Multiple Team Membership: A Theoretical Model of its Effects on Productivity and Learning for Individuals, Teams, and Organizations

While organizations strive to manage the time and attention of workers effectively, the practice of asking workers to contribute to multiple teams simultaneously can result in the opposite. We present a model of the effects of multiple team membership (MTM) on learning and productivity via the mediating processes of individual context switching, team temporal misalignment, and intra-organizational connectivity. These effects are curvilinear, with learning and productivity peaking at moderate levels of these mediating processes

Geographic dispersion in teams : its history, experience, measurement, and change

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Sloan School of Management, 2002.Vita.Includes bibliographical references.This electronic version was submitted by the student author. The certified thesis is available in the Institute Archives and Special Collections.This thesis begins with the simple argument that geographic dispersion has gone surprisingly unexamined despite its role as the domain-defining construct for geographically dispersed teams (a.k.a. "virtual teams"). The last few years have seen slow but steady growth in field studies of such teams, but our understanding of geographic dispersion and the role it plays in work is stillquite limited. The thesis attempts to open the "black box" of geographic dispersion, show that it is far from a new phenomenon in organizations, understand the ways in which it is experienced, propose ways in which it can be measured, and understand the effects of doing work at increasing degrees of dispersion. It does so through three studies which combine qualitative and quantitative methods, and draw on archival, survey, observational, and interview data. Study 1 uses rich archival data covering more than two centuries (1670-1950) of the life of one firm - i.e., the Hudson's Bay Company - to understand its far-flung managers' experience of dispersion. It shows that the managers experienced their dispersion through a combination of coordination, communication, isolation, and control challenges. It also serves as a "typifier," showing that modem "virtual" teams have deep historical roots. Study 2 proposes a multi-dimensional definition of dispersion, including spatial-temporal distance and configuration, as well as a series of new measures to capture those dimensions. It explores the measures and their relationship to communications frequency in a sample of 115 dispersed project teams from a Fortune 500 company.(cont.) Study 3 is based on field research with nine geographically dispersed internal consulting teams in a large, national humanitarian aid organization. It follows them from the inception to the completion of their work and compares two teams in detail. One team was moderately dispersed and one was a pilot for a more fully dispersed approach to the internal consulting projects. It finds that perceptions about timing and dispersion differ from more objective measures like those in Study 2. It also shows how dispersion is a challenge for team boundaries and calls for more attention to the weighting of different team effectiveness criteria. Keywords: geographic dispersion, teams, virtual teams, effectiveness, communications, history.by Michael Boyer O'Leary.Ph.D

Beyond Being There: The Symbolic Role of Communication and Identification in the Emergence of Perceived Proximity in Geographically Dispersed Work

We develop the concept of perceived proximity, understood as a symbolic representation of one's faraway coworkers. We build on Wilson et al. (2008), present new validated measures of perceived proximity, and compare how perceived proximity and objective distance relate to relationship outcomes between geographically dispersed work colleagues. Our results show strong support for a symbolic view of work relationships. Indeed, it is the symbolic meaning of proximity and not physical proximity itself that affects relationship outcomes. Also, the symbolic meaning of proximity is defined not by physical proximity, but by people's sense of shared identity and by their use of (mostly synchronous) communication media. Furthermore, we find that how the sense of proximity is symbolically constructed mediates the effects of communication and identity on relationship outcomes.Proximity ; distance ; geographically dispersed work ; virtual work ; teams ; relationships

Friends and Enemies Within: The Roles of Subgroups, Imbalance, and Isolates in Geographically Dispersed Teams

Research regarding geographically dispersed teams (GDTs) is increasingly common and has yielded many insights into how spatio-temporal and socio-demographic factors affect GDT functioning and performance. Largely missing, however, is research on the effects of the basic geographic configuration of GDTs. In this study, we explore the impact of GDT configuration (i.e., the relative number of team members at different sites, independent of the characteristics of those members or the spatial and temporal distances among them) on GDT dynamics. In a quasi-experimental setting, we examine the effects of configuration using a sample of 62 six-person teams in four different one- and twosite configurations. As predicted, we find that configuration significantly affects team dynamics – independent of spatio-temporal distance and socio-demographic factors. More specifically, we find that teams with geographically-based subgroups (defined as two or more members per site) have significantly less shared team identity, less effective transactive memory, more conflict, and more coordination issues. Furthermore, in teams with subgroups, imbalance (i.e., the uneven distribution of members across sites) exacerbates these effects; subgroups with a numerical minority of team members report significantly poorer scores on the same four outcomes. In contrast, teams with geographically isolated members (i.e., members who have no teammates at their site) outperform both balanced and imbalanced configurations

Multiple Team Membership: A Theoretical Model of Its Effects on Productivity and Learning for Individuals and Teams

Organizations use multiple team membership to enhance individual and team productivity and learning, but this structure creates competing pressures on attention and information, which make it difficult to increase both productivity and learning. Our model describes how the number and variety of multiple team memberships drive different mechanisms, yielding distinct effects. We show how carefully balancing the number and variety can enhance both productivity and learnin

Geographic Configuration Fluidity in Virtual Teams: Consequences for Individuals and Teams

As communications technologies become increasingly stable and secure, distributed virtual work is fast becoming a central component of how global organizations function (Caya, Mortensen & Pissoneault, 2013; Gibson, Huang, Kirkman & Shapiro, 2014). With U.S. virtual worker growth of over 100% in the past decade (Global Workplace Analytics, 2014) and an estimated 1.3 billion virtual workers worldwide (International Data Corporation, 2011), it is increasingly important for organizations and employees to effectively navigate this transformed work environment. Although work is becoming more and more virtual, our collective understanding of the effects of this change is still in its infancy. In a variety of articles across a range of domains, Organizational Behavior scholars have lamented the lack of clarity on whether existing, highly cited management theories wholly apply to virtual contexts (Bolino, Long & Turnley, 2015; Feldman & Ng, 2007; Grandey, 2015). Theories relating to interpersonal interactions, which often rely on synchronous communication, in person cues, and shared understandings, may operate differently in settings where individuals are separated by space, time, and technology. The goal of this symposium is to advance research on virtual work by illuminating new findings and theoretical developments within this emerging work context. The presentations in this symposium cross domains and methodologies to help build an understanding of how virtual work impacts employee status, voice, transactive memory, team creativity, and communication. Together, these presentations propose theories and offer practical implications that will advance our understanding of this increasingly popular business context