Companies that nurture a shared corporate culture based on specific corporate values can improve their performance. However, when companies expand globally, communicating and transferring these ...values can be challenging, particularly when there are significant linguistic and cultural differences. This qualitative study examined the case of a small Norwegian IT company that has put its two corporate values at the core of its activity, and how these values were transferred to a subsidiary in India. Drawing on the concept of recontextualization and socialization theory, the study investigates the following: (1) how the corporate values were transferred, recontextualized and renegotiated in the Indian subsidiary; (2) how those values were implemented through a set of socialization mechanisms. Our main findings reveal how the Indian leaders actively recontextualized the values into prevailing cultural practices in India, and how senior employees were engaged in the value transfer process. Moreover, this article outlines how a small company without a formal HR department and with no expatriates to guide the process can use soft control mechanisms related to more formalized and structured HR practices to implement the headquarters' values. Additionally, the article discusses the theoretical and practical implications of the findings.
Contemporary teams often face complex problem-solving tasks. We theorized that two individual differences previously neglected in team research (cognitive motivation and maximizing) would be helpful ...for teams facing such situations. We tested this assertion on 81 teams participating in an escape-room simulation in which teams were locked into a pre-arranged room and had to solve various complex problems to escape the room as quickly as possible. The findings show that the average of the team members’ cognitive motivation had a positive direct relation to team performance, while maximizing had a positive indirect relation to team performance via cooperation.
The employee flexibility desired in changing and uncertain business environments is amplified in small business settings. How can small business leaders facilitate the employee flexibility needed in ...this context? In the present study, we proposed that mastery goal-oriented leaders who are concerned with learning and competence development would create a work climate that promoted employee flexibility in their firms. We tested our hypotheses with multi-wave, multi-level data collected from leaders and employees in 141 small accounting firms in Norway. Findings revealed that leaders’ mastery goal orientation (MGO) was positively related to employee flexibility through a work climate that encouraged learning and development (a mastery climate). Yet, we also found that leaders’ MGO was negatively related to employee flexibility through a work climate that emphasized the expectations to be adaptive and flexible (an adaptability climate). Taken together, our study suggests that leaders’ mastery goal orientation may fuel employee flexibility when encouraging flexible-related behavior yet backfire when they signal that the same behavior is expected.
Team psychological safety, as a shared perception, is persistently found to be important for team performance. However, team members may not necessarily agree on the level of safety within the team. ...What happens when team members have dispersed perceptions of team psychological safety? Through a survey-based study involving 1,149 members of 160 management teams, we found that, not only is the level of team psychological safety positively related to team performance, but also that sharedness among team members (team psychological safety climate strength) moderates this relationship. The more team members agree on the level of team psychological safety, the stronger the effect of team psychological safety on team performance. Further, having at least one member who perceives the team as psychologically safe may lift team performance in a team of low psychological safety. We discuss theoretical and practical implications of looking beyond average levels of team psychological safety for building high-performing teams.
Cut Me Some Slack Sverdrup, Therese E.; Schei, Vidar
The Journal of applied behavioral science,
12/2015, Volume:
51, Issue:
4
Journal Article
Peer reviewed
This article examines the functioning of team charters in teamwork. We argue that the psychological contract literature serves as a theoretical foundation for understanding team charters. We examine ...what types of psychological contracts are established and developed during interactions between team members and whether these psychological contracts are related to team functioning. Through in-depth interviews and objective performance measures, we find some distinct patterns of psychological contracts that can be related to team functioning. Our results indicate that teams may benefit from early and explicit discussions about standards for work effort and work quality, and about the importance of being tolerant with each other. More particularly, we find that teams that are able to “cut each other some slack,” that is, the ability to live with short-term imbalances in give-and-take relationships, are more functional teams.
The strategic change literature underscores the risk of loss of trust during change but does not address how trust can be restored once compromised. We conduct an inductive longitudinal study of an ...organization undergoing post-merger integration and examine how management worked to restore employee trust after a conflictual change process. We introduce the psychological contract perspective, which emphasizes relational explanations for loss of trust. We show that repairing trust can be conceptualized as a renegotiation of the psychological contract and develop a three-stage model of trust repair. In contrast to extant models of trust restoration, which emphasize diagnosis, explanation, penance, and reform, our model attends to relational dynamics that may emerge in the context of organizational change, with heightened uncertainty and ambiguity, and highlights the importance of restoring balance and renegotiating the contractual basis of the relationship.
PurposeThis paper examines the relationship between chief executive officers' (CEOs') leadership behaviors (consideration and initiating structure) and firm and individual performance (i.e. ...profitability, affective commitment and employees' willingness to change) in small and medium-sized firms (SMEs) that need to adapt to changing environments.Design/methodology/approachSurvey data was collected from SMEs (28 firms, 235 employees) in the accounting industry along with objective performance register data (profit and return on assets). The predicted model was tested with multilevel structural equations modeling (MSEM) using a maximum likelihood estimator.FindingsThe CEO leadership behavior of initiating structure was positively related to firms' profitability, while the CEO leadership behavior of consideration was positively related to employees' willingness to change and affective commitment.Practical implicationsSmall accounting firms typically offer standard services that are now being replaced by digital solutions. These firms have an incentive to offer new services, such as business advisory services. Therefore, leaders should embrace the duality of consideration and initiating structure to gain employees' willingness to change and optimize overall firm performance.Originality/valueThe paper contributes to leadership literature by examining a novel context (CEO consideration and initiation of structure in SMEs in uncertain environments) using a combination of firm performance measures (e.g. objective outcomes at the firm level and employees' willingness to change as a new measure at the individual level). In addition, it reports a comprehensive test of the full model using MSEM, the findings of which demonstrate the importance of dual leadership behaviors for CEOs.
Teams are increasingly relied on to manage and adapt to a changing world. Previous studies have found adaptive teams to be less susceptible to disruptive events. In this study, we test whether or not ...the development of a team charter 2 weeks prior to a given task increases a team's ability to adapt to disruptions and overall performance. We find that teams that develop team charters are better able to handle disruptive events, which in turn increases their performance.
Team emergent states are properties that develop during team interactions and describe team members' attitudes and feelings (e.g., cohesion). However, these states' emergent nature has largely been ...neglected, as most studies do not examine the temporality of team phenomena. We review longitudinal studies on team emergent states and demonstrate that a majority of papers reveal their temporal dynamics but offer no universal patterns as to how such states emerge. The review reveals common variables related to temporal dynamics and highlights the importance of studying the development of team emergent states to enhance our knowledge of their causal directions, antecedents, and outcomes. We suggest that future research should clarify the concept of team emergent states, connect theories to research on temporal dynamics, adopt more qualitative approaches to answer “how” and “why” questions, and improve research designs to study meaningful forms of change. Lastly, we present practical implications for the HR field.
•We review the empirical literature on temporal dynamics of team emergent states.•About two thirds of 115 papers reveal how team emergent states may change.•We find no universal pattern across studies as to how team emergent states develop.•We show the importance of studying the emergent nature of team emergent states.•We suggest four areas for further research on the dynamics of team emergent states.
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