No full-text available
To read the full-text of this research,
you can request a copy directly from the authors.
Team Charters: Theoretical Foundations and Practical Implications for Quality and Performance
Quality Management Journal
Abstract
The objectives of this article are to introduce and develop team charters as tools to link corporate-level mission statements and strategies to activities at the team level. The theoretical frameworks of psychological contracts and realistic job previews provide the foundation. Based on relevant literature and anecdotal experience, the authors offer specific guidance on the content of team charters, suggest a set of applications, and discuss limitations. The principal beneficiaries should be practitioners charged with quality initiatives at all organizational levels.
... The preponderance of research has focused on recommendations for charter content (Aaron et al., 2014;Bird & Luthy, 2010;Cupello, 1995;Hunsaker et al., 2011;Mathieu & Rapp, 2009;Norton & Sussman, 2009;Pilette, 2017). Additionally, other factors may be more salient in developing team cohesion such as shared but unwritten expectations, referred to as psychological contracts, that evolve as teams work together (Holtham et al., 2006;Hunsaker & Hunsaker, 2010;Hunsaker et al., 2011;Robinson, 1996;Rousseau, 1989;Sverdrup & Scheil, 2015;Norton & Sussman, 2016). Although the use of team charters in higher education appears to be a promising practice for developing students' teamwork skills, this has not been well-established empirically. ...
... The process of creating a charter can clarify expectations and create a psychological contract that helps teams overcome problems that may occur (Holtham et al., 2006). Although teams may be successful simply by being assigned to teams with compatible members or having a skilled or experienced leader, charters provide guidelines, particularly for those inexperienced with teamwork, and establish common expectations and processes (Hunsaker et al., 2011;Norton & Sussman, 2016). Heterogeneous teams have less for need a charter but will also not benefit from diverse perspectives (Norton & Sussman, 2016). ...
... Although teams may be successful simply by being assigned to teams with compatible members or having a skilled or experienced leader, charters provide guidelines, particularly for those inexperienced with teamwork, and establish common expectations and processes (Hunsaker et al., 2011;Norton & Sussman, 2016). Heterogeneous teams have less for need a charter but will also not benefit from diverse perspectives (Norton & Sussman, 2016). ...
Schools of business aim to help students develop employer-valued skills, which include communication, teamwork, critical thinking, and application of learning. This can be achieved through team assignments and community-based learning. Such approaches help students apply the concepts they are learning, collaborate with others, develop managerial skills, and solve real-life workplace issues. Teamwork is commonly thought to be enhanced when students establish a team charter outlining their goals, norms, and processes. Research on the value of team charters in business education, however, is limited. This study examined the role of team charters on student perceptions of working well together. Data was collected and analyzed from a mid-term team evaluation and a final team charter assessment. Findings indicated that perceived value of team charters differs across the year in school and tends to be higher for less experienced students. The provision of a structured project roadmap clarified team member roles, responsibilities, personal accountability, and team vision.
... A team charter is a document that defines the team's mutual expectations and norms for collaboration; it is an agreement on how the team will work together. Team charters are frequently used in workplace contexts [9], [10], and research on their use in educational contexts indicates that team charters can improve group performance [11], [12], [13]; motivation [11], [14], [15]; and satisfaction with the team and its processes [11], [14]. Manuscript Team charters can be especially useful for helping teams unpack differences and assumptions regarding goals, commitments, communication norms, and values that, if left undiscussed, can lead to interpersonal conflicts [7], [16]. ...
... A team charter is a document where a group, at the beginning of the project, defines its expectations and norms for collaboration. Charters are frequently used in workplace contexts [9], [10] and commonly include purpose or mission statements, operating guidelines, behavioral norms, project roles, correction mechanisms, and communication guidelines. Charters may particularly benefit diverse teams since explicit ground rules can help teams bridge cultural, linguistic, and disciplinary differences to reach common understanding [9], [10], [29]. ...
... Charters are frequently used in workplace contexts [9], [10] and commonly include purpose or mission statements, operating guidelines, behavioral norms, project roles, correction mechanisms, and communication guidelines. Charters may particularly benefit diverse teams since explicit ground rules can help teams bridge cultural, linguistic, and disciplinary differences to reach common understanding [9], [10], [29]. TPC teachers have long advocated the use of charters when working with student teams [7], [8], [30]. ...
bold xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">Background:
A robust body of research supports the use of team charters to purposefully create a team culture with shared norms and expectations. However, student teams often treat this requirement as busywork and fail to invest the effort needed to create team charters that prepare the team to adapt for obstacles that they may encounter.
Situating the case:
Teams that do not engage in effective planning for their collaborations are likely to encounter a range of problems including slackers, domineering teammates, curtailed learning opportunities, and general exclusion from the project work—problems that are often exacerbated on diverse teams and that disproportionately affect marginalized populations.
About the case:
We created three online modules that help students uncover their own tacit expectations for teamwork, share and merge these expectations, and then construct a team charter and task schedules with their teammates.
Methods:
We used a quasiexperimental design comparing team charters from control and experimental groups to understand how our modules affected students’ charters at a university with a highly international population.
Results:
Analyses revealed that control group charters tended to invoke universal team norms and assign punishments for failing to uphold those norms. By contrast, experimental group charters were more flexible, acknowledged competing priorities, evidenced greater planning, and articulated processes that could accommodate individual goals, values, and constraints.
Conclusions:
Charters created after the modules showed more accommodation of difference; however, more research needs to be done to determine whether the more flexible and elaborated charters improve team behaviors.
... Courtright et al., 2017), and research is particularly sparse for culturally diverse virtual teams. Some research has suggested that charter development can help to create and communicate project goals and objectives, specify communication modalities, offer contingency plans, and list tasks and projected progress tracking (Goodbody, 2005;Mathieu & Rapp, 2009;Moussa et al., 2017;Norton & Sussman, 2009). For example, charters can formally express team values (e.g., democratic decision-making), organizational structures, and commitment expectations (Ibid Q:2 .). ...
... Instead, the paper offered a six-step process for developing a charter: (a) obtaining a problem statement, (b) identifying the principal stakeholders, (c) creating a macro flowchart of the process, (d) selecting the team members, (e) training the team, and (f) selecting the team leader. Norton and Sussman (2009) suggested nine essential attributes of what they called a prototypical charter: (a) mission, (b) affirmed values, (c) structural values, (d) group decision-making, (e) conflict resolution, (f) problem resolution, (g) outside intervention, (h) finding a (new) team member and (i) residual interests (for rewarding differential contributions to a project). ...
... Within the context of a strong functional team, exploratory research has suggested that charters may facilitate teams dealing with conflicts (Norton & Sussman, 2009) and improve group dynamics (Bird & Luthy, 2010). Recent practitioner-based recommendations include the creation of a charter for more effective virtual team projects (Derven, 2016;Hill & Bartol, 2018;Moussa et al., 2017). ...
... Instead, the paper offered a six-step process for developing a charter: (1) obtaining a problem statement, (2) identifying the principal stakeholders, (3) creating a macro flowchart of the process, (4) selecting the team members, (5) training the team, and (6) selecting the team leader. Norton and Sussman (2009) Notably, the few studies that empirically tested the effects of charter on team behaviors generally found positive relationships with team processes. For example, one study (McDowell, Herdman, & Aaron, 2011) split 88 teams into one of three experimental conditions: (1) no charter, (2) a charter used without instructions, and (3) a charter used with instructions. ...
... Setting up the parameters of conflict management and processes to deal with group conflict is expected to create an environment for effective team management and lead to better performance outcomes. Indeed, some have argued that a properly developed and organized charter might help a team deal with conflict in a proactive manner (Norton & Sussman, 2009). ...
... Team contracts include project planning tasks, organizational roles and responsibilities, ground rules to promote team cohesion, as well as conflict resolution and non-performance management strategies [86][87][88][89][90]. These techniques have been utilized by industry and start-up companies, typically in the form of a team alliance charter or strategic alliance agreement [91][92][93][94]. Incorporating these best practices in teamwork and team management is expected to reduce team dynamics disruptions that could detract from student engagement. ...
Student engagement is critical to academic success, particularly in the interdisciplinary field of biomedical engineering (BME). However, engaging and motivating students in class have become increasingly challenging, with the COVID-19 pandemic exacerbating this difficulty. This Perspectives paper synthesizes the insights from three faculty workshops focused on identifying and overcoming barriers to classroom engagement, hosted during the 5th BMES Council of Chairs Biomedical Engineering Educational Summit. Key barriers identified during the Summit include student-based challenges—such as student fear of failure, the challenge of connecting course content to real-world applications, and the diversity of student motivations within BME—and instructor-based challenges, such as time constraints and a lack of institutional incentives to prioritize student-centered learning approaches. We present strategies to promote and evaluate student engagement. Finally, we call for a concerted effort in both research and higher institution educational policy to implement evidence-based strategies and faculty training on effective teaching approaches that increase student engagement in the classroom.
... La dinámica consiste en la definición y consolidación de los equipos de trabajo, que se van mantener a lo largo de la asignatura para el desarrollo de las distintas prácticas y actividades planteadas en la asignatura, simulando la constitución de equipos de trabajo de una empresa (Norton Jr & Sussman, 2009). ...
Actualmente, la cooperación en equipo es una habilidad indispensable en el entorno laboral. Es evidente que cuando los integrantes de un equipo están comprometidos con los objetivos de la empresa, los resultados suelen ser sobresalientes. Por ello, es crucial que los miembros de la comunidad universitaria reconozcan que el aprendizaje se ve enormemente favorecido por el trabajo en equipo. A través de técnicas grupales, los estudiantes pueden desarrollar habilidades sociales, directivas y cognitivas, así como competencias que los preparan para enfrentar diferentes dinámicas grupales en su trayectoria académica y profesional. Existe una relación significativa entre la calidad de los principios y valores establecidos por los equipos, dentro de un Team Charter, y sus estrategias de rendimiento, de manera que los equipos que tienen altos niveles en ambas características tienden a mostrar un rendimiento sostenidamente alto. Este artículo propone una dinámica de grupo que busca fomentar una mayor participación e integración de todos los estudiantes, permitiéndoles desde el inicio del curso definir su propio equipo de trabajo para todo el período docente, basándose en sus propios valores como equipo y normas de trabajo
... As such, team charters are a team-level behavior control mechanism in that they specify the behaviors that members must engage in (Turner & Makhija, 2006). While leaders or coaches often encourage the development of a charter, it is team members who actually develop and utilize team charters (Norton & Sussman, 2009). ...
Though prevalent in practice, team charters have only recently received scholarly attention. However, most of this work has been relatively devoid of theory, and consequently, key questions about why and under what conditions team charter quality affects team performance remain unanswered. To address these gaps, we draw on macro organizational control theory to propose that team charter quality serves as a team-level "behavior" control mechanism that builds task cohesion through a structured exercise. We then juxtapose team charter quality with an "input" team control mechanism that influences the emergence of task cohesion more organically: team conscientiousness. Given their redundant effects on task cohesion, we propose that the effects of team charter quality and team conscientiousness on team performance (through task cohesion) are substitutive such that team charter quality primarily impacts team performance for teams that are low (vs. high) on conscientiousness. We test and find support for our hypotheses in a sample of 239 undergraduate self-managing project teams. Our study contributes to the groups and teams literature in the following ways: first, relative to previous studies, we take a more theory-driven approach toward understanding team charters, and in doing so, uncover when and why team charter quality impacts team performance; second, we integrate two normally disparate perspectives on team effectiveness (team development and team selection) to offer a broader perspective on how teams are "built"; and third, we introduce team charter quality as a performance-enhancing mechanism for teams lower on conscientiousness. (PsycINFO Database Record
... Several key resources outlining additional core com ponents, theoretical foundations, and practical considerations in constructing charters can be found amongst the extant literature (cf. Cox, College, & Bobrowski, 2000;Mathieu & Rapp, 2009;Norton & Sussman, 2009;Wilkinson & Moran, 1998). While the use of team charters is ubiquitous, Mathieu and Rapp (2009) aided significantly by laying the foundation for the empirical study of charter development and benefits among teams. ...
This chapter provides a critical literature review of the research on team-based interventions. It focuses on theory and research to provide an elaborate understanding of team development interventions. The chapter highlights some of the most prevalent team development interventions and their effectiveness on team outcomes, processes, and emergent states. Team development interventions (e.g., team composition, team training) are a culmination of tools used for training (e.g., simulation, feedback, adaptive training), methods used for delivery (e.g., information, demonstration, practice) and content (e.g., competencies, knowledge, skills, attitudes, abilities) created with specific training objectives (e.g., improve attitudes, change behavior) in mind. The chapter describes distinct team development interventions. Those considered in the chapter are team composition, team chartering, team training, team building, team leadership and coaching and team debriefing. Although all interventions advance performance within organizations, each intervention varies in terms of conceptual definition, purpose, and specific strategy.
... Moreover, a practical implication of this is that teams such as the ones in our study may benefit from creating a team contract (e.g. Norton & Sussman, 2009). Such a contract need not be written, but is intended to help the group agreeing on how they will work together. ...
Individuals as well as organizations often need to work together to achieve economies of scale and scope.However, collaboration can be a challenge, and one example in which the potential benefit of cooperation hasbeen difficult to realize are joint operations within the Norwegian farming industry. Thus, the purpose of thisarticle is to illuminate why some of these joint operations fail while others prevail. We conducted in-depthinterviews and gathered performance data in 10 joint farming operations, with our results revealing systematicpatterns; those operations which had the highest level of performance and satisfaction had low levels of conflicts,whereas the others had higher level of conflicts. For the least successful operations, the conflicts werepredominantly relational and typically approached with contention. Furthermore, the conflict patterns weresystematically linked to team design and team planning, in which a balance and stability between partners, aswell as a careful consideration of task issues and team issues, seem to be key variables.
... One particular planning activity that has been shown to be useful is the establishment of a team charter. A team charter is a written document in which team members come to an agreement on the goals of a team, the specific tasks involved in these goals, and how the team will work together (Mathieu & Rapp, 2009;Norton & Sussman, 2009). ...
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.
... Resultatene fra denne studien tyder på at teamet bør etablere relasjonsbaserte og integrerte psykologiske kontrakter, og at dette bør vaere i fokus allerede i etableringen av teamene. I teamforskningen er det nylig gjennomført studier av effekter av å etablere såkalte "teamkontrakter" Rapp 2009, Norton andSussman 2009). Utviklingen av en teamkontrakt er ment å bistå teamene i å diskutere og bli enige om blant annet hvordan de skal jobbe sammen, ta beslutninger, gi hverandre tilbakemeldinger og oppnå mål. ...
Denne artikkelen presenterer et nytt perspektiv for å forstå hva som ligger bak velfungerende team. Det horisontale psykologiske kontraktsperspektivet lanseres for å forstå bedre hvordan relasjoner mellom teammedlemmer utvikles, og videre hvordan dette påvirker teamets prestasjoner. Data ble samlet inn gjennom å intervjue og observere 52 teammedlemmer i 16 team med det formål å utforske ulike typer og egenskaper av psykologiske kontrakter, og koble dette opp mot teamets prestasjoner. Resultatene viste at team som var kjennetegnet av integrerte kontrakter med oppgave-og relasjonsbaserte elementer, samarbeidet bedre, hadde bedre koordinering, var mer engasjert og hadde høyere levedyktighet, sammenlignet med team som var kjennetegnet av løse og oppgavebaserte kontrakter. Videre viste resultatene at i motsetning til tidligere forskning er brudd på psykologiske kontrakter ikke ensidig negativt, men avhenger av hvilken type kontrakt som ligger i bunn før et brudd, og hvordan bruddet håndteres.
... Our findings also have practical implications. Effective cooperation can be achieved by establishing a team contract (Mathieu & Rapp, 2009;Norton & Sussman, 2009). Such a contract need not be formalized on paper, but it is intended to help the group agree on topics like how they will work together, make decisions, provide feedback to each other, and achieve goals. ...
Cycling is arguably one of the most physically demanding sports. However, road cycling athletes are also challenged by a social-psychological tension induced by a fairly simple dilemma: There will only be one individual winner, but no one can win unless teammates sacrifice their own chances to win. This article addresses ways to effectively handle this challenge. We conducted in-depth interviews with athletes from professional and continental road cycling teams, as well as team sports directors. Our findings indicate that a prime undertaking indeed is to deal with the trade-off between individual goals and team goals. We identify three principles that may help to improve cooperation: involvement, cohesion, and the psychological contract. These principles seem to facilitate cooperation and a collective orientation, and they seem to be positively related to performance and satisfaction. We discuss these findings and their implications for cycling teams in particular, as well as for teams and team management in general.
... This has long been acknowledged in the practitioner literature, advising teams to develop team charters, which detail "the mutual expectations regarding behavior of the group, meeting management and allocation of work" (McDowell, Herdman, & Aaron, 2011, p. 80) in the initial phase of their teamwork (Aiken & Keller, 2007;Buchel, 1996;Fisher, Rayner, Belgard, & Armstrong, 1995;Harris & Harris, 1996;Hickman & Creighton-Zollar, 1998;Wilkinson & Moran, 1998). More recently, academic work has picked up this trend, examining both how team charters affect team performance (Mathieu & Rapp, 2009;McDowell et al., 2011), and more normatively, how teams should develop team charters (McKendall, 2000;Mohrman, Cohen, & Mohrman, 1995;Norton & Sussman, 2009). Furthermore, researchers have found that when student teams establish ground rules and clarify expectations, team satisfaction and team performance increase (Aaron, McDowell, & Herdman, 2014;Byrd & Luthy, 2010;Cox & Bobrowski, 2000Hillier & Dunn-Jensen, 2013;Hunsaker, Pavett, & Hunsaker, 2011;Mathieu & Rapp, 2009). ...
This study examines a horizontal psychological contract (HPC) perspective to clarify the relationships between group members. By studying new forms of organizing through collaboration in the farming industry, we collected interview data from 12 joint operations (groups) to investigate three research questions about HPCs: their content, state, and outcomes. First, we found that the content of HPCs is both task and relational oriented, with several sub-themes pertaining to each dimension. Second, we found that the state of HPCs in terms of breach and fulfillment is related to HPC content—that is, task-oriented HPCs are typically breached more often than relational-oriented HPCs. Finally, we found that relational-oriented (vs. task-oriented) contracts and fulfilled (vs. breached) contracts are both strongly associated with good cooperation, high commitment, high team viability, and, to some extent, high performance. We discuss the results and the potential implications of the HPC perspective.
... Moreover, a practical implication of this is that teams such as the ones in our study may benefit from creating a team contract (e.g. Norton & Sussman, 2009). Such a contract need not be written, but is intended to help the group agreeing on how they will work together. ...
Individuals that usually work independently may find it challenging to form projects where team members are highly interdependent. The purpose of this paper is to explore conflict and cooperation processes when these individuals engage in joint operations. We made extensive interviews and gathered data in twelve joint operations in the dairy farming industry. The data indicate various conflict patterns, and these patters can be systematically tied to the teams’ power structure and team planning and to team satisfaction and performance. In general, frequent interactions among members and/or regular well-managed meetings seem important to foster cooperation in the joint farming operations.
As the need to tackle complex clinical and societal problems rises, researchers are increasingly taking on a translational approach. This approach, which seeks to integrate theories, methodologies, and frameworks from various disciplines across a team of researchers, places emphasis on translation of findings in order to offer practical solutions to real-world problems. While translational research leads to a number of positive outcomes, there are also a multitude of barriers to conducting effective team science, such as effective coordination and communication across the organizational, disciplinary, and even geographic boundaries of science teams. Given these barriers to success, there is a significant need to establish team interventions that increase science team effectiveness as translational research becomes the new face of science. This review is intended to provide translational scientists with an understanding of barriers to effective team science and equip them with the necessary tools to overcome such barriers. We provide an overview of translational science teams, discuss barriers to science team effectiveness, demonstrate the lacking state of current interventions, and present recommendations for improving interventions in science teams by applying best practices from the teams and groups literature across the four phases of transdisciplinary research.
De første minuttene i et team legger ofte sterke føringer på hvordan teamet vil fungere. Formålet med denne artikkelen er å utforske effektene av at team utarbeider en handlingsplan (hva de skal gjøre) og en samhandlingsplan (hvordan de skal jobbe sammen). Resultater fra en kvantitativ og en kvalitativ studie av konsulentteam indikerer at slike planleggingsaktiviteter er svært avgjørende for både effektivitet og tilfredshet.
Organizations regularly make significant investments to ensure their teams will thrive, through interventions intended to support their effectiveness. Such team development interventions (TDIs) have demonstrated their value from both a practical and empirical view, through enabling teams to minimize errors and maximize expertise and thereby advance organizational gains. Yet, on closer examination, the current state of the TDI literature appears so piecemeal that the robustness of extant scientific evidence is often lost. Accordingly, we seek to provide a more cohesive and dynamic integration of the TDI literature, evolving thinking about TDIs toward a system of interventions that can be optimized. Drawing on the existing theoretical and empirical literatures, we first broadly define TDIs. We then offer an in-depth look at the most common types of TDIs, in terms of summarizing the state of the science surrounding each TDI. Based on this review, we distinguish features that make for an effective TDI. We then advance a more integrative framework that seeks to highlight certain interventions that are best served for addressing certain issues within a team. In conclusion, we promote a call for evolving this robust yet disjointed TDI literature into a more holistic, dynamic, and intentional action science with clear empirical as well as practical guidance and direction.
Purpose
Team-based assignments must be constructed to contribute to the effective development of teamwork skills, an important learning objective for most schools of business. The purpose of this paper is to understand how students view the usefulness of team assignments in order to inform more effective pedagogical techniques related to team-based assignments and the development of student teamwork competencies.
Design/methodology/approach
Data were collected from Likert-scale online surveys administered to students upon completion of the first-year team-based introductory business course. Survey items were developed to assess the team-related activities and components in the course and students’ perceived usefulness of team-based assignments. Results from exploratory factor analyses are presented.
Findings
Data analyses indicated that survey items contributed to students’ perceived usefulness of team-based assignments. Across three studies, the authors developed a new measure to evaluate effectiveness of team-based assignments.
Practical implications
For those educators who utilize team-based assignments in their courses, this study provides a much needed measure to assess the effectiveness of assignments intended to develop students’ teamwork competencies. The findings also serve to provide evidence of assurance of learning, and evidence of how students are developing in the area of interpersonal skills and abilities to manage interactions that most schools of business and universities deem as essential learning outcomes as a result of Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business requirements.
Originality/value
Evidence from online surveys of 755 students in a pilot study and two additional studies conducted longitudinally over a two-year period support a new measure to assess the usefulness of specific team assignments.
This chapter considers the intersection of leadership and global virtual team dynamics. We consider four key developments in the science of team effectiveness as they apply to virtual teams: (a) team emergent states, (b) team phases, (c) teamwork processes, and (d) team leadership functions. First, we elaborate the importance of team emergent states, highlighting their relevance to team success and acknowledging that leadership is a prominent force to help facilitate their development. Second, we describe the interaction processes through which teams develop optimal emergent states and achieve their goals over time. Leadership is needed that shapes team processes throughout the team lifecycle, and thereby team emergent states and performance. In closing, we offer specific, research-based strategies to guide today’s virtual team leaders in enabling optimal team processes, illustrating these suggestions using examples drawn from a large-scale study of in global virtual teams.
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.
Three organizational structures for business enterprises are examined for their ability to enhance profitability and competitiveness. The structures, namely: the modular, virtual, and barrier-free, are studied using value chain analysis. Results show that the three structures complement each other and enable executives to achieve seemingly unattainable objectives by taking advantage of technological innovations or penetrating new markets.
New Venture Creation: Entrepreneurship for the 21st Century, Canadian Edition, addresses the needs of upper-level entrepreneurship and new venture courses. Timmons provides strong, comprehensive theoretical coverage balanced with practical examples and cases, all designed to instruct students on how to formulate, plan for, finance, launch, manage, and eventually harvest a new venture. Timmons, Canadian Edition, is a rigorous, practical, and experiential text. The hands-on approach gets students thinking, planning, and ready to execute their own businesses. The text is practitioner-focused, features an especially rigorous section on financials, and focuses on high-growth, innovative ventures. Timmons covers the process of getting a new venture started, growing the venture, and successfully harvesting it. Through text, case studies, and hands-on exercises, this "how-to" text guides students in discovering the concepts of entrepreneurship and the competencies, skills, tools, and experience that will equip them to recognize entrepreneurial opportunities. Acknowledging that there is no substitute for actually starting a company, the Timmons authors believe it is possible to expose students to many of the vital issues and immerse them in key learning experiences that result in successful new venture creation.
A phenomenon of the last 20 years has been the rapid rise of the network form of governance. This governance form has received significant scholarly attention, but, to date, no comprehensive theory for it has been advanced, and no sufficiently detailed and theoretically consistent definition has appeared. Our objective in this article is to provide a theory that explains under what conditions network governance, rigorously defined, has comparative advantage and is therefore likely to emerge and thrive. Our theory integrates transaction cost economics and social network theories, and, in broad strokes, asserts that the network form of governance is a response to exchange conditions of asset specificity, demand uncertainty, task complexity, and frequency. These exchange conditions drive firms toward structurally embedding their transactions, which enables firms to use social mechanisms for coordinating and safeguarding exchanges. When all of these conditions are in place, the network governance form has advantages over both hierarchy and market solutions in simultaneously adapting, coordinating, and safeguarding exchanges.
Modes of social activity in organizations are frequently described using the terms formal and informal. Behavioral and situational informality, in the sense of this article. entails ''loose,'' spontaneous. more casual social intercourse and comportment. Formality, in contrast. designates ''tighter.'' more deliberate, impersonal modes of conduct. as well as settings that occasion such conduct. This article outlines a number of specific behavioral and contextual codes of formality and informality and further explores how these categories of social activity may be related to organizational effectiveness. Specifically, the article explores how behavioral informality may be instrumental in the social construction of innovative, organic work organizations and how formality is implicated in the social construction of bureaucratic, impersonal work organizations.
This study of the complete life-spans of eight naturally-occurring teams began with the unexpected finding that several project groups, studied for another purpose, did not accomplish their work by progressing gradually through a universal series of stages, as traditional group development models would predict. Instead, teams progressed in a pattern of "punctuated equilibrium" through alternating inertia and revolution in the behaviors and themes through which they approached their work. The findings also suggested that groups' progress was triggered more by members' awareness of time and deadlines than by completion of an absolute amount of work in a specific developmental stage. The paper proposes a new model of group development that encompasses the timing and mechanisms of change as well as groups' dynamic relations with their contexts. Implications for theory, research, and practice are drawn.
The full text of my (with Sung Hee Kim) third edition of Social Conflict: Escalation, Stalemate, and Settlement is now available from Lulu Press.
--Dean G. Pruitt
A phenomenon of the last 20 years has been the rapid rise of the network form of governance. This governance form has received significant scholarly attention, but, to date, no comprehensive theory for it has been advanced, and no sufficiently detailed and theoretically consistent definition has appeared. Our objective in this article is to provide a theory that explains under what conditions network governance, rigorously defined, has comparative advantage and is therefore likely to emerge and thrive. Our theory integrates transaction cost economics and social network theories, and, in broad strokes, asserts that the network form of governance is a response to exchange conditions of asset specificity, demand uncertainty, task complexity, and frequency. These exchange conditions drive firms to use social mechanisms for coordinating and safeguarding exchanges. When all of these conditions are in place, the network governance form has advantages over both hierarchy and market solutions in simultaneously adapting, coordinating, and safeguarding exchanges.
Conducted a quantitative meta-analysis of 21 realistic job preview (RJP) experiments. Eight attitudinal or behavioral criteria were used to assess the effects of RJPs, and for 4 of these, the variance around the mean effect size could be explained methodologically as a result of sampling error, differences among studies in measurement reliability, or as a result of a single outlier study. Only 1 moderator was found, with the type of medium used to present the RJP moderating the RJP/performance relation. Considering all 8 criteria together, the average amount of variance attributable to sampling error alone is 74.2%. Thus, recent speculation about the possible moderating effects of personal or situational variables seems unwarranted. The direction of the effects was generally consistent with previous thinking. That is, RJPs tended to lower initial job expectations while increasing self-selection, organizational commitment, job satisfaction, performance, and job survival. (38 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
This paper proposes and tests a model of antecedents and consequences of group potency in self-managing teams in retail banking. Based on data collected from boundary-spanning service employees organized in 60 teams and their customers, our findings reveal a significant positive impact of group potency on customer-perceived service quality and a negative effect on service profitability. In addition, we find that team consensus regarding group potency positively moderates the effects of group potency, so that for teams with higher levels of potency consensus, the positive impact of group potency on customer-perceived service quality is stronger, whereas the negative impact of group potency on service productivity is weaker. Furthermore, we find significant positive effects of management and interteam support and functional diversity as well as a significant negative effect of team tenure on individual team member beliefs of group potency. Finally, social support consensus moderates the effects of management support, interteam support, and team tenure on group potency, so that the effects of these antecedents are weaker for teams with higher levels of social support consensus. Thus, we conclude that team confidence consensus increases the positive impact of group potency on customer perceptions of service quality and decreases the negative impact on profitability. Thus, team-member perceptual agreement on their team's potency should be stimulated.
Relations between occupational commitment (OC) and several person- and work-related variables were examined meta-analytically (76 samples; across analyses, Ns ranged 746-15,774). Major findings are as follows. First, OC was positively related to job-focused constructs such as job involvement and satisfaction, suggesting that attitudes toward the job itself may be a central concern in committing to one's occupation. Second, consistent with previous work, OC and organizational commitment were positively related. This relation was found to be moderated by the compatibility of the profession and the employing organization. Third, OC was positively related to job performance and had an indirect effect on organizational turnover intention through occupational turnover intention. This latter effect suggests that understanding of organizational turnover can be enhanced by incorporating occupation-related variables into turnover models.
50 articles dealing with stages of group development over time are separated by group setting: therapy-group studies, T-group studies, and natural- and laboratory-group studies. The stages identified in these articles are separated into those descriptive of social or interpersonal group activities and those descriptive of group-task activities. 4 general stages of development are proposed, and the review consists of fitting the stages identified in the literature to those proposed. In the social realm, these stages in the developmental sequence are testing-dependence, conflict, cohesion, and functional roles. In the task realm, they are orientation, emotionality, relevant opinion exchange, and the emergence of solutions. There is a good fit between observed stages and the proposed model. (62 ref.)
Recently, the psychological contract has attracted increased attention because of a perception that employment relationships, particularly in the United States, are undergoing a period of dramatic change and that contract violations are becoming more commonplace. The psychological contracts literature has largely ignored the idea that cultural differences might be important to the employment relationship. In this paper, we propose that cultural variation influences contract formation, perceptions of contract violation, and responses to perceived contract violations.
- This paper describes the process of inducting theory using case studies from specifying the research questions to reaching closure. Some features of the process, such as problem definition and construct validation, are similar to hypothesis-testing research. Others, such as within-case analysis and replication logic, are unique to the inductive, case-oriented process. Overall, the process described here is highly iterative and tightly linked to data. This research approach is especially appropriate in new topic areas. The resultant theory is often novel, testable, and empirically valid. Finally, framebreaking insights, the tests of good theory (e.g., parsimony, logical coherence), and convincing grounding in the evidence are the key criteria for evaluating this type of research.
This article presents a framework for understanding organizational vision. “Vision” is a term frequently used by academics and practicing managers, but there has been a scarcity of clear concepts and useful tools—in short, the absence of a coherent conceptual framework. This article develops a framework that removes the fuzziness surrounding the topic of vision yet at the same time preserves the magic—the spark—that is an essential quality of vision. © 1991, The Regents of the University of California. All rights reserved.
This paper reports the findings of a study regarding the reactions of 492 line-level employees from two Fortune 500 organizations in response to the organizations' recent implementation of self-managing work teams (SMWTs). As predicted, we found that anticipatory injustice was significantly positively related to change-resistance and turnover intentions; and significantly negatively related to employees' commitment; and that procedural justice can mitigate the latter relationships. Implications for managing change are discussed.
The authors examine the nature, extent, and consequences of psychological contract violations which occur in restructuring firms. Managers in restructuring firms were significantly more likely to perceive psychological contract violations in the areas of job security, input into decision making, opportunities for advancement, and amount of responsibility. Managers in restructuring firms were also significantly more likely to be looking for new jobs and were significantly less likely to be loyal to their employers. Several situational factors mitigated against managers' strong negative reactions to psychological contract violations: procedural justice in how layoffs are handled, low likelihood of future violations, and positive working relationships with colleagues.
Through a quantitative meta-analysis of 40 studies of realistic job previews (RJPs), 26 of which were published, the effects of RJPs on attrition from the job recruitment process, the level and accuracy of initial job expectations, affective reactions, job performance, and turnover were assessed. In general, RJPs were related to higher performance and to lower attrition from the recruitment process, initial expectations, voluntary turnover, and all turnover. Moderating effects of the timing and medium of an RJP and of whether a study was conducted in the laboratory or the field indicated that the effectiveness of RJPs can be enhanced through properly matching RJP methods with the organizational outcomes of interest.
Factor analyses of data from an organizational climate survey suggest that organizational politics is an important dimension of peoples’ perceptions of the work environment. These data were used to examine antecedents and consequences of politics perceptions using the framework suggested by Fandt Russ and Fandt (1989). Measures of perceived intergroup cooperation, clarity of roles and responsibilities, and fairness of rewards/recognition were most predictive of politics perceptions. Minority status was the only personal characteristic that predicted politics perceptions. when controlling for its antecedents, perceptions of organizational politics were only related to perceived innovation. Analyses using structural equation modeling indicated that the relationships between politics and its antecedents were not influenced by an overall affective response to the work environment.
This study examined how top management team diversity variables and debate interacted to influence two measures of company financial performance. Further, it assessed the degree to which decision comprehensiveness mediated those interaction effects. Multi-informant data from the top management teams of 57 manufacturing companies revealed that more job-related types of diversity interacted with debate to influence financial performance, but a less job-related type (age diversity) did not. Decision comprehensiveness partially mediated those effects.
Relationships of employee equity in the company with work attitudes, information, and desired influence were examined in a prosperous firm converted to employee ownership by its management. Questionnaire data suggested that relationships of shareholding with organizational identification and information about the firm'sfinances were moderated by employees' authority and status in the
Strategic planning is based on a number of mistaken assumptions. One of these assumptions is that the external environment can be made predictable. But, in point of fact, the external environment is always unpredictable: turbulence is a constant. Accordingly, the popularity of planning rests in part on the illusion of control.
A model is developed that explicates one process through which employee ownership operates, leading to a set of social-psychological and behavioral effects. Where the formal ownership system is operationalized such that it leads to psychological ownership, a bonding or integration of the employee-owner with the organization occurs. It is through these processes that employee ownership exercises an influence upon group and individual outcomes. A set of antecedent and moderating variables to the operation of the formal ownership system is identified.
Using a field survey of 461 self-managing work team members in four countries, we examined: (1) whether employee resistance to such teams mediated the relationships between employee cultural values and job attitudes and (2) whether the value-resistance relationships were stronger in some countries than in others. Results show that resistance mediated the cultural value-job attitude relationships, sometimes fully and sometimes partially, depending on which type of resistance (to teams or to self-management) and which type of cultural value was being examined. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed.
A vast array of organizational innovations and changes are transforming US corporations. Large firms have dramatically downsized, refocused, and vertically disaggregated. They increasingly obtain goods and services, pursue complex development efforts, and exploit horizontal synergies without the aid of formal hierarchy. Large firms are also internally disaggregating into smaller, more autonomous units that are treated much like external subcontractors. The authors argue that these organizational innovations share an important underlying commonalty: economic activity is converging toward exchange involving either internal (within-firm) or external (between-firm) networks of small, autonomous production or service units. Small units and small firms have become the basic building block, the molecular units, of these new forms. Further, exchange among the small, autonomous units is commonly a mix of both market-like and hierarchical features. The authors develop a theoretical explanation for these trends. They argue that disaggregation is motivated by the powerful performance incentives that accompany small size. They further argue that disaggregation is facilitated by recent innovations in information technology, organizational design, and performance measurement that permit the selective intervention of market elements in hierarchy and hierarchical elements in markets.
The enhanced ability to intervene selectively necessitates a rethinking of traditional assumptions about the discreteness of governance choices. Innovations in organization, measurement, and technology shift decisions about optimal governance from simple market versus hierarchy choices to choices of an optimal mix of hierarchical and market elements. Consequently, managers and scholars must increasingly view organizations as complex webs of governance arrangements rather than as entities with definable boundaries.
Factor analyses of data from an organizational climate survey suggest that organizational politics is an important dimension of peoples' perceptions of the work environment. These data were used to examine antecedents and consequences of politics perceptions using the framework suggested by Ferris, Russ and Fandt (1989). Measures of perceived intergroup cooperation, clarity of roles and responsibilities, and fairness of rewards/recognition were most predictive of politics perceptions. Minority status was the only personal characteristic that predicted politics perceptions. When controlling for its antecedents, perceptions of organizational politics were only related to perceived innovation. Analyses using structural equation modeling indicated that the relationships between politics and its antecedents were not influenced by an overall affective response to the work environment.
This study investigated the differential effects of task design and reward system design on group functioning; the effectiveness of ''hybrid'' groups, in which groups' tasks and/or rewards have both individual and group elements; and how individuals' preferences for autonomy moderate their responses to interdependence at work. An intervention in the reward system at a large U.S. corporation created group, individual, and hybrid rewards for 150 existing teams of technicians that had group, hybrid, or individual tasks. Groups performed best when their tasks and outcomes were either pure group or pure individual. Hybrid groups performed quite poorly, had low-quality interaction processes, and low member satisfaction. Task and outcome interdependence affected different aspects of group functioning: Tasks influenced variables related to cooperation, while outcomes influenced variables related to effort. Individuals' autonomy preferences did not moderate the effects of task and reward interdependence but, instead, were themselves influenced by the amount of interdependence in the work. These findings have implications for the design of work and reward systems for work groups.
This paper presents a multifaceted qualitative investigation of everyday conflict in six organizational work teams. Repeated interviews and on-site observations provide data on participants' perceptions, behaviors, and their own analyses of their conflicts, resulting in a generalized conflict model. Model evaluation indicates that relationship conflict is detrimental to performance and satisfaction; process conflict is also detrimental to performance; and task conflict's effects on performance depend on specified dimensions. In particular, emotionality reduces effectiveness, resolution potential and acceptability norms increase effectiveness, and importance accentuates conflict's other effects. Groups with norms that accept task but not relationship conflict are most effective. The model and the findings help to broaden understanding of dynamics of organizational conflict and suggest ways it can either be alleviated or wisely encouraged.
In this article, we review and evaluate recent management research on the effects of different types of diversity in group composition at various organizational levels (i.e., boards of directors, top management groups, and organizational task groups) for evidence of common patterns. We argue that diversity in the composition of organizational groups affects outcomes such as turnover and performance through its impact on affective, cognitive, communication, and symbolic processes.
Provides a step by step template for developing a team charter. Notes that a team charter is an important element in any teamworking process as it provides a start-up direction for the team and avoids the team wasting a valuable time and resources. Gives an example of a team charter and a detailed analysis of the 21 sections involved.
Purpose
The purpose of the research is to demonstrate the impact of psychological contract infringement (independent variable) on organizational commitment, exit, voice and neglect (dependent variables) within a Canadian federal public organization located in Quebec, where individual (e.g. age), organizational (e.g. stricter rule enforcement) and situational (e.g., employment alternatives) variables are controlled. Design/methodology/approach – A pre‐tested questionnaire (204 questions) on the psychological contract was distributed to 357 Canadian civil servants in a one site federal department. One hundred and thirty‐two questionnaires were returned and considered usable for research, for a 37 per cent response rate. Bivariate analysis was performed on the various determinants and individual responses to psychological contract violation, including organizational commitment, departure designs and counterproductive behaviors. Findings – Results clearly illustrate the great complexity of the link between organizational variables and individual reactions and shed light, on a higher level, on the need to outgrow arguments that reduce bureaucracy to its mere perverse effects. These results suggest that the managerial challenge is not so much to produce a shift from an environment where the rule of law, standards and regulations prevails to an open and flexible environment where individual autonomy is prized as it is to ensure compliance with normative and regulatory constraints. Originality/value – The research seeks to enrich the knowledge base on the subject area because previous research has dealt almost exclusively with the psychological contract within large private companies.
This study examines how first-level supervisors identify and manage marginal employees. It was expected that supervisors would differ both in their approaches to marginal employees and in their willingness to use negative sanctions (informal warnings, formal warnings, and dismissals). Results corroborated these expectations and showed a significant positive correlation between supervisors' use of sanctions and ratings of unit performance by higher level managers. An interpretation based on social learning theory rather than operant conditioning is offered; it suggests that appropriate use of sanctions may be perceived by employees as legitimate and may be conducive to the development of productive group norms.
The ability to transfer best practices intemally is critical to a firm's ability to build competitive advantage through the appropriation of rents from scarce internal knowledge. Just as a firm's distinctive competencies might be difficult for other firms to imitate, its best practices could be difficult to imitate internally. Yet, little systematic attention has been paid to such intemal stickiness. The author analyzes intemal stickiness of knowledge transfer and tests the resulting model using canonical correlation analysis of a data set consisting of 271 observations of 122 best-practice transfers in eight companies. Contrary to conventional wisdom that blames primarily motivational factors, the study findings show the major barriers to internal knowledge transfer to be knowledge-related factors such as the recipient's lack of absorptive capacity, causal ambiguity, and an arduous relationship between the source and the recipient. The identification and transfer of best practices is emerging as one of the most important and widespread practical management issues of the latter half of the 1990s. Armed with meaningful, detailed performance data, firms that use fact- based management methods such as TQM, bench- marking, and process reengineering can regularly compare the perfonnance of their units along operational dimensions. Sparse but unequivocal evidence suggests that such comparisons often reveal surprising perfonnance differences between units, indicating a need to improve knowledge utilization within the firm (e.g., Chew, Bresnahan, and Clark, 1990).' Because intemal transfers typi-
The research reported here compared actual communication of managers and subordinates in two plants, one organized by an organic, self-managing team philosophy and one by mechanistic, authority-based philosophy. Using a relational control coding scheme to analyze and compare interactions, we found that the use of a variety of question and answer combinations and conversational elaboration, and a lack of managerial orders and commands characterized communication at the self-managed plant. In contrast, competitive interchanges, interruptions, and statements of nonsupport typified interaction at the authority-based plant. These findings provide empirical support for hypotheses suggesting that communicative forms are consultative in organic systems and command-like in mechanistic systems.
Literature on the psychological contract has made significant contributions to our understanding of the exchange relationship between employees and their employer. However, the influence of cultural differences on perceptions of the employment relationship has largely been neglected. We propose both cognitive and motivational mechanisms through which the cultural profiles of individuals influence (a) formation of the psychological contract, (b) perceptions of violations of the psychological contract, and (c) responses to perceived violations. General mechanisms for the influence of culture on the psychological contract are followed by specific examples of the influence of individualism and collectivism. Copyright © 2003 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
The authors examine the nature, extent, and consequences of psychological contract violations which occur in restructuring firms. Managers in restructuring firms were significantly more likely to perceive psychological contract violations in the areas of job security, input into decision making, opportunities for advancement, and amount of responsibility. Managers in restructuring firms were also significantly more likely to be looking for new jobs and were significantly less likely to be loyal to their employers. Several situational factors mitigated against managersß strong negative reactions to psychological contract violations: procedural justice in how layoffs are handled, low likelihood of future violations, and positive working relationships with colleagues. © 1998 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
Examines the effect of team demography on firm performance. Three models of team demography, process, and firm performance are considered: direct demography, process, and the intervening model. The demography model, which holds that team demography is the sole determinant of performance outcomes, is modeled in terms of heterogeneity, team tenure, and team size. The process model, which purports that demography and process contribute separately to performance outcomes, measures demography in the same terms as the demography model and measures process in terms of social integration, informal communication, and communication frequency. The intervening model proposes that team demography affects team process and in turn influences process. Data were collected from 53 U.S. high-technology firms, through interviews and surveys of the firm CEOs and their top management teams. The results show little support for the demography model, while partial support is shown for the intervening model. Team process is shown to have a direct impact on performance while demography is shown to have direct and indirect effects. These results indicate that keeping team size small enhances informal communication and social integration. It is evidence that the relationship between team demography, process and performance is not straightforward. (SRD)
Five common themes were derived from the literature on effective work groups, and then characteristics representing the themes were related to effectivness criteria. Themes included job design, interdependence, composition, context, and process. They contained 19 group characteristics which were assessed by employees and managers. Effectiveness criteria included productivity, employee satisfaction, and manager judgments. Data were collected from 391 employees, 70 managers, and archival records for 80 work groups in a financial organization. Results showed that all three effectiveness criteria were predicted by the characteristics, and nearly all characteristics predicted some of the effectiveness criteria. The job design and process themes were slightly more predictive than the interdependence, composition, and context themes. Implications for designing effective work groups were discussed, and a 54-item measure of the 19 characteristics was presented for future research.
This study reanalyzed data from an examination by Hom, Griffeth, Palich, and Bracker (1998) of the mechanisms by which posthire realistic job previews reduce turnover. Irving and Meyer (1999) argued that Hom et al. overstated support for their mediation theory by calculating residual difference scores (errors derived from predicting experienced attainment of job outcomes from initial expectations of outcomes) to operationalize met expectations. Rather, Irving and Meyer showed that methodological weaknesses associated with difference scores also plague residual difference scores. Prompted by their demonstration, this research applied partial correlations (partialing out experienced outcomes from residual differences) and Edwards' (1994) polynomial regression approach to verify whether met expectations underlie realistic previews' effectiveness. These reanalyses disputed met expectations. As a result, this inquiry revised the formulation advocated by Hom et al. (1998), positing that coping strategies and perceptions of employer concern account for how posthire previews work.
Using the methodology of policy capturing, this research identifies the role that performance, time on the job, commitment of long-term employment and employability play in judgment of termination fairness and employer obligations. Previous research (Rousseau and Anton, 1988) found that seniority and past commitments of long-term employment contributed significantly to judgments of termination fairness and obligation. The present study considered these variables along with performance (past, present and future potential) using 116 participants in human resource management courses. Results indicated that present performance, time on the job, and commitments affect judgments regarding termination fairness and obligation. Past and future performance, however, had no impact on these judgments. Implications of the findings for understanding employer and employee obligations are discussed.
Sumario: What culture is and does -- The dimensions of culture -- How to study and interpret culture -- The role leadership in building culture -- The evolution of culture and leadership -- Learning cultures and learning leaders
This paper examines potency, defined as the collective belief in a group that it can be effective, and its role in determining group effectiveness. The paper illustrates the construct and reviews its origins. The distinctiveness of potency from efficacy and from other collective and motivational constructs is described. The measurement of potency is also examined. The paper concludes with a presentation of a conceptual framework for understanding the determinants of potency and with a discussion of future theory, research and practice.