Antecedents of Trust: Status and Power in Virtual Teams

Few empirical efforts have been made to observe hierarchical elements of leadership, namely status and power distinctively. Virtual teams as a form of geographically dispersed work arrangement offer significant opportunities for companies and organizations around the globe, but also pose additional challenges to the leadership and the team itself. Due to communication challenges status and power have special characteristics in virtual teams compared to traditional teams. In this investigation we examine how status and power of a leader impact trust building in virtual teams and in turn the team’s performance. The results revealed that status of a leader has a positive influence on trust in the leader, while power of a leader had no unique effect on followers’ reactions. As members of diverse cultures have different perceptions of leaders, we found a moderating effect of culture but not for team size

Power Control to the People? Private Consumers’ Acceptance of Smart Meters

The increasing diffusion of renewable energies which underlie significant daily and seasonal fluctuations increases grid operations’ complexity. For the effective use of renewable energies, innovative information and communication technologies (ICT) and concepts are necessary to efficiently balance power generation and consumption. An ICT-based innovation in this context is the smart metering technology. High-end smart meters, like advanced meter management (AMM) solutions, comprise a broad range of new services which are vital to an ICT-based energy system (eenergy) by enabling the bidirectional transfer of timely and reliable information between components of an energy system. However, to date the acceptance of smart meters has not been investigated. Using a context-specific extension of the Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) of Davis (1989), our study investigates smart meters’ acceptance based on the attitude toward use and the salient beliefs perceived usefulness, perceived ease of use, and subjective control. Results support the theorized relationships indicating that the attitude toward use fully mediates the relationship between perceived usefulness, perceived ease of use, and subjective control on intention to use. In the conclusion a detailed discussion of the study’s findings is provided and the implications for research, practice, and policy are highlighted

Exploring the Role of Control – Smart Meter Acceptance of Residential Consumers

The increasing diffusion of renewable energies which underlie significant daily and seasonal fluctuations increases grid operations’ complexity. For the effective use of renewable energies, innovative information and communication technologies (ICT) and concepts are necessary to efficiently balance power generation and consumption. An ICT-based innovation in this context is the smart metering technology allowing bidirectional transfer of information between energy systems’ components. Using a context-specific extension of the Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) of Davis (1989), our study investigates smart meters’ acceptance based on the attitude toward use and the salient beliefs perceived usefulness, perceived ease of use, and subjective control. Results support the theorized relationships indicating that the attitude toward use fully mediates the relationship between perceived usefulness, perceived ease of use, and subjective control on intention to use. In the conclusion a detailed discussion of the study’s findings is provided and the implications for research, practice, and policy are highlighted

The Role of Culture and Personality in the Leadership Process in Virtual Teams

Leadership is a key challenge of virtual teams. A particular leadership style, namely inspirational leadership, which is a sub-category of transformational leadership, has been found to be especially suited for the study of highly diverse teams. Virtual team leaders increasingly have to manage global virtual teams that contain members from different cultural backgrounds and value orientations. This study answers a call of incorporating the role of individual-level attributes and dispositions as moderators of inspirational leadership effects, considering cultural and individual values of followers in a virtual setting. Results reveal the importance of inspirational leadership influencing attitudinal outcomes (trust in leadership and cohesion). Furthermore, the effect of leadership is shown to be dependent on cultural as well as personal values of followers indicating the need to consider individual factors in the process of managing virtual teams

Conflict, Value Diversity, and Performance in Virtual Teams

While most studies investigating culture in the context of conflict in teams have been using culture dimensions such as collectivism this study centers on another measurement of culture, namely individual values. In this investigation we examined how individual value diversity influences the relationship between team conflict and performance in virtual teams. Assessing two types of conflict, namely task and process conflict, the results revealed that task conflict had no unique effect beyond the impact of process conflict. Contrary to previous findings relating to group culture, this study found that value diversity has no influence on the relationship between conflict and performance in virtual teams. While individuals come to groups with their own values, they may be less powerful predictors of their behavior in groups where there are strong prevailing group values and norms to act a certain way

A Multi-Level View of the Antecedents and Consequences of Trust in Virtual Leaders

Although trust is widely acknowledged as critical to virtual teams, little is known regarding the causes and consequences of trust in leaders of virtual teams. This paper examines the antecedents and consequences of trust in virtual team leaders. Using survey and archival data from a massively multiplayer online game (MMOG), this study’s findings show that trust in the leader is affected by team members’ use of synchronous communication and breadth of communication with leaders as well as team members’ distance from each other. Furthermore, reasoning that team size and culture create a shared context qualifying team members’ experiences, we found that team size and collectivistic values diminished the benefits of synchronous communication and breadth of communication, respectively. The findings also revealed that trust in leaders had a positive relationship to team performance. Detailed discussion of the findings is provided in the conclusion of the paper

MMOGs as Emerging Opportunities for Research on Virtual Organizations and Teams

Massively Multiplayer Online Games (MMOG) offer new promising opportunities to research virtual organizations and teams. The characteristics of MMOGs allow researchers to obtain objective data from a large and multi-national population. Lasting over months or even years, MMOGs facilitate longitudinal studies and ensure a high involvement of participants. Moreover, collecting data from online surveys and game servers keeps the costs of MMOG studies low. In this paper, we illustrate how research in MMOGs can utilize these opportunities to overcome some limitations of traditional research environments. Further we discuss the diverse information and communication technology (ICT) usage in MMOGs and therefore argue that research in MMOGs can provide a glimpse into the future application of ICT in real life organizations

Conflict, Conflict Management and Performance in Virtual Teams

Although conflict is widely acknowledged as critical to virtual teams, little is known regarding the interplay between different types of conflict and the corresponding conflict management styles in virtual teams. This paper examines the influence of relationship as well as process conflict on team performance together with adequate conflict management styles. Using survey and archival data from a massively multiplayer online game (MMOG), this study’s findings show that team performance is strongly influenced by conflict and that this relationship is moderated by conflict management style. While relationship conflict negatively influenced team performance, process conflict positively influenced performance. Furthermore, we found competitive conflict management moderated the relationship of process conflict and performance while relationship conflict was moderated by collaborative conflict management. Detailed discussion of the findings is provided in the conclusion of the paper

Personen mit Migrationshintergrund in der NAKO Gesundheitsstudie – soziodemografische Merkmale und Vergleiche mit der autochthonen deutschen Bevölkerung

BACKGROUND: Persons with a migration background (PmM) as a population group usually differ from the autochthonous population in terms of morbidity, mortality, and use of the health care system, but they participate less frequently in health studies. The PmM group is very heterogeneous, which has hardly been taken into account in studies so far. OBJECTIVES: Sociodemographic characteristics of PmM in the NAKO health study (age, sex, time since migration, education) are presented. In addition, it is examined through an example whether migration background is related to the use of cancer screening for colorectal cancer (hemoccult test). METHODS: Data of the first 101,816 persons of the NAKO were analyzed descriptively and cartographically. The migration background was assigned on the basis of the definition of the Federal Statistical Office, based on nationality, country of birth, year of entry, and country of birth of the parents. RESULTS: Overall, the PmM proportion is 16.0%. The distribution across the 18 study centers varies considerably between 6% (Neubrandenburg) and 33% (Düsseldorf). With 153 countries of origin, most countries are represented in the NAKO. All variables show clear differences between the different regions of origin. In the hemoccult test, persons of Turkish origin (OR = 0.67) and resettlers (OR = 0.60) have a lower participation rate. PmM born in Germany do not differ in this respect from the autochthonous population (OR = 0.99). CONCLUSION: PmM in the NAKO are a very heterogeneous group. However, due to the sample size, individual subgroups of migrants can be studied separately with respect to region of origin