Effektive Führung heterogener Teams

This article in the journal “Gruppe. Organisation. Interaktion. (GIO)” analyzes theoretical and empirical findings of international research on the role of leadership in diverse teams. While practitioners often tend to expect primarily positive effects of team diversity, research has revealed both positive and negative consequences on team performance. Thereby, realizing positive outcomes of diversity appears to depend on additional boundary conditions; among these, leadership is often considered to be crucial. According to our analysis of the literature, established leadership styles (e.?g., transformational leadership, LMX, leader consideration) may contribute to increased performance of diverse teams. In addition, they will be most effective when leaders perceive and treat their followers as individuals rather than as members of a (sub-)group and when they carefully adjust their behavior to the most critical diversity attribute in the team. Based on these results, we provide practical implications for leadership in diverse teams and discuss how adequate leadership skills can be systematically developed in organizations.     

Kooperation zwischen Organisationen

The success of organizations stands very often in direct correlation to other organizations. The more differentiated, the more subtlety organizations and their tasks are the more this applies: and this applies equally for both profit and non-profit organizations. The way an organization behaves and co-operates with other organizations crucially influences the success factor. And must, as such, be taken extremely seriously and placed in the focal point of organizations’ management strategies and their dynamic processes of change.This contribution is the product of the joint reflections of the authors advisory functions in and with organizations, and closely examines the process of helping to build successful co-operative relationships between organizations. They (the authors) will present their opinions upon what makes co-operative relationships work effectively. The authors will refer to the theory of company control and the systemic development of co-operative strategies, as well as a dynamic group understanding of social dynamics. And demonstrate that the coming together of these various standpoints, results in a new and tenable form of productive co-operation between organizations. In consequence, it furthermore exhibits, how innovative possibilities, like the construction of the co-operative relationship, with adequate control instruments, can be appropriately supported: In concrete terms we will present the from the authors developed intermediary balanced scorecard (BSC). The last section of our article is devoted to the discussion of effective success factors, which, from practical experience, can be regarded as relevant in the forming of the processes of co-operation.     

Emergente Teamphänomene – Warum sich Erfolge eines Teams nicht einfach kopieren lassen

Analyzing emergent team phenomena carries the potential to extend previous research findings. However, team phenomena – such as team cognitions and team emotions – do not make research easier. They are difficult to observe, do not follow a clear course, and can only be measured and shaped indirectly. Nonetheless, they offer new perspectives on a more multi-faceted and realistic world, which leads to many new interesting research questions and makes current knowledge appear in a different light. The moments of surprise and unexpected developments characterize teams and make them worthwhile objects of study. Since not all aspects of a team can be measured entirely, managing team dynamics is a demanding as well as essential challenge for adaptable and learning organizations.     

Die Dynamik von Führung, Vertrauen und Konflikt in virtuellen Teams

The importance of virtual teams for collaboration of globally networked organizations has long been debated. But although this new form of division of labor appears in nearly all companies, which poses special challenges to managers and team members, scientific findings and recommendations have not sufficiently been integrated into practice so far. This article discusses on the one hand the challenges and opportunities of virtual teams, on the other hand wants by the presenting of scientific findings both provide food for thought, as well as concrete recommendations for implementation in practice.     

Führung virtueller Teams

Thanks to an ever-advancing technology and the ensuing development of new media, the boundaries between private and professional life become rather blurred, with digital tools enabling affordable, easy and fast communication, cooperation, organization and production. Organizations everywhere are recognizing the possibilities and benefits to be derived, and are developing cross-border work models to accommodate the new “economic world order”, where nothing is bound to a stationary, existing location anymore. Prime targets are, in particular, virtual teams, whose team members predominantly communicate by information and communication technologies (ICT). There are, however, new challenges to face and solutions to be found. What exactly lies ahead of us? What factors are key to a successful virtual team? Where do present virtual teams stand, and what will future virtual teams look like? The global management consulting firm Hay Group in collaboration with FKI – Führungskräfte Institut have asked both experts and leadership in a survey to share their opinion (N = 289). The results of the survey have shown that virtual teams are a very common form of cross-border work and will gain importance in the future. Furthermore, those six factors determining the success of a virtual team in particular degree, could be identified by the survey. Worth mentioning here in particular are the development of trust and the team leader.     

Team versus individual behavior in the minimum effort coordination game

We compare coordination success of individuals and teams in the minimum effort coordination game. The game is played by groups of either five individuals or five two-person teams with either fixed or random re-matching protocols. When groups are fixed, teams perform at least as well as individuals, if not better, in terms of coordinating to the payoff dominant outcome. But with random re-matching, teams experience pervasive coordination failures. A public recommendation to a strategy or a performance bonus exhorting players to coordinate to the payoff-dominant equilibrium has similar impact on coordination for both individuals and teams playing with fixed matching. However, coordination is far more difficult to achieve with teams playing under random re-matching. Our results have implications for the design of work-groups in organizations.     

Dyaden,Gruppen und Teams: Die Rahmungen von Coachings und Supervisionen

This article examines what impact three different framings of personal oriented consulting interactions – dyads, groups and teams – have on the consulting situation. Intuitively consultants are aware that it makes a difference if a client is consulted in a face-to-face-interaction “under four eyes”, in the framework of a group which just started to know each other or in a team which is working together on regular basis. However, what are exactly the mechanisms which are working in the three different settings? And what exactly are their impacts on the consulting situation? This article provides first interpretations.     

Team effectiveness in Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs) projects

The incorporation of team context into research and practice regarding team effectiveness in NGOs projects is a constant challenge. The research seeks to address the gap and identify the critical determinants of team effectiveness in projects undertaken by non-governmental organizations. Using a systematic process, the study involved both literature and focus group discussions to generate the required items. A total of 157 respondents (Team Members and Team Leaders) were part of the study that filled the questionnaires. Using exploratory factor analysis followed by confirmatory factor analysis, both convergent and discriminant validity was established. The present study found that team effectiveness in NGO social projects has a total of seven dimensions namely: Inter team coordination, community social linkage, team performance, knowledge, skills, and attitudes, leadership communication and engagement, decision making and information sharing, and team formation. There is a significant lack of research on team effectiveness in NGO projects. Where considerably large proportion of research on team effectiveness has focused on the corporate sector, the non-governmental teams have been neglected. This study clearly highlights the determinants that make up team effectiveness in NGOs. The determinants identified will help to specifically look at the effectiveness of teams in NGO projects. The study would help NGOs identify the dimensions in which they may be performing in a weaker manner and direct their energies in improving the factors.     

The interplay between formal project memberships and informal advice seeking in knowledge-intensive firms: A multilevel network approach

In this study we investigate the interplay between knowledge workers’ formal project team memberships and their informal interactions from a multilevel network perspective. Conceptualizing knowledge workers’ affiliation with project teams as a membership network and their interactions as an advice network, we discuss how shared project team memberships as well as multiple memberships influence patterns of informal exchange in knowledge-intensive organizations. To empirically determine the impact of formal organization on informal exchange we apply exponential random graph models for multilevel networks to relational data collected on 434 R&D employees working on 218 project teams in a high-tech firm in Germany. Our results show that employees sharing project memberships create advice ties to each other but do not exchange advice reciprocally. In addition, we find a negative relationship between having a high number of project memberships and informally seeking or providing advice.     

Time out for team practice: structured participation as a method of training for team maintenance and development

The social Work service in most Social Services Departments is organised in distinct geographically based units. Indeed, such units have become synonymous with social work teams. These “teams” rely heavily for their success, as responsive and resourceful units, on their ability to work together. The authors believe there are advantages in a collective approach to a team's decision making and service delivery. They describe a method for developing teamwork, centred around a study day, organised on the basis of structured participation and planned in a way which addresses a range of team concerns.

The programme used on the study day stresses the importance of clear objectives, agreed democratically, and the active involvement of all team members. Although this training method developed gradually and pragmatically it is based on a model of team development which identifies a progression through stages of team functioning. The model of learning emphasises change through participation in a climate of openness and trust.

Examples of a programme used by the authors, together with a report prepared as feedback to a team, are included as appendices.     

The Social‐psychological Aspects of Team Formation: New Avenues for Research

The ubiquity of teams in the modern workplace cannot be denied, as Curseu, Kenis, and Raab (2009, p. 30) note, “team formation is a challenge in modern organizations as most of them use teams to perform a variety of organizational tasks.” How teams form is, therefore, a question of much practical interest. Research illustrates that stratified social systems influence the choice and decision‐making behaviors that shape group and team formation (Hechter, 1978). From a structural social psychological perspective (Sell & Kuipers, 2009; Lawler, Ridgeway, and Markovsky, 1993), teams are like microcosmic societies. They represent a process of social cohesion through interaction. Additionally, they can be organic, mechanical, homogeneous, and heterogeneous. In other words, teams are structural and cultural artifacts of societies. Members of society through interaction create these “social artifacts,” which may consist of hierarchically organizing sets of individuals into a group, or multiple groups, relative to power and status dimensions. In this paper, we aim to show how contributions from social psychology have informed research on team formation. Thus, two research questions guide this paper: What are the mechanisms of team formation via partner selection for self‐organizing teams? In what ways, can these studies advance scholarship focusing on the social psychology of inequality? To establish a foundation for understanding the various studies on team formation, we begin with a general overview on how team and team formation has been conceptualized. Next, we examine the social psychological research on team formation via partner selection. In doing so, we note the importance given to the 4 major mechanisms of team formation emerging from the literature: competence, homophily, familiarity, and affect. Lastly, we conclude the paper with a discussion addressing the research questions guiding this paper and suggest opportunities for social psychologists to consider for future team formation studies.     

Beratung virtueller Teams im interkulturellen Kontext – ein Bericht aus der Praxis

Tasks are nowadays increasingly assigned to teams composed of members from different cultures who have to work together regardless of country borders or time zones. This causes special challenges for all parties involved in such work settings. Consultancy has accordingly to face the resulting increase of complexity: within the scope of an intercultural consulting process it becomes vital to take into consideration the often postulated focus on both differences and commonalities as well as to consider the dynamics within team processes. This article tries to reflect our work with “virtual teams” which consist of members having different cultures. We try to combine popular intercultural models with a systemic-constructivistic approach as well as with knowledge about group dynamics in order to make sure that a productive outcome is possible in a consulting process. In doing so we work on three levels: individual reflection with the participants’ own culture which is then combined with those of the other team members and then finally the group’s specific team culture is addressed and discussed. At the end of the article we summarize implications for consulting and management when working with virtual teams in an intercultural setting.     

May the force be with you: Looking for resources that build team resilience

The aim of this study is to analyze team resilience as a collective psychosocial construct in the framework of the conservation of resources theory. Specifically, the authors hypothesize that (a) team-level resources and (b) organizational-level healthy practices would be positively related to team resilience. Multilevel regression modeling was conducted, using data from 1,167 employees nested in 194 work teams (team level) from 38 organizations (organizational level). Results confirmed the hypotheses having team-level resources and organizational-level healthy practices significant relationships with team resilience. This study provides evidence that team and organizational resources have a strong relationship with team resilience. Practitioners and managers must take these results into account for planning how to manage their resources within the organization. This article found what resources are required (at the team and the organizational level) to help work-team resilience.     

高职院校旅游管理专业教学团队建设的优化思考

旅游管理专业的师资建设以及人才培养方案一直备受社会争议,这既有企业方面的原因,又有学校和学生方面的原因,但究其深层次原因,还是归属于整个旅游管理专业的教学团队建设问题。一直以来,团队建设在高职院校的应用非常少见,但其魅力已在其他领域突显,因此,作者根据多年的教学经验以及调查得出结论,要想提高人才培养质量,必须首先解决教学队伍的问题,即需要建立高效优质的旅游专业教学团队。     

Virtual Teams — Support for Technical Communication?

Abstract

To work together in virtual teams has increasingly become a natural change in how organizations work. Due to demands from the environment, organizations have had to transform from traditional ways of working to becoming more flexible and adaptive. The aim of this article is to identify obstacles, problems, and presumptions in order to enable the virtual team to be successful. A project — The TIC-project — is described, and results from a study concerning collaboration and networking among companies within Technical Communication are presented. Results show that, to a great extent, experiences from networking are lacking. Furthermore, trust must be embedded in the teams, meaning that personal meetings must precede virtual meetings. Most interviewees declared a wish to collaborate despite being competitors. Finally, questions and topics for further research are presented.     

Multidisciplinary Team Perspectives on Older Adult Hoarding and Mental Illness

This qualitative study examined multidisciplinary team members' perspectives of their involvement in older adult hoarding cases. Fifteen informants, as representatives of four hoarding teams, described cases in which teams did or did not work well together. Specifically, informants described their (a) team characteristics, (b) awareness of hoarding as a mental health illness, (c) barriers to providing mental health services for older adults who hoard, and (d) components of successful teamwork within the team and with the older adult as hoarder. Implications include research to better guide interventions, team training to develop common perspectives, and policy development that supports mental health representation on teams and in-home mental health treatment.     

ON EQUILIBRIUM PLAYER ORDERING IN DYNAMIC TEAM CONTESTS

We study equilibrium player ordering in a dynamic all-pay contest between two teams. The contest lasts two periods, and each team consists of two players who perform in different periods on behalf of their teams. The team with the higher aggregate output wins the prize, which is a public good to its players. Each team has one stronger player and one weaker player, and the two teams can differ in their values of the prize. The teams maximize their winning odds by strategically assigning their players to different periods. We find that when the intrateam heterogeneity in player ability is not excessive, the teams would allocate their stronger players to the late positions as the “anchormen.” When both the intrateam ability gap and interteam heterogeneity in teams' values become excessively large, the team with high value always places its stronger player in the early position, who will place a large bid to preempt late competition. (JEL C7, D7, D8)     

Entwicklung eines Modells zur Teamresilienz in kritischen AusnahmesituationenModeling of team resilience under exceptional circumstances

The concept of team resilience has been used in various research traditions. Therefore, fields of applications and variables are heterogeneously used in research and practice. The aim of this article is to develop a team and task specific model of resilience for teams under exceptional circumstances (TiKAS). Concepts from team adaptation and safety research have been reviewed and integrated. The model focuses on teams facing exceptional incidents by defining resilience specific individual and team based influencing factors, cognitive and affective interactions, situational coping styles as well as medium and long term consequences. Modeling team resilience in TiKAS offers a broad range of applications: developing team assessment methods, supporting team development and building research questions for empirical research.     

Burnout als Gruppenphänomen. Ein soziologisch – gruppendynamischer Beitrag zum Wandel der (Team-)arbeit

This paper addresses changes in work processes from a sociological perspective. Organizations have been undergoing dramatic changes with regard to long term membership and individual recognition. The new paradigm of the individual as self-entrepreneur creates stress for team members when attempting to live up to this new standard of conduct and work-ethic. Lacking recognition in the work place leads to exhaustion and burnout. The author suggests a new interpretation of this process. As opposed to traditional wisdom burnout is perceived as a form of “legitimate reaction to overload”. This reaction can be understood as an adequate response to the larger societal and organizational context – at the individual and at the group level alike. A new stage-model developed by this author to cope with burnout at the group-level is introduced. Work teams with burnout symptoms display deviant behaviors and may be disintegrating. This process can be taken as an indicator pointing to an imbalance of externally imposed demands and resources available within the team. Lacking adequate opportunity structures for the development of interpersonal relations, teams moving towards burnout are deprived of this exit option. In many cases the team process freezes at an early stage of burnout: what remains is a continuous overload.     

Resilienz im Arbeitsleben – Eine inhaltliche Differenzierung von Resilienz auf den Ebenen von Individuen,Teams und OrganisationenResilience in the workplace – A conceptual distinction of resilience on different levels: Individuals,teams, and organizations

The ability to recover from adverse events (“resilience”) is crucial in coping with increased demands in the workplace. Resilience facilitates adaptation and development even under demanding conditions and hence ensures psychological well-being. The notion of resilience has not only been used on the level of individuals, but also applies to teams and organizations. Despite its importance for well-being and effective functioning of teams and organizations, the concept of resilience has not yet been sufficiently clarified. In order to deepen the understanding of resilience on different levels, the present article describes and distinguishes individual, team, and organizational resilience. Finally, the article describes guidelines for an organizational resilience management system.