Christopher G. Banford’s research while affiliated with University of Oklahoma and other places

Purpose – The purpose of this paper was to identify examples of management lore currently in the organizational sciences. Design/methodology/approach – The authors deliberated and developed a series of examples of management lore in the organizational sciences and surveyed management practitioners concerning their beliefs in the lore hypothesized. Findings – Pervasive beliefs that conflict with academic research exist in management practices. Although many of these ideas are commonly accepted as immutable facts, they may be based upon faulty logic, insufficient understanding of academic research, anecdotal evidence and an overdependence upon common sense. Buckley and Eder (1988) called these as examples of management lore. In this conceptual paper, we identify and discuss 12 examples of management lore that persist in day-to-day management practices. Topics we explore include personality, emotional intelligence, teams, compensation, goals, performance, work ethic, creativity and organizational citizenship behaviors. Originality/value – A number of areas in which academic research gainsays what we believe to be an immutable fact.

Although difficult coworkers exist in most organizations, and evidence shows that they damage important work outcomes, we know very little about how to buffer their effects in teams. To address this problem, we extend theory on team bad apples by proposing and testing a joint buffering model. Using a sample of 97 teams we found that a single difficult teammate damaged team performance by 30%, but that highly interdependent teams with emotionally stable members cut this effect in half. We also found that the buffering effect was mediated by teammates’ physiological stress (i.e., salivary cortisol) and contextual performance such that highly interdependent teams with emotionally stable members had the highest levels of stress, contextual performance, and team performance in our study. Implications for theory and research are discussed.

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to examine how the effectiveness of delegation as a management practice is impacted by various factors such as manager cognition, perceived subordinate competence, and cultural differences. This research may help global business leaders to better understand how cultural differences may impact managerial functions and how to manage culturally diverse employees. Design/methodology/approach – This paper is based upon a conceptual discussion of delegation as it has been studied in the past and a reflection on the ways in which past research can usefully inform current trends in the use of delegation as a management practice. Findings – A model is proposed that suggests that the effectiveness of delegation in a local context is a function of the global leader’s cognitions and perceptions of their subordinates. Further, it suggests that this relationship is moderated by the local cultural context in that some cultures may be opposed to being delegated authority. Research limitations/implications – This paper presents a conceptual framework and therefore empirical applicability of this model must be proven. Originality/value – Delegation is an under-researched management practice. This paper contributes to the delegation literature by exploring its value to management in a global context.

In the years since Jehn’s (1995) seminal article on task conflict in teams, researchers have sought to understand the beneficial aspects of conflict on performance. Initial efforts focused on the distinction between task and relationship conflict, while more recent efforts have focused on various conditions inside or outside a team. In this article we review and integrate the disparate theoretical arguments for, and empirical evidence of, moderators of the task conflict and team performance relationship in order to organize the findings and provide a framework for future research on conflict in teams and organizations. Specifically, we find four types of conditions suggested, and in some cases found, to moderate the task conflict and team performance relationship: characteristics of the conflict, the task, the team, and individuals within the team. The implications of this review should be valuable to scholars of conflict, teams, and organizations along with practitioners wishing to increase productivity through rigorous discussion and debate in their teams and organizations.

Previous research on teams has found that agreeableness is one of the strongest personality predictors of team performance, yet one of the weakest personality predictors of individual-level job performance. In this study, we examined why teams with more agreeable members perform better. Data were collected across 4 months at 5 points in time from 107 project teams. We found that agreeableness affects performance through communication and cohesion and that communication precedes cohesion in time. Furthermore, we found that virtualness moderated the relationships between agreeableness and communication, as well as between agreeableness and team performance, such that teams only benefitted from high levels of agreeableness when interacting face-to-face.