Diversity in Demographic Characteristics,Abilities and Personality Traits: Do Faultlines Affect Team Functioning?

This study examines the impact of faultlines within teams on cohesion and conflicts. Faultlines concern the attributes of several team members simultaneously and mirror the structure of diversity within a team. The strength of a faultline indicates the level of similarity within potential subgroups and its width the extent of dissimilarity between them. The faultlines addressed in this study are based upon the demographic characteristics, abilities and personality traits of team members. We also address the interaction of team autonomy on the effects of faultlines. Data for this study were collected by means of questionnaires administered to 99 teams of undergraduate students. The results indicate that demographic faultlines directly impair the functioning of a team. Team autonomy conditioned both the relationship between the strength of the ability faultline and team cohesion and the relationship between the depth of the personality faultline and intra-team conflict. In other words, these faultlines are more detrimental to team functioning when team autonomy is high. Ability faultlines seem to emphasize similarities within subgroups, while personality faultlines accentuate dissimilarities between subgroups.     

Team deep-level diversity,relationship conflict,and team members' affective reactions: A cross-level investigation

Drawing from recent advances in the study of deep-level diversity in work teams and the similarity–attraction paradigm, this study examines the ways in which diversity in personality characteristics and preference for teamwork among team members influences the relationship between relationship conflict and subsequent team member affective reactions. Using a longitudinal, multilevel sample of 53 teams (260 respondents), results reveal that similarity or homogeneity in agreeableness, conscientiousness, and emotional stability weakens the negative influence of relationship conflict on team member affective reactions, while heterogeneity in extraversion and preference for teamwork also weakens these relationships. A discussion of theoretical and practical implications follows.     

Team creativity: the effects of perceived learning culture,developmental feedback and team cohesion

This study investigates the influence of perceived learning culture, developmental feedback and team cohesion on team creativity. The results showed that the demographic variables, the three antecedents and their interactions explained 41 per cent of variance in team creativity. Team creativity was positively correlated with a higher level of learning culture, developmental feedback and team cohesion. In addition to the main effects, two interaction effects (developmental feedback and team cohesion; learning culture and team cohesion) were significant. In view of these results, organizations seeking to increase team creativity need an integrated strategy incorporating elements of culture management, effective coaching and team development. Implications, limitations and recommendations for future research are discussed.     

Legitimacy of team rewards: Analyzing legitimacy as a condition for the effectiveness of team incentive designs

This article illustrates how the legitimacy of pay and evaluation processes in teams affect the effectiveness of team-based incentive designs in organizational work teams. We present a theoretical model of the development of legitimacy in team-based incentive designs and propose that the development of legitimacy for both pay dispersion in teams (i.e., difference in allocations of incentives among team members) and for the use of interdependent evaluations of performance promote team effectiveness. Our model introduces a new perspective to theorize about the conditions under which team rewards are an effective incentive design.     

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.     

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.     

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.     

Social support at the workplace,motivation to transfer and training transfer: a multilevel indirect effects model

Supervisor support, peer support and transfer motivation have been identified as important predictors of training transfer. Transfer motivation is thought to mediate the support–training transfer relationship. Especially after team training interventions that include all team members (i.e. whole‐team training), individual perception of these factors might be shared among team members. However, an integration of the team level in the training transfer process is rare, yet still needed. Analyzing 194 employees from 34 teams in the context of whole‐team training interventions, we found similar relationships and processes at both levels of analysis: social support enhances transfer motivation at the individual and team levels. Furthermore, motivation to transfer increases training transfer and serves as a connecting mechanism in the social support–training transfer link. The results underline the importance of: (1) considering multiple levels in theories and research about the training transfer process; and (2) ensuring the practice of individual‐directed support and a shared, supportive climate within teams.     

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.     

Do others think you have a viable business idea? Team diversity and judges' evaluation of ideas in a business plan competition

The study examines how team diversity affects external evaluation of the teams' business ideas. Using an information perspective, we argue that task-related diversity of member characteristics enhance team effectiveness. Nontask diversity hurt team effectiveness by steering teams away from their tasks. Some support was found. Task-related diversity of education level was positively related with evaluation while nontask diversities of age and employment status negatively related with evaluation. The positive relationship of task diversity on evaluations was higher for larger teams. The findings were robust across different functional forms for the demographic factors. Implications of team affects on venture outcomes are discussed.     

Demographic diversity for building an effective entrepreneurial team: is it important?

Although traditional entrepreneurship literature often views entrepreneurship as an economic battle of a “lonely hero”, the prevalence of entrepreneurial teams is an emerging economic reality. This study examines the influences of demographic diversity variables in terms of age, gender, and functional background and team process variables in terms of team-level cognitive comprehensiveness and team commitment on entrepreneurial team effectiveness. With field interview data from 174 entrepreneurs representing 79 entrepreneurial teams, this study suggests that demographic diversity is not important for entrepreneurial team effectiveness, whereas the team process variables positively influence team effectiveness. The findings also suggest that the diversity in terms of gender, age and functional background does not contribute to the team-level cognitive comprehensiveness and team commitment. Finally, the study explores implications of the findings for practice and future research.     

Smaller teams-better teamwork: How to keep project teams small

Scholars and practitioners have long suggested that smaller teams perform better teamwork, yet it is surprising to find that many organizations are using teams of 10 and more members. This paper explains how large team size affects teamwork. Moreover, it suggests four ways to keep teams small: (1) Create a multiteam project; (2) create a core team and an extended team; (3) outsource tasks and define team-external contributions; and (4) keep members on the team only for specific project phases.     

Getting along long distance: understanding conflict in a multinational team through network analysis

Multinational companies (MNCs) create international teams to pool global talent and meet organizational goals. But the many differences among team members are fertile ground for conflict. While traditional conflict management techniques gather all team members together to resolve or minimize conflicts, geographic dispersion greatly increases the time, money, and disruption to daily workflow activities necessary to bring multinational teams together. We use a social network perspective to identify and prioritize conflicts to increase team effectiveness, allowing management to focus on the most critical conflicts first. Further, we show that the most critical conflict might not be between headquarters and country subsidiaries, but between two country subsidiaries.     

Ethnic-immigrants in founding teams: Effects on prospector strategy and performance in new Internet ventures

We investigated differences in strategy and performance between new Internet ventures with ethnic-immigrant members in the founding team and a matched set of Internet ventures with non-ethnic-non-immigrant team members. Results showed that new ventures with an ethnic-immigrant presence in the founding teams tended to pursue a more aggressive prospector strategy than those with non-ethnic-non-immigrant founding team members. Still, performance of the two groups of ventures was comparable. However, the positive effects of ethnic-immigrant presence on founding teams depended on team size and average age of the founding team members.     

The effects of executive turnover on top management team's environmental scanning behavior after an environmental change

This study explores how the scope of managerial environmental scanning changes after an environmental shift. Using the context of deregulation in airline industry, I examined both within- and across-sector scanning embodied in the presidents' letters in the annual reports between 1973 and 1986. The results indicate that: 1) top management teams (TMTs) who experienced large turnover in membership tended to have broader scope of environmental scanning, both within and across different sectors; 2) TMT demographic heterogeneity positively moderated such linkage between executive turnover and environmental scanning; and 3) output-orientation in top team members' functional background had a positive main effect on the scope of environmental scanning. The results of this study offer a new insight on the effects of executive turnover and the subsequent changes in TMT composition on environmental scanning.     

Leadership Dynamics in Partially Distributed Teams: an Exploratory Study of the Effects of Configuration and Distance

Despite the importance of leadership and the wealth of empirical studies focused on leadership effectiveness in traditional and computer-supported groups, there is little research examining leadership dynamics in partially distributed virtual teams (PDTs). Virtual teams are partially distributed when they are configured with one or more subgroups of collocated members and isolated members. This paper lays the groundwork for an in-depth study of leadership in PDTs that can be extended to other types of virtual team configurations. Using three dimensions of virtual distance (geographic, cultural and temporal), we analyze how the configuration of virtual teams interacts with leadership dynamics. We also summarize the results of an exploratory study using 12 student teams to examine the effects of distance and configuration on leadership in PDTs. Findings show significant differences in leadership dynamics (i.e., leader emergence vs. leader retention) which impacted team performance. From these results, we develop propositions on leadership and PDTs.     

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.     

虚拟团队的两种新型薪酬方案

在虚拟团队中 ,管理者难以掌握团队成员的绩效信息 ,在制订薪酬方案时缺乏科学依据 ,容易是团队成员形成不公平感 ,降低工作的积极性 ,为了解决这一问题 ,采用员工自行申报业绩目标的方法 ,提出了奖励框架和惩罚框架两种框架下的薪酬设计方案 ,为解决虚拟团队成员的激励提供了可操作的工具。     

Antecedents,moderators, and performance consequences of membership change in new venture teams

This paper focuses on initial team size and membership change of new venture teams in two studies: (1) a panel study of 408 emerging ventures, and (2) a cross-sectional study of 124 new ventures. The findings suggest that larger initial team size provides an advantage for new organizations, and that the benefits of adding and dropping team members are contingent on the stage of development of the organization and the dynamism of the environment. Both external environment and team composition factors are associated with turnover in venture teams.     

Birds of a feather get lost together: new venture team composition and performance

This study explores the relationship between new venture team composition and new venture persistence and performance over time. We examine the team characteristics of a 5-year panel study of 202 new venture teams and new venture performance. Our study makes two contributions. First, we extend earlier research concerning homophily theories of the prevalence of homogeneous teams. Using structural event analysis we demonstrate that team members?? start-up experience is important in this context. Second, we attempt to reconcile conflicting evidence concerning the influence of team homogeneity on performance by considering the element of time. We hypothesize that higher team homogeneity is positively related to short term outcomes, but is less effective in the longer term. Our results confirm a difference over time. We find that more homogeneous teams are less likely to be higher performing in the long term. However, we find no relationship between team homogeneity and short-term performance outcomes.