Strengthening Identification with the Team in Virtual Teams: The Leaders' Perspective

The number of virtual teams is increasing in today's workplaces. In virtual teams, the members can have different cultural backgrounds, they often work in different countries and are professionals in their own fields. In addition, as such diverse and dispersed teams communicate mainly through communication technology this raises the challenge for the team leader of how to unify the team and get the members to identify themselves with the team. This qualitative study focuses on four virtual team leaders and their attempts to strengthen the team members' identification with the team through computer-mediated communication. The results show four different tactics employed in enhancing identification with the team: catering for the individual, giving positive feedback, bringing out common goals and workings and talking up the team activities and face-to-face meetings. The roles of organizational change and technology in identification with virtual teams are also discussed.     

Emergent Leadership in Self-Managed Virtual Teams

The issue of leadership in virtual teams is an increasingly important one for many modern organizations, because these teams – typically project-based with a finite lifespan and specific deliverables – are frequently self-managed, having no designated leader within the team (Yukl 1998). While such teams may have increased flexibility in setting goals and achieving them, the virtual context may hinder team members' abilities to coordinate activities and influence others (Manz and Sims 1993). Longitudinal data were collected over the course of a semester from virtual teams, comprised of students from three North American universities. Our results suggest that high performing self-managed virtual teams displayed significantly more leadership behaviors over time compared to their low performing counterparts. Specifically, these teams displayed significantly more concentrated leadership behavior focused on performance (i.e. “Producer” behavior) and shared leadership behavior focused on keeping track of group work (i.e. “Monitor” behavior) than the lower performing teams. Interestingly, these behaviors emerged strongly during the first half of the groups' lifespan, and stayed throughout the life of the groups, but steadily dissipated in strength over time.     

Leading global teams

Global teams that are characterized by national, cultural and linguistic heterogeneity and operate in a globally dispersed virtual environment are becoming an established form of organizing work in multinational organizations. As global team leadership research is rather limited, we review the literature on leading multicultural and virtual teams in a global context, focusing on leadership competencies, styles, strategies and modes. We also examine the emergent concepts of biculturalism, global mindset and cultural intelligence with respect to team leaders. Our aim is to add to our knowledge of leading global teams, highlight recent trends and suggest directions for future research. Three themes for global team leadership emerged: leaders as boundary spanners, bridge makers and blenders; people-oriented leadership; and leveraging diversity. We discuss implications for research and practice.     

Does servant leadership foster creativity and innovation? A multi-level mediation study of identification and prototypicality

The purpose of this multi-level study is to examine how servant leadership affects both employee creativity and team innovation. Drawing from social identity, in particular, relational identification theory, we found on the basis of a two-nation Asian sample of 154 teams that servant leadership promotes individual relational identification and collective prototypicality with the leader which, in turn, fosters employee creativity and team innovation. In addition, our study suggests that the mediated effect of leader identification is strongest when team climate for innovation is high.     

A Multi-level Investigation of Authentic Leadership as an Antecedent of Helping Behavior

We develop and test a trickle-down model of how authentic leadership at the department level flows down the organizational hierarchy to encourage team leader authentic leadership and consequently, promotes team and individual-level supervisor-directed helping behavior. Analyses of multi-level and multi-source data collected from a total of 487 employees comprising 122 teams, 47 departments, and 4 different working areas of a major public sector organization in Taiwan show that team leaders’ authentic leadership mediates the relationship between departmental authentic leadership and individual-level leader–member exchange (LMX). We also found that intra-team trust completely mediates the influence of team authentic leadership on both team helping behavior and individual-level supervisor-directed helping behavior. Finally, the results reveal that self-concordance mediates the influence of team authentic leadership on individual-level supervisor helping behavior as well as the influence of individual-level LMX on individual-level supervisor-directed helping behavior. Theoretical and practical implications of these findings are discussed.     

Macrocognition in Collaboration: Analyzing Processes of Team Knowledge Building with CoPrA

Sophisticated collaboration software allows teams that are dispersed in space and time to work together. Nevertheless, to reach their common goals, distributed teams—and the professional facilitators who support them by intervention techniques—are faced with the communication challenges arising from dispersed settings, including task coordination and effective information exchange. When distributed teams use collaboration software, however, traces of their collaboration are left behind. These traces provide an underused source of data which can be analyzed and be used to inform the design of interventions aimed at improving collaboration in distributed teams. This paper investigates the untapped potential for understanding collaboration, and in particular, the macro-cognitive processes of team knowledge building. These processes rely on information shared and knowledge structures developed by team members which are also referred to as team cognition. We performed a qualitative content analysis applying the COllaboration PRocess Analysis technique, CoPrA, and a framework for measuring team knowledge building. Communication data was collected from 18 participants assigned to six distributed teams. While working collaboratively on a problem-solving task teams were supported with synchronous collaboration software. The results show that by using a cognitive perspective on teams, all the hypothesized processes of team knowledge building could be identified in collaboration traces. Moreover, our analysis shows that CoPrA enables us to identify key characteristics of (1) team behavior, e.g., whether teams are rather solution-oriented or problem minded, show consensus-oriented behavior, withhold evaluative arguments, discuss ideas in breadth and/or depth, or spend much effort on coordination as well as (2) behavior of team members, e.g., who show non-participation, are willing to share or predominantly guide coordination. Future research could adopt this approach to improve our understanding of the dynamics of collaboration patterns and its effects on team performance to inform collaboration facilitation in distributed settings.     

Stay close! The role of leader distance in the relationship between transformational leadership,work engagement,and performance in undergraduate project teams

The author aimed to show that (a) transformational leadership is related to project teams’ performance via work engagement and (b) leader distance moderates the relationship between transformational leadership and work engagement. The proposed moderated mediation model was tested using 180 students in an undergraduate management course and working in project teams. The findings supported only the relationship between work engagement and performance, and thus transformational leadership does not appear to be useful in undergraduate project teams. However, the nonsignificant moderator effect revealed an unexpected finding for a direct and marginally significant relationship between leader distance and work engagement.     

Effects of transactional leadership,psychological empowerment and empowerment climate on creative performance of subordinates: A cross-level study

This research surveyed 101 teams, involving 497 team members and 101 team leaders, in a large multinational company in China. A hierarchical linear model is used to examine the hypothesized mediated moderation model. It is found that: (1) individual psychological empowerment is positively related to creative performance; (2) the relationship between transactional leadership and subordinates’ creative performance is moderated by team empowerment climate; (3) individual transactional leadership behavior is positively related to subordinates’ creative performance in teams with higher empowerment climate, but negatively related to subordinates’ creative performance in lower empowerment climate; and (4) the relationship between transactional leadership, team empowerment climate and creative performance is partially mediated by subordinates’ psychological empowerment perception. Theoretical contributions and practical implications are also discussed.     

The Effects of Cultural Diversity in Virtual Teams Versus Face-to-Face Teams

Diversity in the national background and culture of team members is common in virtual teams. An experimental study, with short term teams, was undertaken to examine the effect of cultural diversity on team effectiveness and to examine if this effect changes depending if the team worked face-to-face (F2F) or virtually. Heterogeneous teams were created that had greater diversity than homogeneous teams of individualism/collectivism values, different languages spoken, country of birth, and nationality. The teams worked on a desert survival task either F2F or virtually (via audioconference and electronic chat tools). The overall results indicated that heterogeneous teams were less satisfied and cohesive and had more conflict than the homogeneous teams, although there were no statistical differences in team performance levels. However, examining just the heterogeneous teams found that the performance of the virtual heterogeneous teams was superior to that of the F2F heterogeneous teams. The results support Carte and Chidambaram's (2004) theory that the reductive capabilities of collaborative technologies are beneficial for newly-formed diverse teams.     

CEO Entrepreneurial Leadership and Performance Outcomes of Top Management Teams in Entrepreneurial Ventures: The Mediating Effects of Psychological Safety

This study examines whether the exhibition of entrepreneurial leadership by CEOs within entrepreneurial ventures fosters higher levels of top management team performance and job performance of team members, and whether psychological safety explains such effects. Utilizing four waves of multisource, multilevel data from 262 team members across 56 top management teams, we find that the exercise of entrepreneurial leadership by the CEO leads to higher levels of performance at the team and individual levels, and that psychological safety mediates such relationships.     

When Success Isn’t Everything – Case Studies of Two Virtual Teams

Researchers have been attempting to identify the factors that contribute to virtual team success. Two virtual teams were studied over six-months using an interpretive approach and qualitative data collection techniques. The outcomes of these teams were outwardly very poor. Yet, team members considered themselves successful in relation to the circumstances in which they found themselves. The team members identified the factors they believed contributed to the outcomes and the rationale for why they were successful despite the outward appearances. The interpretive approach allowed for an exploration of the circumstances, and how these perspectives were derived. The cases indicate that working in distributed mode can be problematic if teamwork issues are not addressed, and a technological focus adopted.     

Value Congruence and Charismatic Leadership in CEO–Top Manager Relationships: An Empirical Investigation

Although charismatic leadership theorists have long argued that leader–follower value congruence plays a central role in the development of charismatic relationships, few studies have tested this proposition. Using data from two studies involving a total of 329 CEOs and 1807 members of their top management teams, we tested the hypothesis that value congruence between leaders and their followers is empirically linked to follower perceptions of the charisma of their leader. Consistent with a relational perspective on charismatic leadership, strong support was found for the hypothesis that perceived value congruence between leaders (CEOs) and their followers (members of their top management teams) is positively related to follower perceptions of the degree of charisma possessed by the leader. Conversely, only limited support was found for the hypothesis that actual value congruence is linked to perceptions of charismatic leadership. Implications of these findings for research and practice are discussed.     

Individual Priming in Virtual Team Decision-Making

Virtual teams have different interactions than face-to-face teams because they rely on information and communication technologies, which can impede or assist certain human cognitive processes. Past research has shown that although virtual teams exchange more information than face-to-face teams, poor decisions often result, because team members do not consider the unique information they receive from others. Drawing from cognitive psychology, our research explored a unique way to improve team decision-making through the use of cognitive priming. We proposed that priming group members to pay attention to others or to engage in counterfactual thinking would improve team members’ cognition and, therefore, team performance. Prior research with individuals and brainstorming teams has shown these forms of priming to improve performance; however, no research has attempted to use priming to improve the outcomes of virtual team decision-making, which requires deeper interaction and cognitive involvement than brainstorming. We performed two lab experiments using primes that have been found to improve the individual decision-making process. We found that priming had some impact, but it did not significantly improve decision quality. Various reasons are discussed to explain why priming techniques may not be as powerful in teams as in individuals, and future research ideas are suggested to build on our initial work on priming in virtual team decision-making.     

Authentic Leadership and Behavioral Integrity as Drivers of Follower Commitment and Performance

The literatures on both authentic leadership and behavioral integrity have argued that leader integrity drives follower performance. Yet, despite overlap in conceptualization and mechanisms, no research has investigated how authentic leadership and behavioral integrity relate to one another in driving follower performance. In this study, we propose and test the notion that authentic leadership behavior is an antecedent to perceptions of leader behavioral integrity, which in turn affects follower affective organizational commitment and follower work role performance. Analysis of a survey of 49 teams in the service industry supports the proposition that authentic leadership is related to follower affective organizational commitment, fully mediated through leader behavioral integrity. Next, we found that authentic leadership and leader behavioral integrity are related to follower work role performance, fully mediated through follower affective organizational commitment. These relationships hold when controlling for ethical organizational culture.     

Entrepreneurial passion diversity in new venture teams: An empirical examination of short- and long-term performance implications

Empirical evidence is mounting that passion is an important part of entrepreneurship, contributing to behavior and outcomes for entrepreneurs, employees, and ventures. Yet knowledge of the performance implications of passion within new venture teams is sorely lacking. We examine how both the average level of entrepreneurial passion and the diversity of passion within new venture teams contributes to venture performance in both the short- and long-term. We test our model with multi-source, multi-wave data collected from 107 new venture teams participating in an accelerator program. Our findings indicate that average team passion is not significantly related to performance, but passion diversity, particularly intensity separation, is negatively related to performance. These findings have important implications for the literature on passion, new venture teams, and group affective diversity.Executive summaryWhile existing studies have substantially improved our understanding of entrepreneurial passion, its sources, and its subsequent impact, insight into this topic remains limited in at least three ways. First, most new ventures are founded and led by teams rather than individuals, yet existing studies predominantly focus on entrepreneurial passion at the individual rather than team level. Second, while there is a prevailing assumption in existing literature that entrepreneurial passion leads to beneficial outcomes consistent with longstanding work in psychology, there is emerging evidence in entrepreneurship that passion may not always be functional and that it can even be dysfunctional. Despite this, we have limited understanding of what types of passion or when or for whom it is dysfunctional. And third, extant work on entrepreneurial passion for individuals and within teams has focused on behavioral or self-report measures of performance (e.g. Cardon and Kirk, 2015; Santos & Cardon, 2019) as well as venture survival, rather than objective team or firm performance in the short- and long-term.In this paper, we study the influence of team passion on new venture team performance. We draw on theory concerning entrepreneurial passion within venture teams (Cardon et al., 2017) that suggests that different aspects of entrepreneurial passion within teams shape team dynamics and venture outcomes. While generally, theories of passion suggest that entrepreneurial passion is positively related to team outcomes due to the positive emotions it brings about, we find that in teams, the relationships are more complex. While the average level of passion among team members is positively related to team performance when considered alone, this effect is not significant when passion diversity is also considered. Diversity of passion among individual team members has a negative relationship with team performance, including diversity in the level of passion team members experience (intensity separation), as well as diversity in the object of their passion (focus variety). These negatively affect team dynamics due to conflicting emotions and identities among team members associated with passion diversity. We examine these relationships on specific team performance outcomes including evaluation of the business idea in the short-term and venture performance five years after their participation in an accelerator.The sample used in this study includes 107 entrepreneurial teams that were part of an accelerator program in the Netherlands. Teams were evaluated on the quality of their business ideas at the end of the accelerator program and the amount of investment the team had received five years later. Our results provide no support for positive effects of average team passion on the quality of the business ideas and confirm the negative effects of passion intensity separation on the quality of the business idea and the negative effects of passion focus variety on later venture performance.This paper makes several contributions. First, we expand the literature on passion in entrepreneurship, specifically adding to our understanding of passion within new venture teams. More specifically, we contribute to the growing body of evidence concerning potential dysfunctions of passion by uncovering a dysfunctional property of team passion diversity that uniquely manifests itself at the team level of analysis. We contribute to the literature on new venture teams by examining team composition in the form of passion diversity, and its relationship with team performance. Finally, our study extends work on the effects of entrepreneurial passion by looking at objective team performance outcomes in both the short- and long-term.For entrepreneurs, our findings confirm the importance of affect and identity for new venture teams, and specifically our findings indicate that there is a dark side to team passion. While passion is generally positioned as a positive phenomenon, we highlight the negative outcomes that passion can have in the team context. Diversity in the amount of passion team members experience can diminish the quality of the business ideas the team is able to generate in the short-term, while diversity in the focus of team members' passion can diminish the firm's long-term performance. For investors and accelerator communities this research validates the importance of considering entrepreneurial team composition and specifically entrepreneurial passion levels and domains when investing in teams or when supporting venture building.     

Creating and sustaining trust in virtual teams

Conventional wisdom assumes that trust develops from a history of interpersonal interactions and communication, through which people come to ‘know and trust’ one another. In virtual teams, however, establishing trust can be complicated: members may have no past on which to build, no future to reference, and may never even actually meet face-to-face. Swift but fragile trust can develop early in a team's life cycle. Yet, if swift trust doesn't develop or even dissipates, members need to find ways of building trust in each other. To this end, an understanding of how trust impacts a virtual team's development will help managers and team leaders to facilitate and improve team success. Herein, we describe the three components of trust (ability, integrity, and benevolence) and identify which of these are critical to each life cycle stage (establishing the team, inception, organizing, transition, and accomplishing the task) of the virtual team. Proposed action steps for each stage show managers and team leaders how to help members develop trust and sustain it through the project's successful completion.     

Team Spirit: The Influence of Psychological Collectivism on the Usage of E-Collaboration Tools

The use of information technologies in virtual teams has become common, but little is known about how psychological factors may affect future usage decisions in this context. Our study focuses on psychological collectivism, which is an individual-level form of collectivism (an individual trait capturing people’s “team spirit” or psychological attachments to groups) and investigates how this trait affects team members’ rational decision making processes. Partial Least Squares analysis applied to data collected from 120 team members suggest that psychological collectivism influences both team-referenced perceptions (confidence in one’s team’s capability) and system-referenced perceptions (the perceived usefulness of the e-collaboration tool), and these factors together affect future usage intentions.     

Entrepreneurial visions in founding teams: Conceptualization,emergence, and effects on opportunity development

Prior research on entrepreneurial visions has typically taken a leadership perspective and explored how the founders’ future images of their ventures motivate themselves and followers. Drawing on an upper echelon perspective and longitudinal case studies of eight founding teams, this study finds that founders’ entrepreneurial visions do not only capture the future images of their ventures, but also the future images of the founders’ relationship with it. Taking into account this personal aspect of visions, we show that within a founding team, the members’ visions can be incongruent, i.e., they cannot be realized simultaneously within the current venture. While our data reveal that vision incongruence tends to occurs when all team members perceive to have an equal status, vision congruence emerges when the attributed status in the team is heterogeneous. Founding teams with more congruent visions tend to follow a focused opportunity development path, while those with less congruent visions tend to follow a comprehensive opportunity development path. Depending on the teams’ behaviors in the face of challenging situations either path can lead to successful opportunity commercialization or failure. We discuss the implications of these findings for the literatures on entrepreneurial visions, opportunities, and upper echelons.     

团队精神型领导与研发团队创新行为的关系——团队自省性和团队外部社会资本的影响

研发团队创新行为对企业获取竞争优势至关重要。以往研究相对忽略了精神性因素对团队创新行为的动力机制。文章借鉴创新成分理论和创造力系统理论,聚焦于精神性因素对团队创新行为的动力机制以及团队外部社会资本的调节效应。通过对106个研发团队329名研发团队成员数据的统计分析表明：团队精神型领导对团队创新行为具有显著正向影响;团队自省性在团队精神型领导和团队创新行为之间具有部分中介作用;团队外部社会资本调节了团队精神型领导对团队创新行为的正向影响,团队外部社会资本越高,团队精神型领导对团队创新行为的正向影响也越强,反之越弱。团队外部社会资本还调节了团队自省性在团队精神型领导和团队创新行为之间的中介效应,团队外部社会资本越高,团队精神型领导通过团队自省性的中介进而对团队创新行为的影响也越强,反之越弱。研究结论拓展了中国组织情景下精神型领导在团队层次的影响效应研究,也拓展了团队创新行为的精神性动力因素及其动力机制的实证研究。     

团队权力分布的概念、效用机制与未来方向

团队权力分布的效用机制是团队权力领域的研究热点之一，但相关研究结果却并不一致。部分研究认为团队权力分布对团队绩效有促进作用，而另一些研究则发现其会抑制团队绩效。通过梳理团队权力分布文献，明确了团队权力分布概念，即团队权力分布是指团队中有价值资源的分布情况。在分析团队权力分布主要测量方式的基础上，基于等级制度理论，从功能主义及功能障碍主义两种典型的研究视角，分析当前研究结果不一致的原因：一是研究者所持的理论基础存在差异，二是团队权力分布效用受到团队权力相关因素、团队任务因素及团队领导特征因素等边界条件的影响。最后指出了未来可从团队权力分布概念、研究方法多元化、研究设计整体化和引入更多情境因素等方面进行深入研究。