Effects of Hierarchical Levels on Social Network Structures within Communities of Learning

Facilitating an interpersonal knowledge transfer among employees constitutes a key building block in setting up organizational training initiatives. With practitioners and researchers looking for innovative training methods, online Communities of Learning (CoL) have been promoted as a promising methodology to foster this kind of transfer. However, past research has only provided limited data from actual organizations and largely neglected characteristics that constitute a major obstacle to such collaborative processes, namely participants’ hierarchical levels. The current study addresses these shortcomings by providing empirical evidence from 25 CoL of an online training program, provided for 249 staff members of a global organization. Using social network analysis, we are able to show significant differences in participants’ network behaviour and position based on their hierarchical rank. This translates into higher in- and out-degree network ties, as well as centrality scores among participants from higher up the hierarchical ladder. Finally, based on a longitudinal analysis of all indicated network measures, our results indicate that the main trend develops predominately during the first half of the training program. By incorporating these insights into the implementation of future CoL, it is not only possible to anticipate participants’ behaviour. Our findings also allow to draw conclusions about how collaborative activities within CoL should be designed and facilitated, in order to provide participants with a valuable learning experience

Leader airtime management and team effectiveness in emergency management command and control (EMCC) teams

We investigated the relation between leader airtime management and team effectiveness in Emergency Management Command and Control (EMCC) teams. Leader airtime management concerns leaders’ interventions to structure who shares information when using opening and closing statements to respectively stimulate or reduce information sharing. We coded leaders’ airtime management statements across different meeting phases (structuring, information sharing, decision making) using video-recordings of 12 EMCC exercises involving two consecutive meetings each. Experts rated two components of team effectiveness: Team Situation Awareness (TSA) and Team Decision Making (TDM). We found that closing statements were more frequently used in the decision-making phase than in any other meeting phase. Also, leaders of teams with lower TSA used more opening statements in the decision-making phase of the first team meeting than leaders of teams with higher TSA. These results confirm the importance of the timing of leader airtime management for EMCC team effectiveness.Practitioner summary: We investigated leader airtime management and team effectiveness in EMCC teams. We video-coded 12 exercises; experts rated team effectiveness. In the decision-making phase, leaders use more closing statements, and leaders of less effective teams use more opening statements. Leaders are advised to adjust their airtime management to meeting phases