TEAM COMPOSITION, LEADERSHIP AND INFORMATION-PROCESSING BEHAVIOR A simulation game study of the locus-of-control personality trait

In this study, we relate the individual locus-of-control personality trait of team members to the team’s information gathering and processing behavior. We adopt a team information-processing approach arguing that a team’s information-processing capacity is a function of its composition with respect to the members’ locus of control and the leadership structure of the group. We develop models that go beyond analyzing simple main effects of differences in team locus-of-control composition. We hypothesize that (a) the impact of the team locus-of-control mean depends on the within-group locus-of-control diversity, and (b) the effect of both the team locus-of-control mean and its standard deviation is contingent upon the leadership structure of the group. The hypotheses were tested on 44 teams participating in an elaborate international management simulation over six time periods. As predicted, we find that teams with a high average internal locus-of-control score collect more information and make more informed decisions when the within-team locus-of-control spread is low, and when the team operates without a leader. The opposite is the case for teams with a high average external locus-of-control score. In addition, locus-of-control diversity induces team information search only in the case when the team has no leader. We also show that team financial performance is comparably affected by our focal independent team variables. On a general level, our results offer strong support for recent pleas to study theoretically relevant individual traits, use proper aggregation models and include structural moderator variables in team composition research.Economics ;

The Effect of Digital Maturity on Digital Innovation under Extreme Adversity

During the COVID-19 crisis, the already often announced digital revolution is speeded up considerably. With an offline lockdown, many enterprises move online to the extent feasible and viable. In this pre-registration, we formulate the benchmark hypothesis that for digitally mature businesses incremental digital innovation suffices for the turnaround prescribed by the lockdown. Less digitally mature businesses need radical digital innovation. With the latter being far more risky and likely to fail, the pre-lockdown level of digital maturity should be positively related to chances of survival and success. Next to this intuitive prediction, we develop an alternative narrative, arguing that digital maturity will turn out to be irrelevant. Moreover, we add entrepreneurial personality traits that we argue may operate as key moderators: Behavioral Approach System/Behavioral Inhibition System (BAS/BIS). We can benefit from a convenience sample of about 200 Dutch small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) that consulted a university-based SME Data Lab pre-lockdown, including a measure of their digital maturity. After the crisis, we will engage in follow-up data collection to test our predictions

Transformatie-agenda voor economie en bedrijfskunde

De faculteiten Economie en Bedrijfskunde gaan de komende tijd meer samenwerken, en zullen daarbij de maatschappelijke impact centraal stellen. Deze samenwerking is noodzakelijk vanwege de veranderende eisen die de maatschappij en het wetenschapsbeleid stelt aan de discipline

Policing opportunities and threats in Europe

Purpose – This paper aims to take stock and to increase understanding of the opportunities and threats for policing in ten European countries in the Political, Economic, Social, Technological and Legal (PESTL) environment. Design/methodology/approach – This study is part of the large EU‐funded COMPOSITE project into organisational change. A PESTL analysis was executed to produce the environmental scan that will serve as a platform for further research into change management within the police. The findings are based on structured interviews with police officers of 17 different police forces and knowledgeable externals in ten European countries. The sampling strategy was optimized for representativeness under the binding capacity constraints defined by the COMPOSITE research budget. Findings – European police forces face a long list of environmental changes that can be grouped in the five PESTL clusters with a common denominator. There is also quite some overlap as to both the importance and nature of the key PESTL trends across the ten countries, suggesting convergence in Europe. Originality/value – A study of this magnitude has not been seen before in Europe, which brings new insights to the target population of police forces across Europe. Moreover, policing is an interesting field to study from the perspective of organisational change, featuring a high incidence of change in combination with a wide variety of change challenges, such as those related to identity and leadership