Colin M. Fisher

Learning to Share: Exploring Temporality in Shared Leadership and Team Learning

Using data from 310 executive MBA students in 66 teams on a business simulation project, we explored (a) how shared leadership and team learning behaviors influence each other over time in self-managed teams, and (b) how the stability of the leadership network structure (i.e., network churn) is associated with team learning behaviors. We found that shared leadership stimulated team learning behaviors in a manner consistent with previous research at the early stages of teams’ work together, but not at the middle and later stages of the task. We also found that teams that engaged in more learning behaviors early in the task were more likely to keep their leadership network structure stable. This stability was positively associated with team learning behaviors at the midpoint and end of the task. We use these findings to elaborate theory on how leadership and learning in self-managed teams develop, change, and influence each other over time.

Comparing Social Science and Computer Science Workflow Processes for Studying Group Interactions

In this article, a team of authors from the Geeks and Groupies workshop, in Leiden, the Netherlands, compare prototypical approaches to studying group interaction in social science and computer science disciplines, which we call workflows. To help social and computer science scholars understand and manage these differences, we organize workflow into three major stages: research design, data collection, and analysis. For each stage, we offer a brief overview on how scholars from each discipline work. We then compare those approaches and identify potential synergies and challenges. We conclude our article by discussing potential directions for more integrated and mutually beneficial collaboration that go beyond the producer–consumer model.

Helping You Help Me: The Role of Diagnostic (In)Congruence in the Helping Process within Organizations

Through an inductive, multi-method field study at a major design firm, we investigated the helping process in project work and how that process affects the success of a helping episode, as perceived by help-givers and/or -receivers. We used daily diary entries and weekly interviews from four project teams, and a separate sample of critical incident interviews, to induce process models of successful and unsuccessful helping episodes. We found that, in unsuccessful episodes, help-givers and -receivers maintained incongruent expectations and project understandings throughout the episode, which we call diagnostic incongruence. In contrast, the parties in successful episodes engaged in aligning practices that fostered shared expectations and project understandings (i.e., diagnostic congruence). Importantly, aligning practices in successful episodes occurred before or at the beginning of episodes. We also found that people’s assessments of unsuccessful episodes were often marked by intense emotionality, which sometimes led them to disregard whether the helping resulted in instrumental progress. We discuss the implications of our process model for theory and practice.