Project and Organizational Antecedents of Effort Withholding in IT Project Teams

When individuals assigned to Information Technology (IT) projects do not work as hard as they could, effort withholding occurs. Effort withholding is defined as the likelihood that an individual will give less than full effort on a job-related task. While an extensive body of work demonstrates that effort withholding is prevalent in all types of teamwork, little attention has been paid to an IT project context. In this study, we surveyed 473 IT project managers to address two questions: 1) what are key IT project and organizational factors that influence effort withholding, and 2) which project management approaches can suppress it? Our results indicate that the size of the team, the perceived importance of the project, the degree of uncertainty in the project requirements, and the degree of self-interest (organizational ethical climate) all contribute to effort withholding, while internal integration (project coordination) techniques suppress it

NEUROSCIENCE AND MANAGEMENT: CHALLENGES FOR BEHAVIOuRAL RESEARCH IN ORGANIZATIONS

The objective of this paper is to explore how the application of neuroscience to management research can facilitate a better understanding of some issues concerning to people behaviour in organizations. In recent years, the ability of researchers to directly observe brain activity has increased tremendously. This paper presented extant neuroscientific findings and showed some examples on how they could be incorporated into management research. We present two studies on honesty and social loafing in teams to inform management researchers when and how neuroscientific methods can complement traditional empirical approaches such as interviews or surveys

Situated Information and Communication Moralities : An Investigation into the Personal Use of the Internet in the Office Workplace

Cette thèse remet en question la perception négative, dominante dans la littérature et largement répandue dans les organisations, de l'utilisation personnelle d'Internet au travail. Une étude de cas a été réalisée auprès d’environ 80 d’employés et superviseurs dans un bureau d’un département du gouvernement canadien. La thèse confirme que, non seulement ces employés de bureau transgressaient-ils régulièrement des règles explicites conçus pour cadrer l’utilisation des technologies d’information et de communication (TIC), ces comportements étaient largement tolérés au sein du département. L’analyse des pratiques et interactions quotidiennes a révélé une relation entre des gestionnaires et leur personnel basée sur une confiance réciproque, mais pas absolue. Il ressort une moralité située fondée sur la promotion du professionnalisme et le maintien de la productivité. Le relâchement de contraintes organisationnelles autour de l’utilisation de l’Internet à des fins personnelles est utilisé comme outil de gestion par les superviseurs et cette flexibilité accrue est bien accueillie par les employés pour des raisons à la fois pragmatiques et psychologiques. Une sondage, des entretiens approfondis avec un certain nombre d’employés et gestionnaires et l’observation participante ont révélé un désir de paraître professionnel malgré les activités non liées au travail; une perception généralisée de l’utilisation d'Internet comme compensation informelle pour temps et effort; et un sens partagé de confiance entre des salariés et leurs superviseurs, ce qui favorise la satisfaction au travail et productivité. Avec ces observations, on offre des éléments de réponse pour expliquer comment les employés de bureau négocient ce qui est acceptable en termes de leur utilisation d’Internet non liée au travail, et comment les gestionnaires justifient leur application subjective des règles à ce sujet. Finalement, la recherche montre que l'utilisation personnelle d’Internet au travail peut rapporter des bénéfices et ne devrait donc pas toujours être vu comme du "cyber-loafing" ou du "time banditry" comme la littérature l’a principalement représentée depuis que l’Internet est arrivé massivement sur les lieux du travail. La forme et la faisabilité de restrictions organisationnelles sur ces pratiques devront faire objet de réflexion dans le contexte de brouillage accru de frontières entre le travail et la vie personnelle des employés de bureau du 21e siècle.This case-study investigation challenges the negative perception by organizations and researchers towards the personal use of the Internet in the workplace. While confirming that office employees in the field site were breaking explicit rules governing the use of information and communication technologies (ICT), this thesis provides evidence of informal relations between managers and their staff built on a tacit toleration of rule-violation. Their daily practices and interactions revealed a relationship that was shown to satisfy the conditions of a situated morality in promoting desired occupational identities and relaxing organizational constraints. Survey results, interview responses and observations of about 80 office workers and supervisors in a Canadian government department uncovered a desire to appear professional in spite of the non-work-related activity; Internet use as an informal compensation for time and effort; and a shared sense of trust to foster job satisfaction and productivity. Through these findings, answers are offered to explain how office workers negotiate what is acceptable in terms of non-work-related Internet use, and how supervisors justify their subjective enforcement of rules. Lastly, the research showed that personal Internet use in the workplace can yield positive outcomes and should not always be seen as “cyber-loafing” or “time banditry” as the literature has predominantly portrayed it since the Internet age entered the workplace. Lastly, this thesis raises questions as to the value of employee monitoring and organizational restrictions amid the increasing blurring of work and personal lives of 21st Century office workers

Three essays on how social context shapes engagement online

Understanding online user engagement is a key challenge for social platforms that support the communal creation or transfer of knowledge and information. Engagement is not only a function of individual attributes but also the result of the social context that derives from platform choices. This dissertation presents several empirical examples of how social context shapes online engagement in social platforms such as social media or online communities. In the first chapter, I investigate how the social network structure influences Twitter users’ information sharing behavior. I reconcile contradictory theories of the diversity of information sharing on social media using data representative of the whole population of Twitter users. In the second chapter, I investigate how online community size impacts users’ platform engagement. By conducting a randomized field experiment on edX, I show a causal influence of community size on individual user’s knowledge-sharing behavior, retention and performance. In the third chapter, I examine how social learning impacts out-group users’ engagement in an online learning community in terms of language and culture. I broaden the scope of my research in this last chapter by studying a context that has received little attention in the platform engagement literature. I use an interdisciplinary multi-method approach in my research that includes social network analysis, randomized field experiment, and econometrics. This dissertation involves a combination of these methods to understand user-behavior in the social platform and introduce interventions to maximize the benefit for digital platform and users alike

COalitions in COOperation Networks (COCOON):Social Network Analysis and Game Theory to Enhance Cooperation Networks

Sie, R. L. L. (2012). COalitions in COOperation Networks (COCOON): Social Network Analysis and Game Theory to Enhance Cooperation Networks (Unpublished doctoral dissertation). September, 28, 2012, Open Universiteit in the Netherlands (CELSTEC), Heerlen, The Netherlands.IdSpace, SIK

The effect of shared leadership on workgroup creativity

Research on leadership typically assumes a single leader who has managerial authority over the group, unit or organisation. Shared leadership is an emerging concept of leadership as a group-level phenomenon. It builds on antecedents such as democratic leadership, semi-autonomous and self-managed work groups, participative decision-making and co-leadership that are typically studied as variations of leadership by a single leader. Shared leadership is seen as more distributed, informal and emergent than these. Recent empirical research shows shared leadership can have beneficial effects on a variety of group process and outcome variables. However, so far its effects on creativity have not been empirically examined. This is surprising, since creativity is an important response to increased competition and rapid change in the business environment. Much creativity research identifies important pre-requisites that are more likely to be found in shared than hierarchical leadership. Improved creativity may be one of the most valuable benefits of shared leadership. This study provides empirical evidence on this relationship from a naturalistic experiment in which student groups were allowed to self-manage over a three-month creative project. In assessing shared leadership, two methodological innovations were introduced. First, previous studies have either used aggregated measures of group performance, or more recently the measures of group ‘degree centrality’ (degree of hierarchy) or ‘density’ (degree of sharing) developed in Social Network Analysis research. However, none of these measures by themselves adequately captures the distinction between hierarchical and shared leadership, although the SNA measures are potentially more precise. Following recommendations of previous authors, this study explored the combined use of centrality and density to better reflect the underlying construct. A second refinement was to use a general construct of leadership based on Bass and Bass’s (2008) extensive literature review, rather than constructs such as transformational leadership that have a narrower theoretical base and tend to assume a hierarchical context. Results from items measuring sharing of Bass and Bass’s five ‘leadership functions’ were compared with a ‘global’ measure of leadership sharing. Creativity was assessed by a panel of judges who rated the groups’ creative outputs (movies), rather than the more common method of rating creativity in the work process. The results provide evidence for the hypothesised link between shared leadership and creativity that, although qualified by aspects of the study design, suggests further research is worthwhile. Implications for future research on both leadership and creativity are explored, along with consequences for the practice of management. The issues of how to best measure shared vs. hierarchical leadership, and how much a construct can reflect both forms of leadership, are of particular relevance to the future development of this field. In summary, this study offers the first evidence directly linking shared leadership to work group creativity, and suggests improvements to current methods for measuring the extent of leadership sharing in a group

Conceptualizing and supporting awareness of collaborative argumentation

In this thesis, we introduce “Argue(a)ware”. This is a concept for an instructional group awareness tool which aims at supporting social interactions in co-located computer-supported collaborative argumentation settings. Argue(a)ware is designed to support the social interactions in the content (i.e., task-related) and in the relational (i.e., social and interpersonal) space of co-located collaborative argumentation (Barron, 2003). The support for social interactions in the content space of collaboration is facilitated with the use of collaborative scripts for argumentation (i.e., instructions and scaffolds of argument construction) as well with the use of an argument mapping tool (i.e., visualization of argumentation outcomes in a form of diagrams) (Stegmann, Weinberger, & Fischer, 2007; van Gelder, 2013). The support for social interactions in the relational space of collaboration is facilitated with the use of different awareness mechanisms from the CSCL and the CSCW research fields (i.e., monitoring, mirroring and awareness notification tools). In this thesis, we examined how different awareness mechanisms facilitate the regulation of collaborative processes in the relational space of collaborative argumentation. Moreover, we studied how they affect the perceived team effectiveness (i.e., process outcome) and group performance (i.e., learning outcome) in the content space of collaboration. Thereby, we studied also the effects of the design of the awareness mechanisms on the application of the mechanisms and the user experience with them. In line with the design-based research paradigm, we attempted to simultaneously improve and study the effect of Argue(a)ware on collaborative argumentation (Herrington, McKenney, Reeves & Oliver, 2007). Through a series of design-based research studies we tested and refined the prototypes of the instructional group awareness tool. Moreover, we studied the ecological validity of dominant awareness and instructional theories in the context of co-located computer-supported collaborative argumentation. The underlying premise of the Argue(a)ware tool is that a combination of awareness and instructional support will result in increased awareness of collaboration, which will, in turn, mediate the regulation of collaborative processes. Moreover, we assume that successful regulation of collaboration will result in high perceived team effectiveness and the group performance in turn. In the first phase of development of the Argue(a)ware tool, we built support of the content space of collaborative argumentation with argument scaffold elements in a pedagogical face-to-face macro-script and an argument mapping tool. Furthermore, we extended the use of the script for supporting the relational space of collaboration by embedding awareness prompts for reflecting on collaboration during regular breaks in the script. Following, we designed two variations of the same pedagogical face-to-face macro-script which differ with respect to the type of group awareness prompts they used for supporting the relational space of collaboration i.e. behavioral and social. Upon designing the two script variations, we conducted a longitudinal, multiple-case study with ten groups of Media Informatics master students (n = 28, in groups of three or two, group=case, 4 sessions x70 min, Behavioural Awareness Script group= 5, Social Awareness Script group =5.) where each group was conceptualized as a case. Students collaborated every time for arguing to solve one different ill-structured problem and for transferring their arguments in the argument mapping tool Rationale. Thereby, we intended to investigate the effects of different awareness prompts on (a) collaborative metacognitive processes i.e., regulation, reflection, and evaluation (b) the relation between collaborative metacognitive processes and the quality of collaborative argumentation as well as (c) the impact of the two script variations on perceived team effectiveness and (d) what was experience with the different parts of the script variations in the two groups and how this fits into the design framework by Buder (2011). The quantitative analysis of argument outcomes from the groups yield no significant difference between the groups that worked with the BAS and the SAS variations. No significant difference between the script variations with respect to the results from the team effectiveness questionnaires was found either. Prompts for regulating collaboration processes were found to be the most successfully and consistently applied ones, especially in the most successful cases from both script variations and have influenced the argumentation outcomes. The awareness prompts afforded an explicit feedback display format (e.g. assessment of participation levels of self- and others) through discussion (Buder, 2011). The prompted explicit feedback display format (i.e., ratings of one’s self and of others) was criticized for running only on subjective awareness information on participation, contribution efforts and performance in the role. This resulted in evaluation apprehension phenomena (Cottrell, 1972) and evaluation bias (i.e., users may have not assessed themselves or others frankly) (Ghadirian et al., 2016). The awareness prompts for reflection and evaluation did reveal frictions in the plan making process (i.e., dropping out of the plan for collaboration) in the least successful groups. Problems with group dynamics (i.e., free-loading and presence of dominance) but were not powerful enough to trigger the desired changes in the behaviors of the students. The prompts for evaluating the collaboration in both script variations had no apparent connection to argumentation outcomes. The results indicated that dominant presence phenomena inhibited substantive argumentation in the least successful groups. They also indicated that the role-assignment influenced the group dynamics by helping student’s making clear the labor division in the group. In the second phase of development of the Argue(a)ware tool, the focus is on structuring and regulating social interactions in the relational space of collaborative argumentation by means of scripted roles and role-based awareness scaffolds. We designed support for mirroring participation in the role (i.e., a role-based awareness visualization) and support for monitoring participation, coordination and collaboration efforts in the role (i.e., self-assessment questionnaire). Moreover, we designed additional support for guiding participation in the role i.e., role-based reminders as notifications on smartwatches. In a between-subjects study, ten groups of three university students each (n = 30, Mage =22y, mixed educational backgrounds, 1x90min) worked with two variants of the Argue(a)ware for arguing to solve one ill-structured problem and transferring their arguments in the argument mapping tool Rationale. Next, to that, students should monitor their progress in their role with the role-based awareness visualization and the self-assessment questionnaire with the basic awareness support (role-based awareness visualization with the intermediate self-assessment) and the enhanced awareness support (additional role-based awareness reminders). Half of the groups worked only with the role-based awareness visualization and the self-assessment questionnaire (Basic Awareness Condition-BAC) while the other half groups received additional text-based awareness notifications via smartwatches that were sent to students privately (Enhanced Awareness Condition- EAC). Thereby, we tested the use of different degrees of awareness support in the two conditions with respect to their impact on a) self-perceived awareness of performance in the role and of collaboration and coordination efforts (measured with the same questionnaire at two time points), b) on perceive team effectiveness, c) group performance. We hypothesized that students in EAC will perform better thanks to the additional awareness reminders that increased the directivity and influenced their awareness in the role. The mixed methods analysis revealed that the awareness reminders, when perceived on time, succeeded in guiding collaboration (i.e., resulted in more role-specific behaviors). Students in the EAC condition improved their awareness over time (between the two measurements). These results indicated that enhanced awareness support in the form of additional guidance through awareness reminders can boost the awareness of students’ performance in the role as well as the awareness of their coordination and collaboration efforts over time by directing them back to the mirroring and monitoring tools. Moreover, students in EAC exhibited higher perceived team effectiveness than the students in BAC. However, no significant differences in building of shared mental models or performing in mutual performance monitoring were found between the groups. However, students in BAC and EAC did not differ significantly with respect to the formal correctness or evidence sufficiency of their group argumentation outcomes. Moreover, technical difficulties with the smartphones used as delivery devices for the awareness reminders (i.e., low vibration modus) hindered the timely perception of the reminders and thus their effect on participation. Finally, the questionnaire on the experience with the different parts of Argue(a)ware system indicated the need for exploring further media for supporting the awareness reminders to avoid the overwhelming effects of the multiple displays of the system and enhancing higher perceptiveness of the reminders with low interruption costs for other group members. The rather high satisfaction with the use of the role-based awareness visualization and the positive comments on the motivating aspects of monitoring how the personal success contributes to the group performance indicate that the group mirror succeeded in making group norms visible to group members in a non-obtrusive way. The high interpersonal comparability of performances without moderating the group ‘s interaction directly in the basic awareness condition was proven to be the favored design approach compared to the combination of group mirror and awareness reminders in the enhance awareness condition. In the third phase of development of Argue(a)ware, we focused on designing and testing different notification modes on different ubiquitous mobile devices for facilitating the next prototype of a notification system for role-based awareness reminders. Thereby, the aim of the system was again to guide students’ active participation in collaborative argumentation. More specifically, we focused on raising students’ attention to the reminders and triggering a prompter reaction to the contents of the reminders whilst avoiding a high interruption cost for the primary task (i.e., arguing for solving the problem at hand) in the group. These goals were translated into design challenges for the design of the role-based awareness notification system. The system should afford low interruptions, high reaction and high comprehension of notifications. Notification systems with this particular configuration of IRC values are known as "secondary display" systems (McCrickard et al., 2003). Next, we designed three low-fidelity prototypes for a role-based notification system for delivering awareness reminders: The first ran on a smartwatch and afforded text-based information with vibration and light notification modalities. The second ran on smartphone and afforded text-based information with vibrotactile and light-based notification modalities. Finally, the third prototype run on a smart-ring which afforded graphical- based (i.e. abstract light) information with and light and vibration notification modalities. To test the suitability of these prototypes for acting as “secondary display” systems, we conducted a within-subjects user study where three university students (n= 3, Mage=28, mixed educational background) argued for solving three different problem cases and producing an argument map in each of the three consecutive meetings (max 90min) in the Argue(a)ware instructional system. Students were assigned the roles of writer, corrector and devil`s advocate and were instructed to maintain the same role across the three meetings. In each meeting, students worked with a different role-based awareness notification prototype, where they received a notification indicating their balloon is not growing bigger after five minutes of not exhibiting any role-specific behaviors. The role-based awareness notification prototypes aimed at introducing timely interventions which would prompt students to check on their own progress in the role and the group progress as visualized by the role-based awareness visualization on the large display. Ultimately, this should prompt them to reflect on the awareness information from the visualization and adapt their behaviors to the desired behavior standards over time. Results showed that students perceived the notifications from all media mostly based on vibration cues. Thereby, the vibration cues on the wrist (smartwatch) were considered the least disruptive to the main task compared to the vibration cues on finger (smartwatch) and the vibration cues on the desk (smartphone). Students also declared that vibration cues on wrist prompted the fastest reaction i.e., attending to notification by interacting with the smartwatch. These results indicate that vibration cues on the wrist can be a suitable notification mechanism for increasing the perceived urgency of the message and prompting the reaction on it without causing great distraction to the main task, as studies previous studies showed before (Pielot, Church, & deOliveira, 2013; Hernández-Leo, Balestrini, Nieves & Blat, 2012). Based on very limited qualitative data on light as notification modality and awareness representation type no inferences could be made about its influence on the cost of interruption, reaction and comprehension parameters comprehensiveness. The qualitative and quantitative data on the experience with different media as awareness notification systems indicate that smartwatches may be the most suitable medium for acting as awareness notification medium with a “secondary display” IRC configuration (low-high-high). However, this inference needs to be tested in terms of a follow up study. In the next study, the great limitations of study (limited data due to low power and mal-structured measurement instruments) need to be repaired. Finally, the focus should be on comparing notification modalities of one medium (e.g., smartphone) based on a larger set of participants and with the use of objective measurements for the IRC parameter values (Chewar, McCrickard & Sutcliffe, 2004). Finally, we draw conclusions based on the findings from the three studies with respect to the role of awareness mechanisms for facilitating collaborative processes and outcomes and provide replicable and generalizable design principles. These principles are formed as heuristic statements and are subject to refinement by further research (Bell, Hoadley, & Linn, 2004; Van den Akker, 1999). We conclude with the limitations of the study and ideas for future work with Argue(a)ware

An investigation of factors that influence student and team outcomes in entrepreneurship education

This thesis investigates the impact of individual, team and pedagogical factors on individual and team level outcomes in the context of entrepreneurship education. Despite the growth in research focused on entrepreneurship education in recent decades, there are on-going concerns about methodological rigor within the domain. Furthermore, few researchers have explored the student team in entrepreneurship education. Drawing primarily on Social Cognitive Career Theory and the Input-Mediator-Output framework, this study explores the influence of factors such as entrepreneurial self-efficacy, entrepreneurial intentionality, creativity, and entrepreneurial experience on individual and student team outcomes. A series of four quantitative studies were conducted, drawing on 1,004 third-level students and 185 student teams. In synthesising the findings with extant knowledge, a definition and research framework for the student team in entrepreneurship education is presented. The key findings indicate that in entrepreneurship education, students with entrepreneurial experience have higher entrepreneurial intentionality and founding passion, while student teams with entrepreneurship experience are associated with better team processes, higher performance, and more innovative outcomes. Furthermore, entrepreneurial self-efficacy predicts entrepreneurial intentions, subject interest, and reduces social loafing. In addition, perceptions of creativity, creativity training, and supportive climates for innovation (team and institutional) are positive predictors of individual and team outcomes. The study provides a critical review of prominent entrepreneurship theories, and provides a contextual revision of an individual trait-based measure of entrepreneurial tendencies. By using novel operationalisations of key constructs the team-level studies, greater insight into team emergent states and misalignment is provided. It is the first study to examine cognitive team separation variables in context. Pedagogically, the four studies provide actionable insights for the educator in areas such as training, team selection, and mitigation of social loafing, thus enhancing the delivery of entrepreneurship education, and supporting a stronger ecosystem conducive to student entrepreneurial development

Preponderance of the Evidence versus Intime Conviction. A Behavioural Perspective on a Conflict between American and Continental European Law

Most apparent differences between US and continental law lose their relevance once one looks beneath the doctrinal surface and checks how doctrine plays itself out in concrete cases. One of the few exceptions is standards of proof. Not only distinguishes US law between "preponderance of the evidence" and "beyond a reasonable doubt". It even constructs proof differently. In the US, proof is an objective, science-like affair. On the continent, proof is holistic and subjective. The decision maker is called upon to form a personal conviction, and to take on personal responsibility for her assessment of the facts. What seems utterly mystic actually has a sound scientific base. Continental law capitalises on the power of intuition. Intuition relies on unconscious mental machinery. This apparatus processes huge amounts of information in almost no time. It is programmed to come up with an assessment even if the evidence is patently incomplete. It does so by multiple feedback loops. At the end of this procedure, evidence conflicting with the final decision is devalued, whereas evidence supporting the decision is given greater weight. While instrumental in making most of the available evidence, the mental mechanism is not error proof. One particularly troublesome implication precisely concerns standards of proof. Given the mechanism is designed to force a decision, one might be afraid that it mutes the difference between standards of proof. A more stringent standard would be neutralised by an even stronger devaluation of conflicting evidence. Happily an experiment shows that the concern is misplaced. A plausible explanation is this: the standard of proof instruction tags convicting an innocent defendant by a somatic marker. If this hypothesis could be proven true, the presumption of innocence would have been rescued by an emotion.standard of proof, law of evidence, comparative law; storytelling model, unconscious decision-making, consistency maximisation, coherence shift, somatic marker