SHARED TEAM EXPERIENCES AND TEAM EFFECTIVENESS: UNPACKING THE CONTINGENT EFFECTS OF ENTRAINED RHYTHMS AND TASK CHARACTERISTICS

This study explores the conditions under which shared team task-specific (STTS) experiences in crew-based arrangements may negatively influence team effectiveness.We suggest that the entrained rhythms featured in social entrainment theory act as a dual-edged sword with the potential to generate complacency detriments in addition to the commonly cited synchronization benefits. We argue that the manifestation and influence of the countervailing forces (i.e., synchronization and complacency) on the STTS experience—team effectiveness relationship will depend on salient task characteristics (i.e., frequency and difficulty). More specifically, frequently performed tasks create conditions for complacency tomanifest (generating an inverted-U shaped relationship between STTS experience—team efficiency), whereas infrequently performed tasks do not (generating a positive, linear relationship). We further this distinction by layering on task difficulty that, we posit, acts to amplify the respective negative and positive consequences. Analyses of archival data from 8,236 surgeries performed over one year at a large hospital located in the southwestern region of the United States were consistent with our hypotheses and 30 semi-structured interviews with operating room personnel added richness and precision to our theory. Ancillary analyses on patient post-surgery recovery rate yielded additional insights. Implications and future directions are discussed

SHARED TEAM EXPERIENCES AND TEAM EFFECTIVENESS: UNPACKING THE CONTINGENT EFFECTS OF ENTRAINED RHYTHMS AND TASK CHARACTERISTICS

This study explores the conditions under which shared team task-specific (STTS) experiences in crew-based arrangements may negatively influence team effectiveness.We suggest that the entrained rhythms featured in social entrainment theory act as a dual-edged sword with the potential to generate complacency detriments in addition to the commonly cited synchronization benefits. We argue that the manifestation and influence of the countervailing forces (i.e., synchronization and complacency) on the STTS experience—team effectiveness relationship will depend on salient task characteristics (i.e., frequency and difficulty). More specifically, frequently performed tasks create conditions for complacency tomanifest (generating an inverted-U shaped relationship between STTS experience—team efficiency), whereas infrequently performed tasks do not (generating a positive, linear relationship). We further this distinction by layering on task difficulty that, we posit, acts to amplify the respective negative and positive consequences. Analyses of archival data from 8,236 surgeries performed over one year at a large hospital located in the southwestern region of the United States were consistent with our hypotheses and 30 semi-structured interviews with operating room personnel added richness and precision to our theory. Ancillary analyses on patient post-surgery recovery rate yielded additional insights. Implications and future directions are discussed

An Exploration of Shared Leadership Emergence in Project Teams: A Form and Functional Analysis

Shared leadership refers to an emergent team property whereby leadership is distributed among team members rather than focused on a single designated leader. In general, research has found positive relationships between shared leadership and performance however, the construct of shared leadership itself remains elusive. Specifically, there has been no research examining the process by which individuals engage in shared leadership or how this process may change over time as a function of external demands. Accordingly, I conduct a stratified random sample, quasi-experimental design to test the influence of external pressures on the development of a shared leadership structure. First, I predict how multiple individuals emerge into leadership roles based on general and specific predictors of leadership functions in context within project teams. Using these various leadership indicators across functions, I test a predictive algorithm using 221 observations of individuals who are enrolled in an undergraduate-level strategy course at a large university in the Northeast United States. Second, I compute predictive scores to determine the leader role occupancy of team members and respective team leadership structures using hierarchical linear modeling techniques. Using a sample of 79 teams, predicted leadership models are compared with the observed leadership structure over time under conditions of a leadership design intervention. Changes in leadership structure as a function of the intervention and team performance levels are examined. Implications for research and practice are discussed