109,117 research outputs found
Communication network dynamics in a large organizational hierarchy
Most businesses impose a supervisory hierarchy on employees to facilitate
management, decision-making, and collaboration. In contrast, routine
inter-employee communication patterns within workplaces tend to emerge more
naturally, as a consequence of both supervisory relationships and the needs of
the organization. Scholars of organizational management have proposed theories
relating organizational trees to communication dynamics and measures of
business performance. Separately, network scientists have studied the
topological structure of communication patterns in different types of
organizations. However, the nature of the relationship between a formal
organizational structure and emergent communications between employees remains
unclear. In this paper, we study associations between organizational hierarchy
and communication dynamics among approximately 200,000 employees of a large
software company in May 2019. We propose new measures of communication
reciprocity and new shortest-path distances for trees to characterize the
frequency of messages passed up, down, and across the organizational hierarchy.
By dividing the organization into 88 teams -- organizational trees rooted at
the senior leadership level -- we identify distinct communication network
structures within and between teams. These structures are related to the
function of these teams within the company, including sales, marketing,
engineering, and research. We discuss the relationship of routine employee
communication patterns to supervisory hierarchies in this company, and
empirically evaluate several theories of organizational management and
performance
Non-Technical Individual Skills are Weakly Connected to the Maturity of Agile Practices
Context: Existing knowledge in agile software development suggests that
individual competency (e.g. skills) is a critical success factor for agile
projects. While assuming that technical skills are important for every kind of
software development project, many researchers suggest that non-technical
individual skills are especially important in agile software development.
Objective: In this paper, we investigate whether non-technical individual
skills can predict the use of agile practices. Method: Through creating a set
of multiple linear regression models using a total of 113 participants from
agile teams in six software development organizations from The Netherlands and
Brazil, we analyzed the predictive power of non-technical individual skills in
relation to agile practices. Results: The results show that there is
surprisingly low power in using non-technical individual skills to predict
(i.e. explain variance in) the mature use of agile practices in software
development. Conclusions: Therefore, we conclude that looking at non-technical
individual skills is not the optimal level of analysis when trying to
understand, and explain, the mature use of agile practices in the software
development context. We argue that it is more important to focus on the
non-technical skills as a team-level capacity instead of assuring that all
individuals possess such skills when understanding the use of the agile
practices.Comment: 18 pages, 1 figur
Virtual Leadership: Required Competencies for Effective Leaders
There are countless books, articles, and resources available which attempt to identify the competencies and qualities of effective leaders. Traditionally, leaders have been at the center of a community, be it work, church, or social groups. In these communities, face-to-face meetings and close personal interaction have dominated the way leaders interact with their members. However, with the advent of the internet and the host of communication tools that followed, teams today are becoming increasingly dispersed and diverse. Studies are now being done to understand how leadership has or should evolve in order to meet the changing needs and demands of these new and different communities. Some argue that leadership in the virtual environment is simpler as fewer tools are available to virtual leaders. Others may argue that access to fewer tools makes virtual leadership more complex and challenging than traditional leadership.
This paper will explore leadership in virtual settings and how it’s changing as more teams move away from traditional team environments. I’ll review the responsibilities and roles of virtual leaders in an effort to better highlight the core competencies needed in today’s virtual settings. I’ll also look at competencies required of global virtual leaders and I’ll address how these competencies can be cultivated to ensure leaders are more effective in leading teams in these new environments
Achieving high performance outcomes through trust in virtual teams
Developing trust among team members is critical for achieving high performance outcomes. Recently, global business operations necessitated working in a team environment with colleagues outside traditional organizational boundaries, across distances, and across time zones. In this article, we discuss how human resource practices can support organizational initiatives when business operations mandate increased virtual teamwork. We examine the role of HR in enhancing relationship building and the development of trust among workers who may rarely, if ever, meet face-toface. Using research from teamwork, social exchange theory, and knowledge sharing, we discuss how four areas of human resources management—recruitment, training, performance appraisal, and compensation/reward— might combine with technology to facilitate the development of trust among virtual team members
Correct and Control Complex IoT Systems: Evaluation of a Classification for System Anomalies
In practice there are deficiencies in precise interteam communications about
system anomalies to perform troubleshooting and postmortem analysis along
different teams operating complex IoT systems. We evaluate the quality in use
of an adaptation of IEEE Std. 1044-2009 with the objective to differentiate the
handling of fault detection and fault reaction from handling of defect and its
options for defect correction. We extended the scope of IEEE Std. 1044-2009
from anomalies related to software only to anomalies related to complex IoT
systems. To evaluate the quality in use of our classification a study was
conducted at Robert Bosch GmbH. We applied our adaptation to a postmortem
analysis of an IoT solution and evaluated the quality in use by conducting
interviews with three stakeholders. Our adaptation was effectively applied and
interteam communications as well as iterative and inductive learning for
product improvement were enhanced. Further training and practice are required.Comment: Submitted to QRS 2020 (IEEE Conference on Software Quality,
Reliability and Security
SMEs: ERP or virtual collaboration teams
Small firms are indeed the engines of global economic growth. Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) play an important role to promote economic development. SMEs in the beginning of implementing new technologies always face capital shortage and need technological assistance. Available ERP systems do not fulfil the specific requirements of Small firms. SMEs has scarce resources and manpower therefore many SMEs don?t have the possessions to buy and operate an ERP System. On the other hand competition and competitiveness of SMEs have to be strengthened. This paper briefly reviews the existing perspectives on virtual teams and their effect on SMEs management. It also discusses the main characteristics of virtual teams and clarifies the differences aspects of virtual team application in SMEs. After outlining some of the main advantages and pitfall of such teams, it concentrates on comparing of ERP and virtual collaborative teams in SMEs. Finally, it provides evidence for the need of ?Software as a Service (SaaS)? where an application is hosted as a service provided to customers across the web for SMEs as an alternative of ERP. It has been widely argued that ERP disadvantage in SMEs such as administrative expenditure and cost, isolated structure, severe lack of software flexibility, insufficient support of SMEs business and high operating cost, lead SMEs to use virtual collaborative team which is net work base solution
Learning more from crossing levels: Investigating agility at three levels of the organization
Scholars have tried to explain how organizations can build agile teams by
only looking at one level of analysis. We argue in this short paper that
lessons can be learned from organizational science results explaining variance
on three different abstraction levels of organizations. We suggest agility
needs to be explained from organizational (macro), the team (meso), and
individual (micro) levels to provide useful and actionable guidelines to
practitioners. We are currently designing such studies and hope that they will
eventually result in validated measurements that can be used to prevent
companies from investing in the wrong areas when trying to move towards more
agility
Autonomous agile teams: Challenges and future directions for research
According to the principles articulated in the agile manifesto, motivated and
empowered software developers relying on technical excellence and simple
designs, create business value by delivering working software to users at
regular short intervals. These principles have spawned many practices. At the
core of these practices is the idea of autonomous, self-managing, or
self-organizing teams whose members work at a pace that sustains their
creativity and productivity. This article summarizes the main challenges faced
when implementing autonomous teams and the topics and research questions that
future research should address
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