exploitation, it may also lead to disagreements and potential conflict within top management teams (TMTs). To improve our understanding of the effectiveness of diversity in ambidextrous organizations, we develop a synergistic perspective on TMT diversity and examine how two types of diversity – functional and age diversity – affect the achievement of organizational ambidexterity. We also identify shared responsibility and CEO cognitive trust as important contingencies that may complement the effects of diversity within TMTs in terms of resolving potential conflicts and managing tensions between exploration and exploitation effectively. Based on multisource data, our study shows that CEO cognitive trust and shared responsibility moderate the relationship between different types of diversity and ambidexterity. Our study has important implications for research on organizational ambidexterity, diversity, and senior leadership.     

Leading across language barriers: Managing language-induced emotions in multinational teams

This study shows which negative emotion language barriers can provoke among multinational team (MNT) members and investigates how MNT leaders can successfully mitigate these detrimental effects. Multilingual teams constitute a leadership context of paramount importance in today's organizations, which prior research has neglected. Our study contributes to the literature on MNT leaders' emotion regulation strategies by investigating the specific challenges they face in this setting. We advance research on leadership in teams by exploring successful leadership strategies geared towards addressing language-induced emotions and by demonstrating the positive outcomes of MNT leaders leveraging their power in this context. Our study contributes to research on language barriers in multinational corporations by introducing the interplay of language-induced emotions and leadership to this area. Furthermore, it contributes to emotion-sensitive organizational studies by specifying previously established emotion management models for multilingual environments. On this basis, we draw conclusions for the development of future MNT leaders.