Aimée A. Kane

Team receptivity to newcomers: Five decades of evidence and future research themes

Reviews of research on newcomers mostly address socialization processes, focusing on individual adjustment. This article takes a different approach by examining the ways in which teams adapt to new...

One of Us or One of My Friends: How Social Identity and Tie Strength Shape the Creative Generativity of Boundary-Spanning Ties

Social ties to colleagues on other work teams can spur creative ideas and workplace innovation by exposing an individual to diverse knowledge. However, for external knowledge to be recombined into innovation, the knowledge must first be recognized as potentially valuable. Going beyond traditional structural explanations, we predict that the use of diverse knowledge to generate creative ideas and solutions will depend in part on employees’ psychological attachment to the organizational groups to which they belong, i.e., their social identity, and the strength of their social ties. We test our hypotheses in an R&D division of a global high-technology firm, finding that social identity influences the creative generativity of boundary-spanning ties. Specifically, stronger team identity renders interactions with colleagues on other work teams less generative of creative ideas, while identification with an overarching, superordinate group (e.g., a division) enhances creative generativity. We also hypothesize and find that tie strength attenuates the negative effect of team identity.

Immigrant managers as boundary spanners on offshored software development projects: partners or bosses?

A growing trend to source complex software development projects to lower-cost (offshore) locations has created a need for effective collaboration across cultural boundaries. One way of addressing this need in practice has been to nominate onshore immigrants to manage projects being sourced to the immigrants country of origin. The assumption is that these managers will enable effective collaboration by drawing on their dual identity. We report findings of a qualitative study involving offshore software providers and onshore project managers (both immigrant and non-immigrant) investigating consequences of this practice. We then use social identity theory to explain our findings.

To join or not to join: an investigation of individual facilitators and inhibitors of medical faculty participation in interdisciplinary research teams.

Interdisciplinary research (IDR) teams are an important mechanism for facilitating medical breakthroughs. This study investigates the role of individual-level predictors of the choice to join a new IDR team at a major medical institution. We collected survey data from a sample of 233 faculty members who were given the opportunity to participate in IDR teams that had recently formed around a wide range of medical topic areas. Our results suggest that even under supportive organizational conditions, some medical experts were more likely to participate than others. Specifically, basic and translational researchers, associate professors, and faculty with distinctive topic area expertise and with more experience collaborating across departmental boundaries participated at a greater rate than their peers. Our findings have implications for research, practice, and policy focused on overcoming the challenges of drawing together diverse medical experts into IDR teams with the potential to advance knowledge to prevent, cure, and treat complex medical conditions.

When and how groups utilize dissenting newcomer knowledge: Newcomers’ future prospects condition the effect of language-based identity strategies

Two experiments suggest that newcomers’ structural role (permanent vs. temporary appointment) in the groups they enter conditions the extent to which their use of language-based identity strategies (integrating vs. differentiating) influences groups’ willingness to accept them and utilize their dissenting task knowledge. For newcomers with permanent future prospects, the use of integrating pronouns leads to greater acceptance than the use of differentiating pronouns, and newcomer acceptance is in turn a key mediator of groups’ willingness to utilize their knowledge. For newcomers with temporary future prospects, however, the use of integrating pronouns (vs. differentiating pronouns) does not positively influence their acceptance, nor does newcomer acceptance determine the willingness of groups to utilize their knowledge. The theory supported by these studies advances group socialization literature by elucidating when and how groups are receptive to dissenting newcomers.

Language and Group Processes: An Integrative, Interdisciplinary Review:

This article reviews research that examines the use of language in small interacting groups and teams. We propose a model of group inputs (e.g., status), processes and emergent states (e.g., cohesion, influence, and innovation), and outputs (e.g., group effectiveness and member well-being) to help structure our review. The model is integrated with how language is used by groups to both reflect group inputs but also to examine how language interacts with inputs to affect group processes and create emergent states in groups, and then ultimately helps add value to the group with outputs (e.g., performance). Using cross-disciplinary research, our review finds that language is integral to how groups coordinate, interrelate, and adapt. For example, language convergence is related to increased group cohesion and group performance. Our model provides the theoretical scaffolding to consider language use in interacting small groups and suggests areas for future research.