Team Players and Collective Performance: How Agreeableness Affects Team Performance Over Time

Previous research on teams has found that agreeableness is one of the strongest personality predictors of team performance, yet one of the weakest personality predictors of individual-level job performance. In this study, we examined why teams with more agreeable members perform better. Data were collected across 4 months at 5 points in time from 107 project teams. We found that agreeableness affects performance through communication and cohesion and that communication precedes cohesion in time. Furthermore, we found that virtualness moderated the relationships between agreeableness and communication, as well as between agreeableness and team performance, such that teams only benefitted from high levels of agreeableness when interacting face-to-face.Yeshttps://us.sagepub.com/en-us/nam/manuscript-submission-guideline

The Impact of Degree of Virtualness on Performance Appraisal Scores and Organizational Justice in the U.S. Navy Reserves

With advances in information and communication technology, many organizations no longer require employees to work in the same location as their leader. This results in employees having different amounts of face-to-face and electronic-mediated communication, or different degrees of virtualness, with the leader. While virtualness can provide benefits to organizations, virtual workers’ contributions may not be properly recognized. This dissertation investigated the relationship between the degree of virtualness and both performance-appraisal scores and subordinates’ perceptions of the fairness of the performance appraisals in the Navy Reserve. The study also examined the mediating effects of Leader-Member Exchange (LMX), a measure of relationship quality between the leader and subordinate. Finally, the study investigated leader inclusiveness as a moderator between the degree of virtualness and LMX, performance appraisal scores, and perceptions of organizational justice, suggesting that leaders who foster inclusiveness may mitigate the potentially harmful effects of virtualness. Results show that the degree of virtualness is, in fact, negatively related to performance appraisal scores and organizational justice through the mediation of LMX. Control variables showed that women were rated lower than men and supervisors were more likely to communicate performance evaluations in person when scores were higher. Interestingly, tenure with supervisors had a negative effect but tenure in the unit had a positive effect. This study contributes to the literature degree of virtualness, performance appraisals, organizational justice, and leader inclusiveness. Managerial implications and future research opportunities are also discussed. Findings suggest the Navy Reserve should consider evaluating virtual workers as a separate category

The relationship between the amount of FtF-interaction and conflict in virtual teams : the moderating role of a shared identity

The purpose of this thesis was to study the influence of the amount of face-to-face interaction on task and relationship conflict, especially in teams with a shared identity. Data was collected from 332 respondents, who are members in a team in real life. Results show that the amount of face-to-face interaction had a significant negative impact on relationship conflict and a significant positive impact on task conflict. The model with team identification as a moderator was significant only regarding task conflict and not relationship conflict.O propósito desta tese foi estudar a influência da interação pessoal e os conflitos de relacionamento, durante uma experiência, especialmente em equipas com identidades similares. Foram entrevistados 332 membros de uma equipa que opera como tal na vida real. Os resultados mostram que a interação pessoal entre membros da equipa tem um impacto negativo no conflito do relacionamento, contudo o impacto é positivo quando o conflito surge durante a tarefa a executar. Identificação da equipa como moderador foi significativo para o modelo apenas para o conflito de tarefas

Virtual Teams Affect, Performance and Interpersonal Perception with Unexpected Leadership Change

Traditional ways of doing business and communicating in the workplace are changing. With frequent mergers, shifting operational demands and underlying economic pressure, computer-mediated communication has been increasingly employed. To achieve greater flexibility in workforce configurations, working virtually is often more the norm than the exception. With continuously improving internet technologies, frequently work-teams are formed when members are not geographically co-located. Both internal and external pressures combine, in the corporate setting, to produce an unprecedented velocity of change which seems especially related to globalization. (Held, 2007) Just exactly how does the virtual team handle abrupt change? While many researchers focus on the differences between face-to-face teams and virtual environs (Olson & Olson 2000), formation of trust (Jarvenpaa & Leidner, 1999), leadership (Kayworth & Leidner , 2001/2002), emergent leadership (Wickham &Walther, 2007), status differences (Weisband, Schneider, & Connolly, 1995), knowledge integration (Hartmann, Piontkowski, Keil, & Laus, 2002) (Malhotra & Majchrzak, 2004) (Zakaria, Amelinckx, & Wilemon, 2004), crossing cultures (Gibbs, 2009) and innovation (Nemiro, 2002),there has been relatively less focus on how the virtual experience influences the emotional state, cognitive functioning, and metaperceptions of teams who work virtually. It would be assumed that instability would affect the virtual teams negatively; however, there could be something different about virtual teams that uniquely position them for better sailing in shifting winds. In the laboratory we simulated the workplace virtual team structure in a streamlined way, assembling 40 groups from the community. This study examined how a quick change of leadership influences the virtual team across measures of affect, cognitive performance, group process performance and evaluative concerns. The teams experiencing leadership change experienced lower positive affect and blunted positive metaperception. Cognitive performance, negative affect, evaluation, and perceptions of team processes were remarkably stabl

Clients and Lawyers Unite: The Dysfunction of Law Firm Teams Needs a Cure

Attorneys and clients have made clear: Dysfunctional law firm teams are not working. Gone are the days when lawyers had to quietly endure poor management, poor planning, and all-around poor work dynamics. Growing pressure on lawyers to get more efficient and produce more value—and a welcome focus on lawyer wellbeing—means that law firms can no longer ignore their responsibility to cultivate better workplaces. It is no secret that law firm lawyers consistently rank as among the least happy workers in the world. And team dynamics—how attorneys and other legal professionals work together—may be a bigger piece of that puzzle than you think. In study after study, researchers have found that the quality of our work relationships powerfully implicates productivity, work fulfillment, and wellbeing. In other words, our team relationships have a lot to do with how happy and productive we are. The good news is that investing in healthy team practices pays off not just for attorneys, but for the firm, too. More good news: A growing body of research offers concrete tools for building better teams. This Article collects some of the most data-backed tools, explaining why they work and how they can best be deployed in the modern legal workplace. This Article’s authors combine their expertise to bring an interdisciplinary approach to the legal teams problem. One author formerly practiced at several large law firms and now works extensively with legal organizations across the nation as a consultant and trainer. The other author brings his expertise in industrial-organization psychology, the study of scientifically based solutions to human problems in work and other organizational settings. The authors identify the principal problems facing law firm teams now and in the future, as well as simple, concrete solutions to make legal teams work better

Team perceived virtuality: an emergent state perspective

The rapid changes of work, the ease of mobility, and ubiquitous use of virtual tools have fundamentally changed the way that teamwork in modern organizations is accomplished. Although these developments have elicited a broad range of studies focusing on the phenomenon of team virtuality, the construct itself is still tied to conceptual ambiguities, opposing theoretical underpinnings, and inconsistent findings. The present paper synthesizes the structural and social-constructivist elements of team virtuality in order to introduce the novel concept of team perceived virtuality (TPV), embedded within a theoretical model of its team-level emergence. We define TPV as a cognitive-affective team emergent state which is grounded in collectively experienced feelings of distance and perceptions of information deficits. We further describe how TPV emerges as a function of team members’ collectively developed co-constructions and identify antecedents that contribute towards this emergence. By disentangling perceptions from structural properties, the present paper conceptually advances our understanding of team virtuality beyond its structural characteristics. Ultimately, this conceptual work serves as a starting point for future research on team virtuality as a collectively constructed, team-level emergent construct.info:eu-repo/semantics/acceptedVersio

How virtuality impacts start-up employees performance through its influence on entrepreneurship passion

There is evidence that organizations have increased the use of virtual teams in recent years and combined with this there are many advantages. However, there is no certainty that these teams have a virtual positive effect on their performance. This study, through a questionnaire, examined how team's entrepreneurial passion mediated the relationship between Virtuality and Team Performance and how the Work Conflict moderated the Team's Entrepreneurial Passion effect on performance. A sample of 41 start-ups was analyzed using a moderate mediation model; and the results indicate that the Virtuality is positively related to Team Performance and that the Team's Entrepreneurial Passion also contributes to good performance. On the other hand, the relationship between Virtuality and Team Entrepreneurial Passion is less clear, and its positive impact depends on the informational value and the extent of use with which the team uses virtual tools to work. Practical implications of the results and possible questions for future research are discussed.Há evidências de que as organizações têm aumentado o uso de equipas virtuais nos últimos anos e aliado a isso existem muitas vantagens. Ainda assim, não há certeza de que estas equipas tenham um efeito positivo da virtualidade na sua performance. O presente estudo, através de um questionário, examinou como é que a paixão empreendedora da equipa mediou a relação entre virtualidade e performance e como o conflito de trabalho moderou o efeito da paixão empreendedora da equipa na performance. Uma amostra de 41 start-ups foi analisada por meio de um modelo de mediação moderada; e os resultados indicam que a virtualidade está positivamente relacionada com a performance e que também a paixão empreendedora da equipa contribui para uma boa performance. Por outro lado, a relação entre virtualidade e paixão empreendedora da equipa é menos clara, sendo que o seu positivo impacto depende do valor informacional e do grau de utilização com que a equipa recorre a ferramentas virtuais para trabalhar. São discutidas implicações práticas dos resultados e levantadas possíveis perguntas para futuras pesquisas

A Multi-Level View of the Antecedents and Consequences of Trust in Virtual Leaders

Although trust is widely acknowledged as critical to virtual teams, little is known regarding the causes and consequences of trust in leaders of virtual teams. This paper examines the antecedents and consequences of trust in virtual team leaders. Using survey and archival data from a massively multiplayer online game (MMOG), this study’s findings show that trust in the leader is affected by team members’ use of synchronous communication and breadth of communication with leaders as well as team members’ distance from each other. Furthermore, reasoning that team size and culture create a shared context qualifying team members’ experiences, we found that team size and collectivistic values diminished the benefits of synchronous communication and breadth of communication, respectively. The findings also revealed that trust in leaders had a positive relationship to team performance. Detailed discussion of the findings is provided in the conclusion of the paper

A LONGITUDINAL STUDY OF IMPRESSION MANAGEMENT STRATEGIES AND LEADERSHIP EMERGENCE: THE MODERATING ROLES OF GENDER AND VIRTUALNESS

This study used a longitudinal study spanning a twelve-week time period and involving 165 undergraduate students to examine the combined impact of gender and impression management strategies on leader emergence by members relying on low versus high virtualness. The subjects were formed into 44 self-managed work groups and charged with completing four deliverables that built on top of each other and were part of their course requirement. The results shows that for individuals relying on low virtualness, there were significant three-way interaction effects between gender, for individuals relying impression management strategies (ingratiation and self-promotion) and time as well as significant two- way interaction effects, regardless of gender, between intimidation and time. For individuals relying on high virtualness, there were significant three-way interaction effects between gender, impression management strategies (ingratiation, self-promotion and exemplification) and time on leader emergence.Slope analysis revealed that women relying on low virtualness faced a backlash in terms of their leader emergence when engaging in high ingratiation, a role-congruent impression management strategy that has been shown to enhance performance evaluations in organizational settings. For these women, high self-promotion, a role-incongruent strategy, also decreased leader emergence over time. In contrast, the leadership emergence for men relying on low virtualness was not impacted by any impression management strategies. Also, the results showed that regardless of gender, for members relying on low virtualness, high intimidation reduced leader emergence over time while low intimidation had the opposite effect. However, intimidation enhanced leader emergence initially.Women relying on high virtualness, on the other hand, did not face a backlash in their leader emergence when they engaged in high ingratiation (a role-congruent strategy) and high self-promotion (a role-incongruent strategy). Instead, for women relying on high virtualness, low ingratiation, self-promotion and exemplification increased their leader emergence over time. Further, regardless of gender, individuals relying on high virtualness did not face any dysfunctional effects on leader emergence over time when they engaged in high supplication or intimidation. In addition, for men relying on high virtualness, ingratiation, exemplification and self-promotion positively influenced leader emergence, regardless of time.In essence, our results demonstrated that the relationship between impression management strategies and leader emergence is influenced by virtualness, time and gender. Women and men need to be wary when engaging in impression management strategies when relying on low virtualness. Further, a text-based setting enables both women and men to engage in impression management strategies without facing backlash effects. For women relying on high virtualness, it would appear that in the long run, they should let their work speak for itself, while for men with a similar disposition, they can still engage in ingratiation, self-promotion and exemplification--in their emerging as leaders

Virtual team performance factors : a systematic literature review

Abstract: What constitutes a successful virtual team or not is of great importance considering their widespread use in business. Despite this, the failure rate of virtual teams remains relatively high compared to non-virtual teams. This study conducted a literature review that analysed 135 articles from peer-reviewed English journals. The results were coded into groups of factors and the impact of these groups on performance and their status in literature were determined. It was found that beneficial interpersonal characteristics such as empathy or behavioural flexibility were the most commonly identified positive factors in virtual team performance, followed by trust, and the appropriateness of functionality and richness of communication technology used by the team. The most significant failure factors in virtual teams were found to be the effects of geographic and temporal dispersion, the effects of cultural diversity, and negative leadership qualities such as bias