Do Individual Preferences Affect the Environmental Decision‐Making Process in Teams? The Role of Participation

Literature on organizations and the natural environment has focused on the importance of individual managers and leaders. However, this literature has scarcely ever focused on individuals in the team context, even when teams have been considered to be key for a firms’ environmental progress. Although teams’ environmental decisions can be enriched by the different contributions of team members, it is necessary that team members actually participate and contribute their preferences during the decision‐making process. We used an adaptation of the legislative dilemma task with 84 students to contribute to environmental management literature by analyzing members’ participation during the team decision‐making process. The results of this paper show how those members with environmentally proactive preferences have a higher participation during the decision‐making process, and as a consequence they have a greater influence on the team decision. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment.     

Five Steps to Leading Your Team in the Virtual COVID-19 Workplace

The emergence of COVID-19 has presented employees and employers new challenges as many employees and managers were forced to work in a remote environment for the first time. For many reasons, managing virtual teams is different than managing employees in a traditional face-to-face office environment. Although many managers have been learning how to lead their virtual teams over the last several months, we offer five steps for leaders to follow for how to maximize the effectiveness of a remote workplace. By taking specific actions and ensuring the organization has a culture to support their virtual workforce, leaders can improve the performance output and engagement of their teams. The five steps are: first establish and explain the new reality; second, establish and maintain a culture of trust; third, upgrade leadership communication tools and techniques to better inform virtual employees; fourth, encourage shared leadership among team members; and fifth, to create and periodically perform alignment audits to ensure virtual employees are aligned with the organization’s cultural values including its commitment to mission. All these steps start with the realization that managing a team is going to be different when the members are dispersed, and new leadership strategies, communication routines and tools are required.     

Enabling Shared Leadership in Virtual Project Teams: A Practitioners' Guide

Many virtual project teams perform better when leadership is shared (rather than centralized with the formal team leader); however, team leaders are often neither prepared to identify shared leadership potential nor to actually share leadership responsibility. Based on a study of 96 globally dispersed software development teams we show that team leaders tend to underestimate the team members’ capacity to lead themselves. As a consequence, these leaders monopolize decision‐making authority and provide insufficient levels of autonomy for team members to tackle their tasks. Preventing the team members from unfolding their true potential, these leaders unconsciously jeopardize virtual team performance. Paradoxically, it is thus team leaders themselves hindering leadership effectiveness in virtual teams.     

Training for virtual teams: An investigation of current practices and future needs

Organizations are creating virtual teams at an ever‐faster rate. Virtual team leaders and members from distant locations work together and communicate with each other using a variety of information technologies. Results from a survey of 440 training and development professionals identify current organizational training practices aimed at preparing leaders and members for virtual team assignments. Comparing organizations with more effective and less effective virtual team training programs allowed us to identify a set of “best practices.” We offer practical guidance regarding the effective use of training to promote high‐quality virtual team performance. © 2006 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.     

Can leadership compensate for deficient inclusiveness in global virtual teams?

Although the number of global virtual teams has been growing rapidly, it is still a great challenge to achieve internal collaboration across geographic, cultural, and linguistic barriers. Two factors that have been identified to improve productivity are inclusive group attitudes in the team and the right leadership from the team leader. Although there are strong indications that each of these concepts would have a favourable effect on team member performance, we set out to explore how they function in combination. More specifically, we hypothesise that inspirational motivation from a team leader can compensate for a lack of inclusive group attitudes in the form of team openness to language diversity. We also predict the positive effects of “inspirational motivation” leadership to be stronger than those of the “management by exception” style of leadership. Using responses from 174 team members and their 23 team leaders in the research and development department of a Danish manufacturing organisation, we confirm our hypotheses. This provides clear guidelines for HRM interventions in organisations using global virtual teams.     

Leader productivity and people orientations for cooperative goals and effective teams in China

Researchers have traditionally distinguished leaders by the extent to which they are oriented to people and productivity, and meta-analytic results indicate that these orientations have consistent and practically important effects. But research is needed to understand the dynamics by which these orientations induce team effectiveness. This study empirically relates leader orientations to teamwork by suggesting that productivity- and people-oriented leaders develop cooperative goals among team members that in turn results in team effectiveness. A total of 146 team leaders from 21 organizations in China completed measures of productivity and people orientations and their encouraging cooperative goals among team members; 1067 team members rated their effectiveness. Results of the structural equation analysis support the theorizing that leader productivity and people values when complemented by strengthening cooperative relationships can contribute to making teams effective in China and perhaps in other countries as well.     

MST视角的GVT沟通影响因素案例研究

GVT作为一种新兴的团队组织形式，正以其低成本、高效率、响应迅速的优势被广泛应用于各个领域，但以信息与通信技术沟通为主的协作方式也为GVT管理带来了挑战。本研究以媒体同步性理论为基础，构建GVT沟通影响因素的初步理论模型，并以大连软件园两家软件公司中的4组团队为案例访谈对象，通过案例分析进一步修正和检验模型。分析结果显示：媒体同步性主要受传输速率和并行性影响；沟通过程与媒体同步性相适配的状态对沟通绩效有促进作用；GVT成员的语言能力、媒体经验和明确的沟通规范都会对沟通工具的使用产生重要影响。     

The impact of project managers' communication competencies: Validation and extension of a research model for virtuality,satisfaction, and productivity on project teams

Current research continues to establish the importance of communication in the management of projects. However, little is known about the behavioral aspects of project managers' communication competency especially as they relate to crucial outcomes in virtual environments. This article reports on a survey‐based research study of 564 respondents from the Chief Project Officer Web site that validates and extends a research model of project managers' competencies in decoding and encoding communication, the satisfaction and productivity of their team members, and the degree of virtuality present in the project. The findings indicate that project managers' competencies in decoding and encoding communication significantly contribute to team member satisfaction and productivity. In addition, geographic dispersion plays an unexpected and significant role in how project managers' competency in decoding and encoding communication impacts team member satisfaction and productivity.     

Communication in virtual teams: a conceptual framework and research agenda

As virtual teams are becoming more frequently implemented within organizations, research examining the effect of virtual tool use on team functioning has correspondingly expanded. One primary focus of this literature is the impact of virtuality on team communication. However, findings remained mixed. Specifically, the impact of virtuality on the mechanisms between communication and performance as well as the simultaneous moderating effect of contextual factors on this relationship remains to be fully examined. One reason for this lack of clarity stems from ambiguity regarding the elements that constitute communication. To address this gap, this paper delineates which aspects of communication are most influential and should, consequently, be the primary focus of future research efforts. An overarching framework of the communication process with accompanying research propositions is also described to inform future research and the practice of virtual teams.     

Inspirational leadership,positive mood,and team innovation: A moderated mediation investigation into the pivotal role of professional salience

Multidisciplinary teams are increasingly advocated for in healthcare policy consequent to their capacity to develop innovative solutions to seemingly intractable service and care challenges. Recent arguments that inspirational leadership styles may foster innovation in multidisciplinary teams point to their potential value in this effort. However, inconsistency in the capacity of such leaders to engender innovation highlights the need to understand the mechanisms and boundary conditions that determine when such leadership generates positive effects. We argue that follower positive mood acts to mediate the path between inspirational leadership and innovation and may account for its variable effects. By increasing positive team mood, inspirational leaders can potentially bring about more flexible thinking and enhance innovation but can also increase reliance on less effortful information processing, undermining innovative potential. In an effort to address the dilemma posed by these contrasting effects, we propose that professional salience acts as an important boundary condition of this relationship such that only when profession is salient do inspirational leaders enhance multidisciplinary team innovation through positive mood. An analysis of survey data from 60 UK‐based multidisciplinary healthcare teams, investigating the inspirational leadership of practice‐based innovation, supports our moderated mediation model. Finally, the implications for HRM are considered, specifically for leader development and work team design.     

大学生模拟创业平台体系的构建研究——以福州大学为例

本文总结了福州大学的学生模拟创业平台体系,即学生首先通过创业教育,培养创业意识,学习基本的公司管理知识,培养团队管理能力,之后利用社团互助平台,获取人力资源,组建团队,随之在赛事训练平台开展虚拟和实体的创业实践训练,在此基础上,形成成熟创业计划的团队,可申请孵化,进入创业孵化平台。该平台体系系统上具有有序性,运作上又具有系统性,可供有关同行参考。     

Job satisfaction in teams

This paper analyses and discusses the results of a large sample survey of job satisfaction among clerical employees working in teams. The relative strengths of association between several variables and job satisfaction are assessed and the results support the importance of on-the-job training, participation in decision making and management leadership. Questions are raised about first-line supervisors as team leaders.     

Team personality composition,emergent leadership and shared leadership in virtual teams: A theoretical framework

Limited theory and research has been devoted to the role of team personality composition, as well as emergent and shared leadership, in virtual teams. In an effort to provide a theoretical basis for the role of team personality composition, as well as emergent and shared leadership, in virtual teams, we propose a virtual team framework that portrays the team personality composition as predictors of emergent and shared leadership. These in turn are expected to impact virtual team performance. We further posit that the relationships between team personality composition and virtual team performance are indirect, through emergent leadership and shared leadership. Finally, we present team virtuality as a moderator between team composition and team processes. Suggestions for future research and implications for the management of virtual teams are presented.     

Sink or Swim: Empowering Leadership and Overload in Teams' Ability to Deal with the Unexpected

The notion of improvisation has recently emerged in managerial studies as a viable solution to flexibly dealing with unexpected occurrences in work environments. However, past research on team improvisation has overlooked the contingencies that allow teams to effectively improvise. Drawing upon demand‐control theory, we investigate how empowering leadership and overload affect the improvisation‐performance relationship in the context of 48 work teams. Our results suggest that empowering leadership positively moderates the relationship between improvisation and performance, while overload attenuates the same relationship. Moreover, we found a joint effect of overload and empowering leadership influencing the improvisation‐performance link, such that improvisation is most positively related to performance when empowering leadership is high and overload is low. Conversely, we found that empowering leadership is particularly detrimental to the improvisation‐performance relationship when team members perceive high degrees of overload. Our findings make important contributions to the extant team literature as well as to the emerging literature on team improvisation. We outline several significant insights for HR managers and team leaders who are responsible for supporting teams that face unexpected events in the work environment. © 2013 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.     

The Effect of Team Affective Tone on Team Performance: The Roles of Team Identification and Team Cooperation

Affective tones abound in work teams. Drawing on the affect infusion model and social identity theory, this study proposes that team affective tone is related to team performance indirectly through team identification and team cooperation. Data from 141 hybrid‐virtual teams drawn from high‐tech companies in Taiwan generally supported our model. Specifically, positive affective tone is positively associated—while negative affective tone is negatively associated—with both team identification and team cooperation; team identification is positively associated with team cooperation; and team cooperation is positively associated with team performance. Managerial implications and limitations are discussed. © 2016 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.     

Leader humility,team job crafting and team creativity: The moderating role of leader–leader exchange

Despite an increasing number of studies on leader humility, the relationship between leader humility and team creativity needs further exploration. Using the connectionist network model, we propose that leader–leader exchange (LLX), the upward exchange relationship of a team's direct supervisor, moderates the effect of leader humility on team job crafting, and this in turn affects team creativity. We test our hypotheses using a sample of 286 employees in 59 teams with a multiple‐source, time‐lagged research design. Our conclusions are as follows: (a) for team leaders with high LLX, leader humility is positively related to team job crafting, whereas for team leaders with low LLX, the relationship between leader humility and team job crafting is negative; (b) team job crafting is positively related to team creativity and (c) team job crafting mediates the effect of the interaction between leader humility and LLX on team creativity.     

How to be an inclusive leader for gender-diverse teams

Gender inequity is globally present in the labor force and advocating for gender equality is not merely a fairness issue, but a benefit for organizations. In this paper, we identify common challenges for gender-diverse teams (i.e., turnover, discrimination, communication issues, conflict between team members, and low team cohesion). We also discuss the importance of inclusive leadership to overcome these challenges. Correspondingly, we provide practical actions for inclusive leaders to implement on their teams to address issues regarding diversity, and subsequently leverage its benefits.     

When does virtuality help or hinder teams? Core team characteristics as contingency factors

In this paper, we seek to encourage scholars to consider how reliance on technology-mediated communications can bring both promises and perils to team-based work structures. Specifically, we argue that a team's core characteristics (including skill differentiation, temporal stability, and authority differentiation) will differentially affect the challenges and opportunities presented by the team's reliance on virtual means of communication. First, we will discuss how varying degrees of each core characteristic can affect outcomes when teams rely on virtual communication. We then propose how configurations of the three characteristics and virtuality can enhance understanding in both research and practice. We advance propositions that we hope will serve as a starting point for scholarly discussion about how the literature on virtual teams can leverage the existing theories and knowledge on team structure and interdependencies.     

Team formation with complementary skills

One explanation for the prevalence of self‐managed work teams is that they enable workers with complementary skills to specialize in the tasks they do best, a benefit that may be enhanced if workers can sort themselves into teams. To assess this explanation, we design a real‐effort experiment to study the endogenous formation of teams, and its effect on productivity, when specialization either is or is not feasible. We find a strong positive interaction between endogenous team formation and the ability to specialize, indicating that endogenous team formation is a particularly effective mechanism for promoting team output in production environments that enable the exploitation of skill complementarities.     

Leadership and cooperation in growing teams

We study how the growth of teams affects leadership effectiveness and intragroup cooperation. We put experimental participants in two teams. In each team, the members voluntarily contribute to a club good. In one of the two teams, the members observe the contribution of a randomly chosen leader before they decide themselves. Two treatments allow for migration between the teams. In one of them, participants control access to their team with a voting process. By design, participants can achieve the efficient outcome only if they all move into one team. We compare the results with a leaderless setting as well as with four treatments which vary team size exogenously. The results show that high contributions of leaders encourage higher per-capita contributions of their followers which foster migration into their teams. In turn, larger teams experience even more courageous leadership and higher contributions, but the coordination effect diminishes. Nevertheless, the dismissal of potential newcomers in the treatment with voting suggests that team members see a trade-off between team size and contributions. They sacrifice economic benefits from potential entrants to maintain intrateam cooperation.