Virtual Team Dynamics

Deep level Factors

Takes time to recognize , the affects of deep level differences take time to develop has the strongest positive impacts on team performance.

Organizational culture

refers to the shared values and beliefs and norms of an organization - "organizational culture affects both the internal operations of the organization and how it relates to its external environment."

Three approaches to rewarding performances

individual team organizational

knowledge base pay

rewards employees for depth of knowledge in an area is a useful organizational tool for developing and retaining technical experts.

Three types of teams

parallel process project

Inflation bias

refers to a positive evaluation given when raters expect to have to present feedback to others

parallel teams

typically part time temporary teams that supplement the regular work system and perform problem solving and improvement functions

Misperception

"People from different backgrounds hold different values and respond to situations differently. - These differences in values and behavior can be threatening to people's sense of what is appropriate. To deal with the psychological anxiety, people may either ignore or misinterpret the contributions of minority members. (Minority in this case means people with different backgrounds from those of most group members.) - Over time, minority members respond to this by contributing less to group communication. The lack of power these members experience causes them to have less impact on the group's decisions (Tolbert et al., 1995).

"Diversity as a Cognitive Process"

"the problem of diversity is that we misperceive people. People prejudge others on the basis of their categories, rather than on how others actually behave. This causes people to treat others inappropriately, to have poorer communications, and to dislike and distrust others without getting to know them"

Emotional Distrust

- The dividing of a group into in-group and out-group members creates social friction. Power conflicts create a climate of distrust and defensive communication. - Rather than forming a social unit, the team may become subdivided into cliques or divided along faultlines " " Emotional distrusts prevents groups from forming the social bonds necessary to create a cohesive team."

Reward system

- have the potential to influence the motivation of individual team members, the level of coordination in the team, and the quality of the group process."

Context to supporting diversity

- increasing awareness:The goal is to increase knowledge and awareness of diversity issues, - improving group process skills: skill-based diversity programs improve people's interpersonal skills to better manage diversity issues. - creating a safe environment:encourage communication and collaboration with all team members - improving organizational issues: team identification

Failure to use team resources

- the way a group treats a minority only reduces how much they contribute to the team "Over time, minority members become less committed to the team's goals and less motivated to perform for the team This in turn is used to justify not rewarding minorities or failing to provide them with opportunities and support to achieve more." - "Diversity has been shown to affect turnover and socialization in work teams (McGrath et al., 1995). Minority members are more likely to have higher turnover in a team. It is easier for a team to socialize new members into the team if their characteristics are similar to those of the majority."

behavioral measures examples

- they can be used for any type of job - the rater can deal with factors outside of employees control and impact results - can encourage positive employee behavior that is not direclety related to the job. - encourages the rater to focus on the targets behavior rather then personality.

Types of evaluations

- traditional individual evaluations: the supervisor appraises an individual employee - team member evaluations:team members instead of supervisors conduct evaluation - evaluations of the team: the supervisor instead of the team evaluates the entire team. - happens when work is interdependent.

four basic rules of brainstorming

1. criticism are strictly forbidden 2. free thinking and wild notions are encouraged 3. numerous iras are sought 4. combing and building on the ideas of others is good.

Team Culture

A team's culture is the shared perception of how the team should operate to accomplish its goals. The team's culture provides a way to unite team members who have different views of teamwork and teamwork practices.

Characteristics of transitional teams

Cultural distance: High cultural distance creates problems because team members have difficulty interpreting the meaning of other team members' behaviors, so the team has difficulty communicating and interacting. Cultural identity: we have multiple identities the one that is most salient is based on the situation the two main cultural dimensions that affect these teams are individualism/collectivism, and status or power distance. - to be successful, transnational teams must deal with differences in culture that affect how people work and communicate in teams

Types of diversity

Demographic: gender,ethnicity , age psychological: Values,personality, knowledge organizational:tenure, occupation, status

group creativity

Groups may develop negative or critical communication climates that discourage creativity." - " Interpersonal conflicts in groups may discourage creativity." - "conformity pressure and domineering members can hurt creativity in the group process."

Problems in diversity

Misperception Emotional Distrust failure to use team resources

team performance measurement

The measurement should focus on the results of the teas performance not on the internal activities of the team because the team should be free to accomplish its goals the way it wants to. - it is better yo use behavioral to outcome based measures that can be quantifies and clearly defined.

Power and status

The power dimension is the degree to which people in a culture accept unequal power. High power:"In high-power cultures, large power and status differences are acceptable. In such cultures, great respect and deference are shown to higher-status people, and challenging authority feels uncomfortable. On teams, members are more willing to accept the leader's decisions." - It makes team members more willing to accept the team leader's view, which is a lack of independence that reduces team creativity" Low Power: "In low-power cultures, people are less willing to accept the authority of others on the basis of the positions they hold in an organization. Their viewpoint is more egalitarian. Team members take initiative and do not automatically accept management directives. - Members' more open communication style creates more conflicts. Their sense of independence from the organization's authority may lead the team into decisions that are not sensitive to the politics of the organization."

Uncertainty and risk avoidance

Uncertainty is the degree to which people feel threatened by ambiguous situations or change. Risk avoidance cultures: social harmony and stability are valued. People want to have rules and norms that define appropriate behavior, and they prefer things to stay the same so they know what is expected of them. Risk taking cultures: They tend to be action oriented and do not plan changes in advance. People in these cultures are open and willing to try out new ideas. Conflict is more likely to be viewed as positive because it encourages new ideas and change.

Surface Level factors

affect people more immediately people who have similar surface level factors are more likely to be initially attacked to each other

créativité techniques

are approaches to help people play with idea and view problems from alternative perspectives

profit sharing programs

are based on meeting probability targets for the organizations

Team and organizational rewards systems

are better at encouraging teamwork and appropriate when tasks are highly interdependent. - when teams are rewarded collectively the team has a high incentive to deal with members that are not doing there fair share. - team rewards may encourage social loafing discourage the performance of good workers and create inequity problems

Transitional Teams

are composed of individuals from different cultures working on activities that span national border - they are formed through a global company or through alliances among companies in different geographical places. - the main challenge is to learn how to integrate this cultural diversity into a functioning unit Deal with three important concurs for global companies: - Local responsiveness - global efficiency - organizational learning

Individual reward systems

are good for motivating high performances but may discourage cooperation and teamwork. - not rewarding individuals can reduce the motivation of high performing team members.

Cross- functional teams

are highly valuable because they bring together knowledge and expertise that exits throughout and organization. "However, cross-functional teams are often difficult to operate because the competing viewpoints that are necessary for creativity create conflicts that hurt team relationships. The diversity of viewpoints in these teams is crucial for their success, but success only happens if team members are willing to share their knowledge and learn from each other " "The participants retain their individual values and differences while forming an agreement that uses these differences in a synergistic way"

Multirater performance evaluations

are more reliable then supervisor only evaluations - those are being evaluated are able to find feedback from multiple sources - may be used for a student team project -

creativity relevant skills

are the appropriate cognitive styles that encourage creativity and knowledge about creativity techniques. cognitive styles include: ability to break out of established mental states, appreciate complexity , suspend judgment and use broad categories to view issues.

cognitive interfernece and social inhibitors

are the main reason why group interaction leads to less creativity then when individuals are alone - cognitive interfrefence is the disruption of thinking that occurs while one is waiting for their turn to speak. - "Social inhibitors relate to anxiety about how others will evaluate one's ideas and to social loafing, which is the reduction in motivation caused by one's performance being hidden in a groups output.

domain relevant skills

are the skills knowledge and talent people have in a particular application area.

halo affect

describes how team members view the success and failure of teams. - when teams are successful team members view success as caused by the team - when unsuccessful they tend to blame individual members for the failure.

individual creativity

develops from an interaction of personal and situational factors can be affected by: "Individual creativity may be limited by the use of extrinsic rewards, communication issues, evaluation apprehension, and being stuck in one's paradigms

The trait approach

diversity affects how people act, people with different backgrounds have different values skills and personalities these differences affect how they interact with a team.

Diversity as a social process

diversity problems arise from social competition and conflict "Diversity affects group interaction primarily by creating power differentials within the group " "Power differences affect group cohesion because individuals with similar status are more likely to interact with one another and form friendships " "Power differences may also lead diverse teams to have more internal conflicts because of conflicting goals and increased miscommunication. .

skill based pay

encourages employees to learn new skills, which makes them more flexible and increases understanding of the work process.

Individualism and collectivism

individualism culture: People seek individual achievement and recognition and might have trouble committing to team goals." Collectivism:people value the ties between people. People are expected to look after one another. Self-interest is subordinate to the interests of the social group or team."

Dimensions of organizational culture

individualism vs collectivism power and status uncertainty and risk avoidance

hybrid culture

is both a set of rules about how to act and a set of expectations about how a team should operate.

gain sharing

link pay to collective results at a level smaller than the entire organization "This can make them more motivating, given that fewer employees are involved" "they provide a way to give incentives to teams when jobs are interconnected and individual incentive programs cannot be used. Gain-sharing programs are powerful incentives that encourage teamwork throughout an organization

Reciprocity bias

occurs when people feel obligates to give positive ratings after they have received positive ratings from others.

The expectations approach

the beliefs people have about what other people are like. These expectations affect how they interact with people from different backgrounds.

Creating an affective transitional team

the main challenge is to understand the meanings of the behaviors of other team members and to create a mental made on how to operate a team. Strategies for developing an effective transitional team are: - spending more time intentionally to start the team - training the team - using strong leadership Transnational teams should schedule face-to-face meetings early in their existence to develop personal relationships and a shared understanding among team members " should spend more effort developing project plans and other types of project management structures. Face-to-face meetings need to be scheduled at key points in the plan to clarify any misunderstandings about the team's progress. - Virtual teams often need leaders who are more powerful to help coordinate communications and work assignments. Multicultural teams perform better when they have strong designated leaders (Earley & Gibson, 2002). Leaders provide direction, motivate team members, and ensure the team stays on course. Leaders help develop the hybrid culture that unites a diverse team.