To Link or Not to Link? Multiple Team Membership and Unit Performance

Multiple team membership is common in today’s team-based organizations, but little is known about its relationship with collective effectiveness across teams. We adopted a microfoundations framework utilizing existing individual- and team-level research to develop a higher-level perspective on multiple team membership’s relationship with performance of entire units of teams. We tested our predictions with data collected from 849 primary care units of the Veterans Health Administration serving over 4.2 million patients. In this context, we found multiple team membership is negatively associated with unit performance, and this negative relationship is exacerbated by task complexity

THOSE WITH THE MOST FIND IT HARDEST TO SHARE: EXPLORING LEADER RESISTANCE TO THE IMPLEMENTATION OF TEAM-BASED EMPOWERMENT

We use a convergent parallel mixed methods approach to explore barriers to the successful implementation of a team-based empowerment initiative within the Veterans Health Administration. Although previous research has suggested that leaders often actively obstruct empowerment initiatives, little is known about the reasons behind and effects of such hindering. Using a longitudinal quasi-experimental design, we support a hypothesis that higher-status physician leaders are less successful than lower-status nonphysician leaders in implementing team-based empowerment. In parallel, we analyze qualitative data obtained through interviews conducted during early months of the teambased empowerment initiative to identify common themes for why and how leaders facilitated or obstructed implementation. Leader identity work and leader delegation were identified as themes explaining (1) why higher-status leaders struggled with the new empowering role and (2) how specific leader actions either facilitated or inhibited sharing of tasks and leadership. Results suggest that team-based empowerment creates a status threat for high-status leaders who then struggle to protect their old identity as someone with distinct professional capabilities, which in turn leads to improper delegation behavior. Therefore, in order for team-based empowerment to succeed, leaders may need to change their perceptions of who they are before they will change what they do

New Theoretical Directions in Multiple Team Membership Research: The Employee Experience

This symposium showcases multiple team membership (MTM) employee experiences research that examines critical individual and team-level outcomes (e.g., stress, performance, viability, citizenship behavior, and career-related outcomes) in the following two areas: (a) the experiences of MTM employees across their teams (e.g., teamwork quality, team leadership, team member exchange, identification, transactional attention systems), and (b) the experiences of MTM employees across their various roles (e.g., role ambiguity and variety). Our symposium consists of five papers that extend theory and investigate MTM-related phenomena at the within-individual, individual, and team/project levels of analysis using a variety of theoretical perspectives, research designs, contexts, methodologies, and analytical methods (i.e., archival, field-based, laboratory). We hope to provide a forum to generate new insights, foster discussion, and advance MTM research

Promoting Performance and Positive Organizational Environment Through Multiple Team Membership

Inspired by the Positive Organizational Scholarship Perspective—that is, committed to create and sustain work environments that support human potential, thriving, and wellbeing (e.g., Cameron et al., 2012)—with this symposium we aim to open up this black box and shed light on such complexity by giving answers to a pressing question: how can we design and manage an organizational MTM system that promotes both performance and a positive organizational environment conducive to individual and collective wellbeing and flourishing