MONITORING IN TEAMS: USING LABORATORY EXPERIMENTS TO STUDY A THEORY OF THE FIRM

Alchian and Demsetz’s influential explanation of the classical business firm (The American Economic Review, 1972, 62, 777–795) argues that there is need for a concentrated residual claim in the hands of a central agent, to motivate the monitoring of workers. We model monitoring as a way to transform team production from a collective action dilemma with strong free riding incentives to a productivity‐enhancing opportunity with strong private marginal incentives to contribute effort. In an experiment, we have subjects experience team production without monitoring, team production with a central monitor, and team production with peer monitoring. Then subjects vote on whether to employ the central monitor, who gets to keep a fixed share of the team output, or to rely on peer monitoring, which entails a coordination or free riding problem. Our subjects usually prefer peer monitoring but they switch to the specialist when unable to successfully self‐monitor. We provide evidence for situations in which team members resist the appointing of a central monitor and succeed in overcoming coordination and free riding problems as well as for a situation in which an Alchian–Demsetz‐like firm grows in the laboratory.     

Self-management competencies in self-managing teams: Their impact on multi-team system productivity

This research examined how composition of individual capabilities within self-managed teams translates into greater effectiveness for multi-team systems (MTS) in which teams are embedded. We investigated how a broad range of self-management competencies by team members aggregate to form a collective construct that influences productivity of a team network. In a semiconductor plant, we surveyed 716 members from 97 self-managed teams in 21 MTS. We found that MTS comprising teams whose members widely practice self-management strategies attain higher productivity gains and that multi-team systems consisting of highly cohesive teams of self-managers are the most productive.     

DO WAGE CUTS DAMAGE WORK MORALE? EVIDENCE FROM A NATURAL FIELD EXPERIMENT

Employment contracts are often incomplete, leaving many responsibilities subject to workers' discretion. High work morale is therefore essential for sustaining voluntary cooperation and high productivity in firms. We conducted a field experiment to test whether workers reciprocate wage cuts and raises with low or high work productivity. Wage cuts had a detrimental and persistent impact on productivity, reducing average output by more than 20%. An equivalent wage increase, however, did not result in any productivity gains. The results from an additional control experiment with high monetary performance incentives demonstrate that workers could still produce substantially more output, leaving enough room for positive reactions. Altogether, these results provide evidence consistent with a model of reciprocity, as opposed to inequality aversion.     

Social Connections and Incentives in the Workplace: Evidence From Personnel Data

We present evidence on the effect of social connections between workers and managers on productivity in the workplace. To evaluate whether the existence of social connections is beneficial to the firm's overall performance, we explore how the effects of social connections vary with the strength of managerial incentives and worker's ability. To do so, we combine panel data on individual worker's productivity from personnel records with a natural field experiment in which we engineered an exogenous change in managerial incentives, from fixed wages to bonuses based on the average productivity of the workers managed. We find that when managers are paid fixed wages, they favor workers to whom they are socially connected irrespective of the worker's ability, but when they are paid performance bonuses, they target their effort toward high ability workers irrespective of whether they are socially connected to them or not. Although social connections increase the performance of connected workers, we find that favoring connected workers is detrimental for the firm's overall performance.     

Optimal Coordination in Distributed Software Development

The construction of a software system requires not only individual coding effort from team members to realize the various functionalities, but also adequate team coordination to integrate the developed code into a consistent, efficient, and bug‐free system. On the one hand, continuous coding without adequate coordination can cause serious system inconsistencies and faults that may subsequently require significant corrective effort. On the other hand, frequent integrations can be disruptive to the team and delay development progress. This tradeoff motivates the need for a good coordination policy. Both the complexity and the importance of coordination is accentuated in distributed software development (DSD), where a software project is developed by multiple, geographically‐distributed sub‐teams. The need for coordination in DSD exists both within one sub‐team and across different sub‐teams. The latter type of coordination involves communication across spatial boundaries (different locations) and possibly temporal boundaries (different time zones), and is a major challenge that DSD faces. In this study, we model both inter‐ and intra‐sub‐team coordination in DSD based on the characteristics of the systems being developed by the sub‐teams, the deadline for completion, and the nature of division adopted by the sub‐teams with respect to development and integration activities. Our analysis of optimal coordination policies in DSD shows that integration activities by one sub‐team not only benefit that sub‐team (as is the case in co‐located development) but can also help the other sub‐teams by providing greater visibility, thereby resulting in a higher integration frequency relative to co‐located development. Analytical results are presented to demonstrate how the characteristics of the projects and the sub‐teams, and the efficiency of communication across the sub‐teams, affect coordination and productivity. We also investigate the pros and cons of using specialized integration sub‐teams and find that their advantage decreases as the project schedule becomes tighter. Decentralized decisions and asymmetric subsystems are also discussed.     

LETTING DOWN THE TEAM? SOCIAL EFFECTS OF TEAM INCENTIVES

This paper estimates social effects of incentivizing people in teams. In three field experiments featuring exogenous team formation and opportunities for repeated social interactions, we find large team effects that operate through social channels. In particular, assignment to a team treatment increases productivity by 9%–17% relative to an individual incentive treatment, even though the individual incentive yields a higher private return. Further, we find that in a choice treatment individuals overwhelmingly prefer the individual incentive to the team incentive, despite the latter being more effective. These results are most consistent with the team effects operating through guilt or social pressure as opposed to pure altruism.     

Invisible Whispering: Restructuring Collaborative Decision Making with Instant Messaging

Organizational decision making is dominated by teams. When an important decision is required, a team is often formed to make it or to advise the individual decision maker, because a team has more resources, knowledge, and political insight than any one individual working alone. As teams have become geographically distributed, collaboration technology has come to play an important role in such collective decision making efforts. Instant messaging (IM) is an increasingly prevalent workplace collaboration technology that enables near‐synchronous text exchanges on a variety of devices. We examined the use of IM during face‐to‐face, telephone, and computer‐mediated team meetings, a practice we call “invisible whispering.” We introduce Goffman's characterization of social interaction as dramatic performance, differentiable into “front stage” and “backstage” exchanges, to analyze how invisible whispering alters the socio‐spatial and temporal boundaries of team decision making. Using IM, workers were able to influence front stage decision making through backstage conversations, often participating in multiple backstage conversations simultaneously. This type of interaction would be either physically impossible or socially constrained without the use of IM. We examine how invisible whispering changes the processes of collaborative decision making and how these new processes may affect the efficiency and effectiveness of collaborative decision making, as well as participation, satisfaction, relationships among team members, and individual attention.     

THE TRADEOFF BETWEEN PERFORMANCE AND QUITTING IN HIGH POWER TOURNAMENTS

Tournaments may be characterized by the performance they induce as well as by the rate of quitting and dropouts of participants. Although most of the attention in the literature is on the performance induced by high power incentives, there are many daily situations in which dropouts and quitting are a major concern. Using a field experiment in schools and a model of dynamic tournament we examine the effect of different levels of rewards on the rate of quitting. Our experiment indicates that there is a possible tradeoff between performance and quitting. Strong incentives tournaments induced participants to exert more effort and exhibit a better performance but, at the same time, it induces a higher rate of quitting. We present a multi‐stage tournament model that gives rise to a similar characterization.     

知识型团队动态能力构建、团队体系模型与创新运作模式研究

知识型团队是现代组织执行复杂创新任务的重要组织形式.本文从分析知识型团队与知识工作任务的匹配关系入手,在引入知识链及知识链网络等概念的基础上,探讨了基于知识链的知识型团队的动态能力构建机制,分析了围绕知识链网络的知识团队结构体系模型及创新运作机理.     

Transformational leadership in context: Face-to-face and virtual teams

This experimental study examined transformational leadership in the context of traditional teams using face-to-face communication and virtual teams using computer-mediated communication. Thirty-nine leaders led both face-to-face and virtual teams. Repeated-measures analyses revealed similar mean levels of transformational leadership in both team types; however, leader rank order varied across team type. Post hoc analyses revealed that the most effective leaders where those who increased their transformational leadership in virtual teams. Furthermore, analyses at the team level revealed that the effect of transformational leadership on team performance was stronger in virtual than in face-to-face teams. Team-member ratings of transformational leadership were equally linked to project satisfaction in face-to-face and virtual teams. Considered as a whole, our results suggest that transformational leadership has a stronger effect in teams that use only computer-mediated communication, and that leaders who increase their transformational leadership behaviors in such teams achieve higher levels of team performance.     

Voice,Affective Commitment and Citizenship Behavior in Teams: The Moderating Role of Neuroticism and Intrinsic Motivation

This paper provides an empirical examination of the effects of co‐workers’ procedural justice, defined as the individual's perception of how procedural justice is displayed towards him/her by the group. Drawing on the social exchange literature, it is confirmed that team affective commitment mediates the relationship between team voice – a form of co‐workers’ procedural justice – and team citizenship behaviors. The study also tests whether this positive indirect effect is moderated by neuroticism and intrinsic motivation. The results from a survey of 154 dyads consisting of employees and their current supervisor generally support the hypotheses. Team voice is a strong and consistent predictor of team citizenship behaviors, and the effect is mediated by team affective commitment only when intrinsic motivation is low and/or neuroticism is low. This study extends knowledge of the different sources of justice. Specifically, it shows that team voice and the boundary conditions of its effects are crucial to understanding attitudes and behaviors directed towards the team. This finding highlights the necessity of carefully taking into account the ability to express one's opinion inside teams.     

Team incentives,task assignment,and performance: A field experiment

The performance of a work team commonly depends on the effort exerted by the team members as well as on the division of tasks among them. However, when leaders assign tasks to team members, performance is usually not the only consideration. Favouritism, employees' seniority, employees' preferences over tasks, and fairness considerations often play a role as well. Team incentives have the potential to curtail the role of these factors in favor of performance — in particular when the incentive plan includes both the leader and the team members. This paper presents the results of a field experiment designed to study the effects of such team incentives on task assignment and performance. We introduce team incentives in a random subsets of 108 stores of a Dutch retail chain. We find no effect of the incentive, neither on task assignment nor on performance.     

Emotions and the optimality of uneven tournaments

Standard results from tournament theory show that an employer should avoid organizing uneven tournaments in which workers are characterized by different cost functions. In this paper, we introduce a concept of emotions that workers have when comparing their own performance with the performances of their co-workers. We can show that under emotional workers the employer may prefer uneven tournaments to even ones. In that case, the employer benefits from both positive and negative emotions. Moreover, the behavior of emotional workers fits well with experimental findings on uneven tournaments where players choose excessive effort levels.     

Managing Nationality Diversity: The Interactive Effect of Leaders’ Cultural Intelligence and Task Interdependence

In light of the workforce's increasing nationality diversity, our study explores the antecedents for the successful management of nationality diversity as visualized in a favourable diversity climate and enhanced team performance. We propose a double‐contingency model in which we argue that the effects of nationality diversity will be dependent upon task interdependence and leaders’ cultural intelligence. We propose that nationality diversity will be more consequential in more interdependent teams, in which team interactions and processes are more salient. Moreover, team leaders with higher cultural intelligence will possess the skills to foster adequate team processes and thereby enhance diversity climate and performance of nationally diverse, more interdependent teams. We collected multi‐source data from 63 work teams (N = 410) and their supervisors at a German facility management company. Moderated regression analyses supported the hypothesized three‐way interaction between nationality diversity, task interdependence and leaders’ cultural intelligence. Additional simple slope analysis showed that nationality diversity is positively related to diversity climate and performance only when both team leaders’ cultural intelligence and task interdependence are high. Our study not only provides recommendations for successful nationality diversity management but also yields theoretical implications for diversity and cultural intelligence research.     

Harnessing Diversity and Collective Action in the Top Management Team

Diversity has become an important issue at all levels of the company from the boardroom to the back office. It is increasingly apparent that diversity is vital to productivity, with academic research indicating an important link between diverse top management team (TMT) composition and corporate performance. However, the nature of this link remains elusive, as there is little accessible research that can help top teams to evaluate how diversity impacts on their strategic capacity. This paper seeks to fill this gap by developing a conceptual framework, illustrated with case examples, to explain the relationships between TMT diversity and TMT collective action. As collective action is difficult to attain from top teams that are high in diversity, six practical processes are developed from this framework for establishing and exploiting top team strategic capacity. The paper concludes by outlining the theoretical implications of the framework.

It is the range of skills and attributes acquired through a diversity of experiences and backgrounds that combine to create a cohesive and effective board.¹

     

The Effects of Group Incentives in an Indian Firm: Evidence from Payroll Data

Abstract. This paper estimates the effects of group incentives on productivity, pay and employment in a large unionized firm in India. Using plant‐level monthly time‐series data from the payroll office for the period 1985–95, and controlling for both (plant) fixed effects and (contract) time effects, the paper provides econometric evidence on the effectiveness of both the level and intensity of incentive pay on the outcome measures. In addition, the relative performance of two types of group incentives defined on the basis of group size is also analysed. The results generally confirm predictions from theory that productivity returns to incentives are non‐linear and concave in shape and that the effectiveness of incentives is decreasing in group size. It is argued that the latter is most likely due to the lessening of the free‐rider problem and the increased effectiveness of peer monitoring associated with smaller groups. The results also point to a negative relationship between the level of incentives and employment over time.     

Managing Cost Salience and Procrastination in Projects: Compensation and Team Composition

The rising trend of projects with high‐skilled and autonomous contributors increasingly exposes managers to the risk of idiosyncratic individual behaviors. In this article, we examine the effects of an important behavioral factor, an individual's cost salience. Cost salience leads individuals to perceive the cost of immediate effort to be larger than the cost of future effort. This leads to procrastination in early stages and back‐loaded effort over the course of the project. We model the problem confronting the manager of a project whose quality is adversely impacted by such distortion of individual effort over time. Complementary to prior works focused on the planning and scheduling tasks of project management in the absence of human behavior, we find that managers should reward contributions made in earlier stages of a project. Our analysis also yields interesting insights on the project team performance: teams with diverse levels of cost salience will perform better than homogeneous teams. We also address another important facet of team composition, namely, the choice between stable and fluid teams, and find that the practice of creating fluid teams might have previously unrecognized benefits when behavioral aspects of projects are considered. We conclude with insights and organizational implications for project managers.     

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.     

Mitigating the Impact of Functional Dominance in Cross‐Functional Process Improvement Teams

Manufacturing process improvement teams often draw upon cross‐functional expertise. However, teams dominated by a single or few functions often do not achieve the desired interdisciplinary learning and cooperation, which in turn could negatively affect the performance of that cross‐functional team. Through an empirical analysis of 149 manufacturing process improvement teams in six SIC industrial categories, we show that even after controlling for several factors such as team size, number of functions, gender diversity, ethnicity, number of management levels, and geographic dispersion of team members, psychological safety of work environment fully mediates the relationship between functional dominance and team performance. We also confirm that a team leader possessing high interpersonal justice mitigates the deficiency of dominated teams and improves team performance by fostering a psychologically safe work environment. Our recommendation therefore is that when a dominated team is unavoidable due to the needed skill sets or other organizational considerations, to ensure success it is imperative that the firm chooses a team leader who can promote psychological safety by being just, and who can effectively encourage input from all functional team members and give them objective feedback.