Christine Quinn Trank

Not All Group Exchange Structures Are Created Equal: Effects of Forms and Levels of Exchange on Work Outcomes in Virtual Teams

Electronic communications collected from 233 undergraduate business students in 50 virtual teams were coded to identify group exchange structures. Results revealed four types of structures: unified generalized (characterized by high-quality exchange relationships among group members and high information sharing and cooperation; n = 10), unified generalized with isolates (high-quality exchange among most members, with negative exchange among some isolated members; n = 16), unified balanced (characterized by low-quality exchange relationships among members and low trust and concern for others; n = 8), and unified balanced with isolates (low-quality exchange among most members and negative exchange with some isolated members; n = 16). Contrary to expectations, virtual teams with unified generalized as opposed to unified balanced exchange structures did not experience higher levels of performance and member satisfaction. However, when isolates were present, adverse effects on performance and satisfaction were observed, but only for teams with balanced as opposed to generalized structures, as expected. The findings reveal the importance of promoting generalized exchange structures to avoid the potentially detrimental effects of group isolates on virtual team performance and member satisfaction. The implication for organizations planning to adopt virtual teams is that concerted efforts to foster positive social exchanges characterized by high levels of trust, cooperation, information sharing and coordination, and thereby avoid the creation of group isolates, may produce dividends in member satisfaction and team productivity.

This Is Going to Hurt Compassionate Research Methods

As compassion has become established in the organizational literature as an important area of study, calls for increased compassion in our own work and research have increased. Compassion can take many forms in academic work, but in this article we propose a framework for compassionate research methods. Not only driven by caring for others and a desire for improving their lot, compassionate research methods actually immerse the researcher in compassionate work. We propose that compassionate research methods include three important elements: ethnography, aesthetics, and emotionality. Together, these provide opportunities for emergent theoretical experimentation that can lead to both the alleviation of suffering in the immediate research context and new theoretical insights. To show the possibilities of this method, we use empirical data from a unique setting—the first U.S. permanent death penalty defense team.

Journal of Management Inquiry at 20: Still Crazy After All These Years

Anniversaries commemorate important occasions. Once a year, we mark weddings, birthdays, and memorable—and sometimes tragic—events. We might think that because we note these events each year, the observation is about the passage of time—that we are somehow marking duration (or survival) as important. To an extent, that might be true. We marvel at the couple that celebrates their diamond wedding anniversary because it is an impressive amount of time. However, we also comment—sometimes cynically—at the love and forbearance required to sustain a relationship for 75 years. Marriage is hard. “Big” anniversaries get our attention because they are interruptions in our experience that cause us to take stock— 74 means something different from 75. Love and forbearance were just as important at 74, we just didn’t pay that much attention then. Journal of Management Inquiry (JMI) is turning 20. We think it makes sense to use this anniversary to make note of the love and forbearance required to get to 20 because JMI is hard. In the thicket of journals participating in the citation chase, JMI is resolutely different. We won’t pretend that citations aren’t just as important to us as they are to other journals, but there is something about JMI and the people who publish in it, edit it, review for it, and read it that tells us that these people who virtually populate JMI care deeply about the issues that are discussed in her pages, and willingly participate in the work and courage it takes to break frames. That’s why JMI is hard. Our authors often go out on a limb and take the editors with them (and sometimes authors aren’t far enough out on a limb, and the reviewers and editors must nudge them further). JMI is also hard because of the editorial commitment to be different—to cover what is not generally covered in traditional management journals and to give space and freedom to forms of expression that do not fit with the traditions of academic writing. In the first piece appearing in this issue, Alan Glassman and Thomas Cummings (2011) trace the history of JMI, locating its genesis in the frustration many scholars had with mainstream management journals of the time. Qualitative research seemed not to be welcomed in their pages, and growing methodological rigidity left little room for experimentation and reflection. The forms of academic writing were becoming increasingly institutionalized. The voice of practice and experience did not have a regular, dedicated forum. JMI was conceived as a remedy. JMI often works differently from other journals as well. Responding to critics (e.g., Bedian, 1996) that the author’s voice was being lost in the review and editorial process, coeditors Paul Hirsch and Kim Boal sought a mechanism through which authors’ innovative ideas and perspectives could be privileged and escape the often homogenizing process of review and revision. Their solution, inspired by the letters section of American Psychologist, was to formalize a more public process, allowing critics and advocates to comment on published work. It is but one of the mechanisms that have evolved to solve the problem of staying legitimate in the academic community while making space for those who challenge its conventions. The trick, as Glassman and Cummings (2011) point out, is to maintain a level of quality and rigor that rivals the major journals in the field while clearly being an alternative to them. This accomplishment has been the result of ongoing work by writers, editors, and reviewers to get it right. The early pioneers at JMI were establishing an organization with a distinctive identity (Glynn & Abzug, 2002), in the field of management journals. Negotiating and protecting the new journal’s identity required cultural entrepreneurship (Lounsbury & Glynn, 2001) to attain legitimacy in the broader academic community while protecting its identity as an alternative to the mainstream. The founding story has appeared in print before, and it is repeated often in the hallways at meetings of the Western Academy of Management. We retell it here so that as we grow (and age) we preserve and reinforce our identity (Wry, Lounsbury, & Glynn, 2011). These pioneers seem to have been instinctively aware of the social construction processes that underlie cultural entrepreneurship and used a range of strategies. Editors’ introductory essays to each published article represented one such strategy. Whether the essays were deliberate attempts at cultural entrepreneurship, these introductory essays helped to frame and reinforce JMI’s unique identity, and continue to do so. Even the journal’s choice to recognize papers that in 421072 JMIXXX10.1177/1056492611421072B oal and TrankJournal of Management Inquiry