Over the last 10 to 15 years, the use of work teams has proliferated around the globe. In order to better understand what makes teams effective in a variety of countries, Bradley L. Kirkman, Cristina B. Gibson, and Debra L. Shapiro examined the role that national culture plays in determining employee receptivity to the implementation of self-managing work teams (SMWTs).
Research and Insights Archive
Research and Insights from the Center for Effective Organizations
Available Content
Helping Transnational Team Members to Sense Trust: A Counterintuitive Approach to Leadership
Gretchen M. Spreitzer, Debra L. Shapiro, and Mary Ann Von Glinow state that despite their assignment to work together, members of transnational teams (TNTs)— teams whose members are geographically spread across at least two countries— are in many ways apart.
Perceptual Distance: The Impact of Differences in Team Leader and Member Perceptions Across Cultures
In this chapter, C. Gibson, J. Conger, and C. Cooper propose a theory of perceptual distance and its implications for team leadership and team outcomes.
Individualizing the Organization: Past, Present and Future
E. Lawler and D. Finegold discuss that one approach to attracting, retaining, and motivating employees is to individualize the relationship they have with an organization.
Resolving Communication Dilemmas in Database-Mediated Collaboration
Michael E. Kalman, Peter R. Monge, Janet Fulk, and Rebecca Heino discuss how in organizational settings, a communication dilemma exists whenever the interests of a collective (i.e., team, organization, interorganizational alliance) demand that people voluntarily share privately held information, but their individual interests motivate them to withhold it instead.
Preserving Commitment During Downsizing: Examining the Mitigating Effects of Trust and Empowerment
Drawing on Lazarus and Folkman’s (1984) stress theory, Gretchen Spreitzer and Aneil K. Mishra hypothesize that the negative effects of downsizing on commitment can be mitigated when trust and empowerment are high.
Me and Us: Differential Relationships Among Goal Setting Training, Efficacy and Effectiveness at the Individual and Team Level
In this paper by Cristina B. Gibson, efficacy-effectiveness relationships were examined for individual nurses and nursing teams who were either trained or untrained in goal-setting.
Intercultural Analysis of the Meaning of Teamwork: Evidence from Six Multinational Corporations
This paper by Mary E. Zellmer-Bruhn develops a conceptual framework to explain variance in the meaning of teamwork across national and organizational cultures.
We Can’t Get There Unless We Know Where We Are Going
In this chapter, S. Cohen, S. Mohrman, and A. Mohrman closely examine one set of factors that are critical for knowledge work team effectiveness –how organizations set and communicate direction for teams.
Guanxi in Vertical Dyads: Evidence from Taiwan and the PRC
Katherine R. Xin, Jing-Lih Farh, Bor-Shiuan Cheng, and Anne S. Tsui examined the impact of two related concepts, relational demography and guanxi (defined as particularistic ties between individuals), on organizational commitment, quality of leader-member exchange (LMX), and performance in two empirical studies conducted in Taiwan and the PRC.
When Workers are Here, There and Everywhere: A Discussion of the Advantages and Challenges of Telework
Nancy B. Kurland and Diane E. Bailey discuss home-based telecommuting, satellite offices, neighborhood work centers, and mobile working which are alternative forms of work organization that together constitute “telework.”
Do They Do What They Believe They Can? Group-Efficacy and Group Effectiveness Across Tasks and Cultures
Cristina B. Gibson discusses group-efficacy, a group’s belief regarding its ability to perform effectively. It is argued that group-efficacy effects are complex and moderated by several contingency factors.