Fluid Tasks and Fluid Teams: The Impact of Diversity in Experience and Team Familiarity on Team Performance

In this paper, we consider how the structures of tasks and teams interact to affect team performance. We study the effects of diversity in experience on a team's ability to respond to task changes, by separately examining interpersonal team diversity (i.e., differences in experience across the entire team) and intrapersonal team diversity (i.e., whether individuals on the team are more or less specialized). We also examine whether team familiarity - team members' prior experience working with one another - helps teams to better manage challenges created by task changes and greater interpersonal team diversity. Using detailed project- and individual-level data from an Indian software services firm, we find that the interaction of task-change with intrapersonal diversity is related to improved project performance, while the interaction of task-change with interpersonal diversity is related to diminished performance. Additionally, the interaction of team familiarity with interpersonal diversity is related to improved project performance in some cases. Our results highlight a need for more nuanced approaches to leveraging experience in team management.Diversity, Knowledge Work, Project Flexibility, Task Change, Team Familiarity

Video Game Development in a Rush: A Survey of the Global Game Jam Participants

Video game development is a complex endeavor, often involving complex software, large organizations, and aggressive release deadlines. Several studies have reported that periods of "crunch time" are prevalent in the video game industry, but there are few studies on the effects of time pressure. We conducted a survey with participants of the Global Game Jam (GGJ), a 48-hour hackathon. Based on 198 responses, the results suggest that: (1) iterative brainstorming is the most popular method for conceptualizing initial requirements; (2) continuous integration, minimum viable product, scope management, version control, and stand-up meetings are frequently applied development practices; (3) regular communication, internal playtesting, and dynamic and proactive planning are the most common quality assurance activities; and (4) familiarity with agile development has a weak correlation with perception of success in GGJ. We conclude that GGJ teams rely on ad hoc approaches to development and face-to-face communication, and recommend some complementary practices with limited overhead. Furthermore, as our findings are similar to recommendations for software startups, we posit that game jams and the startup scene share contextual similarities. Finally, we discuss the drawbacks of systemic "crunch time" and argue that game jam organizers are in a good position to problematize the phenomenon.Comment: Accepted for publication in IEEE Transactions on Game

Trojan Horses or Local Allies: Host-country National Managers in Developing Market Subsidiaries

We investigate a multinational corporation's (MNC) decision to appoint host-country national (HCN) managers to foreign subsidiaries based on the institutional context of and familiarity with the host country. HCN managers are commonly associated with specialized knowledge, superior responsiveness, and higher legitimacy. Yet, we argue that local familiarity of HCNs can also be perceived as risky or harmful by MNC parents. We analyze how formal and informal institutions affect the trade-off between positive effects and potential costs associated with HCN managers ("Local allies" vs. "Trojan horses"). We find that legal institutions protect foreign MNCs from potential costs, encourage the use of HCNs and reinforce their benefits. Corruption and corruption distance, however, increase perceived costs associated with HCN managers up to a point at which they outweigh their perceived benefits

The Geography of Stock Market Participation: The Influence of Communities and Local Firms

This paper is the first to investigate the importance of geography in explaining equity market participation. We provide evidence to support two distinct local area effects. The first is a community ownership effect, that is, individuals are influenced by the investment behavior of members of their community. Specifically, a ten percentage-point increase in equity market participation of the members of one's community makes it two percentage points more likely that the individual will invest in stocks. We find further evidence that the influence of community members is strongest for less financially sophisticated households and strongest within peer groups' as defined by age and income categories. The second is that proximity to publicly-traded firms also increases equity market participation. In particular, the presence of publicly-traded firms within 50 miles and the share of U.S. market value headquartered within the community are significantly correlated with equity ownership of individuals. These results are quite robust, holding up in the presence of a wide range of individual and community controls, instrumental variables estimation, the inclusion of individual fixed effects, and specification checks to rule out that the relations are driven solely by ownership of the stock of one's employer.

Code Blue: methodology for a qualitative study of teamwork during simulated cardiac arrest.

IntroductionIn-hospital cardiac arrest (IHCA) is a particularly vexing entity from the perspective of preparedness, as it is neither common nor truly rare. Survival from IHCA requires the coordinated efforts of multiple providers with different skill sets who may have little prior experience working together. Survival rates have remained low despite advances in therapy, suggesting that human factors may be at play.Methods and analysisThis qualitative study uses a quasiethnographic data collection approach combining focus group interviews with providers involved in IHCA resuscitation as well as analysis of video recordings from in situ-simulated cardiac arrest events. Using grounded theory-based analysis, we intend to understand the organisational, interpersonal, cognitive and behavioural dimensions of IHCA resuscitation, and to build a descriptive model of code team functioning.Ethics and disseminationThis ongoing study has been approved by the IRB at UC Davis Medical Center.ResultsThe results will be disseminated in a subsequent manuscript

THE "POWER" OF TEXT PRODUCTION ACTIVITY IN COLLABORATIVE MODELING : NINE RECOMMENDATIONS TO MAKE A COMPUTER SUPPORTED SITUATION WORK

Language is not a direct translation of a speaker’s or writer’s knowledge or intentions. Various complex processes and strategies are involved in serving the needs of the audience: planning the message, describing some features of a model and not others, organizing an argument, adapting to the knowledge of the reader, meeting linguistic constraints, etc. As a consequence, when communicating about a model, or about knowledge, there is a complex interaction between knowledge and language. In this contribution, we address the question of the role of language in modeling, in the specific case of collaboration over a distance, via electronic exchange of written textual information. What are the problems/dimensions a language user has to deal with when communicating a (mental) model? What is the relationship between the nature of the knowledge to be communicated and linguistic production? What is the relationship between representations and produced text? In what sense can interactive learning systems serve as mediators or as obstacles to these processes

Portfolio Diversification and City Agglomeration

We relate the degree of investor portfolio focus to the broader urban economic context of the household. Using a detailed panel of investors in Sweden over the period 1995 to 2000, we find that the level of investor diversification, as measured by number of stocks in the portfolio and by the average correlation among holdings, is partially explained by city industrial characteristics. We find that rural portfolios are more diversified than urban portfolios and that portfolio diversification is characterized by factors associated with urban growth. We consider a number of theories to explain investor focus, including behavioral biases, real and perceived informational advantage, local social competition and hedging of non-tradable risk. We find little evidence to support social and hedging motives to explain the lack of portfolio diversification, and some evidence in favor of perceived informational advantage in an urban setting. We attribute this evidence as support for the broader 'knowledge spillover' processes documented in the recent urban economics literature. Portfolio effects may be added to the list of factors that define and differentiate urbanism.

Documentation and knowledge acquisition

Traditional approaches to knowledge acquisition have focused on interviews. An alternative focuses on the documentation associated with a domain. Adopting a documentation approach provides some advantages during familiarization. A knowledge management tool was constructed to gain these advantages

The apparatus of digital archaeology

Digital Archaeology is predicated upon an ever-changing set of apparatuses – technological, methodological, software, hardware, material, immaterial – which in their own ways and to varying degrees shape the nature of Digital Archaeology. Our attention, however, is perhaps inevitably more closely focussed on research questions, choice of data, and the kinds of analyses and outputs. In the process we tend to overlook the effects the tools themselves have on the archaeology we do beyond the immediate consequences of the digital. This paper introduces cognitive artefacts as a means of addressing the apparatus more directly within the context of the developing archaeological digital ecosystem. It argues that a critical appreciation of our computational cognitive artefacts is key to understanding their effects on both our own cognition and on the creation of archaeological knowledge. In the process, it defines a form of cognitive digital archaeology in terms of four distinct methods for extracting cognition from the digital apparatus layer by layer