Objective: The aim of this study was to examine how task, social, and situational factors shape work patterns, information networks, and performance in spaceflight multiteam systems (MTSs).
Background: Human factors research has explored the task and individual characteristics that affect decisions regarding when and in what order people complete tasks. We extend this work to understand how the social and situational factors that arise when working in MTSs affect individual work patterns.
The Coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic has prompted an unprecedented shift to remote work. Workers across the globe have used digital technologies to connect with teammates and others in their organizations. In what ways did the COVID-19 crisis alter the frequency and balance of internal and external team interactions? During a crisis, networking offers a type of goal-directed behavior through which individuals source and provide information.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFTeammate invitation networks are foundational for team assembly, and recommender systems (similar to dating websites, but for selecting potential teammates) can aid the formation of such networks. This paper extends Hinds, Carley, Krackhardt, and Wholey's (2000) influential model of team member selection by incorporating online recommender systems. Exponential random graph modeling of two samples (overall = 410; 63 teams; 1,048 invitations) shows the invitation network is predicted by online recommendations, beyond previously-established effects of prior collaboration/familiarity, skills/competence, and homophily.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFDigital technologies are changing the nature of teamwork in ways that have important implications for leadership. Though conceptually rich and multi-disciplinary, much of the burgeoning work on technology has not been fully integrated into the leadership literature. To fill this gap, we organize existing work on leadership and technology, outlining four perspectives: (1) technology as context, (2) technology as sociomaterial, (3) technology as creation medium, and (4) technology as teammate.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFToday's most pressing scientific problems necessitate scientific teamwork; the increasing complexity and specialization of knowledge render "lone geniuses" ill-equipped to make high-impact scientific breakthroughs. Social network research has begun to explore the factors that promote the of scientific teams. However, this work has been limited by network approaches centered conceptually and analytically on "nodes as people," or "nodes as teams.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFContemporary definitions of leadership advance a view of the phenomenon as relational, situated in specific social contexts, involving patterned emergent processes, and encompassing both formal and informal influence. Paralleling these views is a growing interest in leveraging social network approaches to study leadership. Social network approaches provide a set of theories and methods with which to articulate and investigate, with greater precision and rigor, the wide variety of relational perspectives implied by contemporary leadership theories.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFProc Natl Acad Sci U S A
September 2014
The innovations of science often point to ideas and behaviors that must spread and take root in communities to have impact. Ideas, practices, and behaviors need to go from accepted truths on the part of a few scientists to commonplace beliefs and norms in the minds of the many. Moving from scientific discoveries to public good requires social influence.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe translation of medical research from bench-to-bedside often requires integrated input from multiple expert teams. These collectives can best be understood through the lens of multiteam systems theory. Team charters are a practical tool thought to facilitate team performance through the creation of explicit shared norms for behavior.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFTeams are formed to benefit from an expanded pool of expertise and experience, yet 2 aspects of the conflict stemming from those core differences will ultimately play a large role in determining team viability and productivity: conflict states and conflict processes. The current study theoretically reorganizes the literature on team conflict--distinguishing conflict states from conflict processes--and details the effects of each on team effectiveness. Findings from a meta-analytic cumulation of 45 independent studies (total number of teams = 3,218) suggest states and processes are distinct and important predictors of team performance and affective outcomes.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe current study draws on motivated information processing in groups theory to propose that leadership functions and composition characteristics provide teams with the epistemic and social motivation needed for collective information processing and strategy adaptation. Three-person teams performed a city management decision-making simulation (N=74 teams; 222 individuals). Teams first managed a simulated city that was newly formed and required growth strategies and were then abruptly switched to a second simulated city that was established and required revitalization strategies.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFObjective: We link the problem of complex sociotechnical systems to a new unit-of-analysis and fruitful developing area of applied research, the multiteam system.
Background: Teams are the dominant entity and theoretical lens being applied to understanding the performance of complex sociotechnical systems. We submit that such problems cannot be solved through the teams lens because complex sociotechnical systems exhibit features such as mixed-motive goal structures and complex, layered social identities that do not meet the definitional requirements of a team.
Major theories of team effectiveness position emergent collective cognitive processes as central drivers of team performance. We meta-analytically cumulated 231 correlations culled from 65 independent studies of team cognition and its relations to teamwork processes, motivational states, and performance outcomes. We examined both broad relationships among cognition, behavior, motivation, and performance, as well as 3 underpinnings of team cognition as potential moderators of these relationships.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFInformation sharing is a central process through which team members collectively utilize their available informational resources. The authors used meta-analysis to synthesize extant research on team information sharing. Meta-analytic results from 72 independent studies (total groups = 4,795; total N = 17,279) demonstrate the importance of information sharing to team performance, cohesion, decision satisfaction, and knowledge integration.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThis study examined 2 leader functions likely to be instrumental in synchronizing large systems of teams (i.e., multiteam systems [MTSs]).
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe authors examined how networks of teams integrate their efforts to succeed collectively. They proposed that integration processes used to align efforts among multiple teams are important predictors of multiteam performance. The authors used a multiteam system (MTS) simulation to assess how both cross-team and within-team processes relate to MTS performance over multiple performance episodes that differed in terms of required interdependence levels.
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