Team Learning: A Theoretical Integration and Review

With the increasing emphasis on work teams as the primary architecture of organizational structure, scholars have begun to focus attention on team learning, the processes that support it, and the important outcomes that depend on it. Although the literature addressing learning in teams is broad, it is also messy and fraught with conceptual confusion. This chapter presents a theoretical integration and review. The goal is to organize theory and research on team learning, identify actionable frameworks and findings, and emphasize promising targets for future research. We emphasize three theoretical foci in our examination of team learning, treating it as multilevel (individual and team, not individual or team), dynamic (iterative and progressive; a process not an outcome), and emergent (outcomes of team learning can manifest in different ways over time). The integrative theoretical heuristic distinguishes team learning process theories, supporting emergent states, team knowledge representations, and respective influences on team performance and effectiveness. Promising directions for theory development and research are discussed

How Supervisors Influence Performance: A Multilevel Study of Coaching and Group Management in Technology-Mediated Services

This multilevel study examines the role of supervisors in improving employee performance through the use of coaching and group management practices. It examines the individual and synergistic effects of these management practices. The research subjects are call center agents in highly standardized jobs, and the organizational context is one in which calls, or task assignments, are randomly distributed via automated technology, providing a quasi-experimental approach in a real-world context. Results show that the amount of coaching that an employee received each month predicted objective performance improvements over time. Moreover, workers exhibited higher performance where their supervisor emphasized group assignments and group incentives and where technology was more automated. Finally, the positive relationship between coaching and performance was stronger where supervisors made greater use of group incentives, where technology was less automated, and where technological changes were less frequent. Implications and potential limitations of the present study are discussed

Strategic HRM and Organizational Behavior: Integrating Multiple Levels of Analysis

[Excerpt] A few trends have emerged in the field of Strategic Human Resource Management (SHRM) over the past few years. First, and most obviously, has been the extensive effort to demonstrate a link between HRM practices and firm performance (Becker & Gerhart, 1996). Researchers such as Huselid (1995), MacDuffie (1995), Delery and Doty (1996), and Guthrie (2000) have published empirical studies showing a statistically significant linkage between HRM practices and some measures of organizational performance. A second trend has been to try to understand the mechanisms through which this relationship takes place. Authors such as Becker & Gerhart, (1996), Dyer and Reeves (1995), Guest, (1997) and Wright and Gardner (2003), have all called for research that uncovers some of the mediating relationships that must exist between the HRM practices and organizational performance. A final trend has been the recent interest in taking a multi-level approach to understanding SHRM. Wright and Boswell (2001) reviewed the SHRM literature and categorized this research as being differentiated along one dimension representing whether the focus was on single or multiple practices, and along a second dimension dealing with the unit of analysis, specifically the individual versus the group or organization. Ostroff and Bowen (2000) and more recently Bowen and Ostroff (2004) have developed the most extensive multi-level model of SHRM to date. Their theoretical approach argues that HR practices serve as communications mechanism signaling employees to engage in certain behaviors; relying on communications theory they contend that different aspects of HRM systems impede or facilitate this communication process. The purpose of this paper is related to these last two trends: we conceptually examine some of the mediating processes that might occur in the HRM – performance relationship, and try to make explicit their multilevel nature. In order to accomplish this, we will first explore the concept of variance, which is crucial to the analysis of any phenomena across multiple levels. We will show how virtually all existing SHRM research focuses on variance at one level of analysis while assuming constancy at other levels. We will next discuss the process through which HRM practices must act, and identify some of the relevant variables that have heretofore been virtually ignored in the empirical SHRM literature, specifically focusing on variance at different (unit vs. individual) levels of analysis. Finally, we will present some implications for theorizing and research in this area

What is Strategic Competence and Does it Matter? Exposition of the Concept and a Research Agenda

Drawing on a range of theoretical and empirical insights from strategic management and the cognitive and organizational sciences, we argue that strategic competence constitutes the ability of organizations and the individuals who operate within them to work within their cognitive limitations in such a way that they are able to maintain an appropriate level of responsiveness to the contingencies confronting them. Using the language of the resource based view of the firm, we argue that this meta-level competence represents a confluence of individual and organizational characteristics, suitably configured to enable the detection of those weak signals indicative of the need for change and to act accordingly, thereby minimising the dangers of cognitive bias and cognitive inertia. In an era of unprecedented informational burdens and instability, we argue that this competence is central to the longer-term survival and well being of the organization. We conclude with a consideration of the major scientific challenges that lie ahead, if the ideas contained within this paper are to be validated

Why organizational identification ‘matters’ as a communication variable: A state-of-the-art review of past, present, and future trends

The purpose of this paper is to examine the area of identification from an organizational communication perspective. In so doing, the author attempts to achieve three major goals. First is an examination of the concept of organizational identification, where the author examines what this concept means, how scholars have defined this concept, how both the definition and nature of identification have changed over the past several decades, and why both scholars and practitioners should be interested in issues of identification. Second, the author examines how scholars have studied issues of identification and how, methodologically, there seems to have been a shift in how one uncovers employee identification with one or more organizational targets (e.g. profession, organization, department, team). Finally, the author concludes with a detailed analysis of several gaps in the area of organizational identification as represented within the literature, as well as suggestions for future research and how the nature of organizations has perhaps forced scholars to re-think, re-conceptualize, and re-model what it truly means for an employee to “become identified.

Desegregating HRM: A Review and Synthesis of Micro and Macro Human Resource Management Research

Since the early 1980’s the field of HRM has seen the independent evolution of two independent subfields (strategic and functional), which we believe is dysfunctional to the field as a whole. We propose a typology of HRM research based on two dimensions: Level of analysis (individual/ group or organization) and number of practices (single or multiple). We use this framework to review the recent research in each of the four sub-areas. We argue that while significant progress has been made within each area, the potential for greater gains exists by looking across each area. Toward this end we suggest some future research directions based on a more integrative view of HRM. We believe that both areas can contribute significantly to each other resulting in a more profound impact on the field of HRM than each can contribute independently

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

Ethics and taxation : a cross-national comparison of UK and Turkish firms

This paper investigates responses to tax related ethical issues facing busines