Dental Students and Faculty Members’ Attitudes Towards Care for Underserved Patients and Community Service: Do Community‐Based Dental Education and Voluntary Service‐Learning Matter?

Peer Reviewedhttps://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/153543/1/jddj002203372014788tb05783x.pd

Shared language in the team network-performance association: Reconciling conflicting views of the network centralization effect on team performance

We reconcile two conflicting views of the network centralization effect on team performance. In one view, a centralized network is problematic because it limits knowledge transfer, making it harder for team members to discover productive combinations of their know-how and expertise. In the alternative view, the limits on knowledge transfer encourage search and experimentation, leading to the discovery of more valuable ideas. We maintain the two sides are not opposed but reflect two distinct ways centralization can affect a team’s shared problem-solving framework. The shared framework in our research is a shared language. We contend that team network centralization affects both how quickly a shared language emerges and the performance implications of the shared language that develops. We analyze the performance of 77 teams working to identify abstract symbols for 15 trials. Teams work under network conditions that vary with respect to centralization. Results indicate that centralized teams take longer to develop a shared language, but centralized teams also create a shared language that is more beneficial for performance. The findings also indicate that the highest performing teams are assigned to networks that combine elements of a centralized and a decentralized network

Collaborating at the Tower of Babel: The Meaning of Cooperation and the Foundations of Long-Term Exchange

This dissertation is the first to propose and validate a general process by which exchange partners arrive at a shared understanding of what actions constitute (vs. defection) in changing and complex environments, thereby making cooperation possible. Achieving cooperation in the face of incentives to defect is essential in organizations and markets. Past research has focused on the payoff structure and the resulting risk of defection as a determinant of cooperative outcomes but has failed to explain how exchange partners arrive at shared understandings of what actions constitute cooperation and defection, and why exchanges featuring the same payoff structure sometimes have different cooperative outcomes. I resolve this puzzle and explain how and when exchange partners can coordinate on the meaning of cooperation. I do so by advancing and testing a theory of shared coordination frameworks – developed through long-term exchange – that help exchange partners reach common interpretations of cooperation when unanticipated events inevitably occur. I then provide theoretical clarification for the prevalence of long-term exchange, by demonstrating the causal primary of shared frameworks in actors’ decisions to exchange with long-term partners. I validate these propositions using a novel experimental platform that is the first to manipulate participants’ coordination frameworks and disentangle their effect from the risk of defection and other correlates of long-term exchange. The results indicate that shared coordination frameworks dramatically increase the likelihood of successful cooperation in complex exchanges.Ph.D