Deanna M. Kennedy

Team adaptation: A fifteen-year synthesis (1998–2013) and framework for how this literature needs to “adapt” going forward

Organizations increasingly operate within dynamic environments that require them to adapt. To respond quickly and effectively to acute or on-going change, many organizations use teams to help them remain competitive. Accordingly, the topic of team adaptation has become more prominent within the broader organizational team literature. Given the wealth of knowledge that has been accumulated, we consider what has been learned to date. However, even with the increased attention to team adaptation within the literature, not all teams are created equal in terms of their capacity for adaptability. Thus, we review factors that serve as antecedents of team adaptation, the process of adaptation, and the resulting adaptive outcomes. Finally, we suggest future directions for research and practice as we introduce a conceptual framework, whereby the focus of a team’s adaptation process is impacted by the type and severity of the disruption or trigger that gives rise to the need for adaptation.

Temporal Patterns of Mental Model Convergence: Implications for Distributed Teams Interacting in Electronic Collaboration Spaces

Objective: Our objective is to capture temporal patterns in mental model convergence processes and differences in these patterns between distributed teams using an electronic collaboration space and face-to-face teams with no interface. Background: Distributed teams, as sociotechnical systems, collaborate via technology to work on their task. The way in which they process information to inform their mental models may be examined via team communication and may unfold differently than it does in face-to-face teams. Method: We conducted our analysis on 32 three-member teams working on a planning task. Half of the teams worked as distributed teams in an electronic collaboration space, and the other half worked face-to-face without an interface. Results: Using event history analysis, we found temporal interdependencies among the initial convergence points of the multiple mental models we examined. Furthermore, the timing of mental model convergence and the onset of task work discussions were related to team performance. Differences existed in the temporal patterns of convergence and task work discussions across conditions. Conclusion: Distributed teams interacting via an electronic interface and face-to-face teams with no interface converged on multiple mental models, but their communication patterns differed. In particular, distributed teams with an electronic interface required less overall communication, converged on all mental models later in their life cycles, and exhibited more linear cognitive processes than did face-to-face teams interacting verbally. Application: Managers need unique strategies for facilitating communication and mental model convergence depending on teams’ degrees of collocation and access to an interface, which in turn will enhance team performance.

Project team effectiveness: the case for sufficient setup and top management involvement

Launching and supporting successful maintenance projects is an overlooked aspect of maintenance management research. This paper examines the effects of four important factors on project success: resource allocation, team leader authority, significant project objectives, and top management involvement. Additionally, we investigate the moderating effects of top management involvement on the relationship between inputs and team performance. By examining the responses from 60 industrial teams we found that a project teams ability to function efficiently is positively related to resource allocation and significant project objectives and negatively related to team leader authority and top management involvement. A project teams ability to achieve its business goals was positively related to significant project objectives. Moreover, the relationship was stronger for significant project objectives and project efficiency when top management was involved. The moderator also enhanced the team leader authority–goal achievement relationship but negatively impacted the team leader authority–project efficiency relationship. Implications are discussed.

Native American Values and Management Education: Envisioning an Inclusive Virtuous Circle

Circles are symbols of interconnectedness. Behavioral circles can be vicious or virtuous. Many American Indians are caught in a vicious circle of exclusion from the purported benefits of Westernization, entrapment in its negative elements, and the ongoing undermining of their culture and thus their identities. Yet Native Americans, along with many indigenous peoples the world over, are holding fast to traditional values. Indigenous knowledge systems include spiritual orientations that, in the face of the social and environmental issues facing humanity, may provide an alternative set of values for generating life-enhancing business behavior. The authors introduce management educators to Native American values generally and specifically to four traditional Lakota values: bravery, generosity, fortitude, and wisdom. Management education might move toward to an inclusive, virtuous circle through respect for Native American values as an equally valid alternative to dominant management values.

Merging internal and external processes: Examining the mental model convergence process through team communication.

Mental model convergence is a macrocognitive process critical to team development. Yet, little is known about how the convergence process occurs in a team domain. To date, researchers have examined convergence at specific points in time after performance episodes. While this approach has moved the field forward, research is needed that captures the dynamics of the convergence process as it occurs during collaborative activities. To facilitate this needed research, we present a framework for examining mental model convergence via communicated mental model content. Our framework is theoretically based on research in cognitive science and communication, as well as more recent team mental model research. By explicitly establishing the theoretical connection between mental model convergence and team communication, we extend the extant research that links communication and team cognition and address a gap in the team mental model literature regarding how to examine the mental model convergence process over time.

Perception and action influences on discrete and reciprocal bimanual coordination

For nearly four decades bimanual coordination, “a prototype of complex motor skills” and apparent “window into the design of the brain,” has been intensively studied. Past research has focused on describing and modeling the constraints that allow the production of some coordination patterns while limiting effective performance of other bimanual coordination patterns. More recently researchers have identified a coalition of perception-action constraints that hinder the effective production of bimanual skills. The result has been that given specially designed contexts where one or more of these constraints are minimized, bimanual skills once thought difficult, if not impossible, to effectively produce without very extensive practice can be executed effectively with little or no practice. The challenge is to understand how these contextual constraints interact to allow or inhibit the production of complex bimanual coordination skills. In addition, the factors affecting the stability of bimanual coordination tasks needs to be re-conceptualized in terms of perception-related constraints arising from the environmental context in which performance is conducted and action constraints resident in the neuromotor system.

Team Decision Making in Computer-Supported Cooperative Work: How Initial Computer-Mediated or Face-to-Face Meetings Set the Stage for Later Outcomes*

The success of teams working together over multiple meetings may depend on how processes develop at initial meetings. Computer-mediated tools, in particular, may hinder team process development which may set the stage for shortcomings later. One recommendation is to hold the initial team meeting face to face. Herein, we examine social processes over time and whether computer-mediated teams completing their first session face to face can offset the shortcomings in process development and outcomes in their second session. Using longitudinal data we test the differences in, and relationships among, processes and outputs across teams that met twice as computer mediated, twice as face to face, or as mixed media (first as face to face and second as computer mediated). Results indicate computer-mediated teams reported lower participative decision making than face-to-face teams after the first session and the disparity continued at the second session. Mixed-media teams, however, had improved participative decision making over pure computer-mediated teams in the long run. Further, mixed-media teams reported team satisfaction similar to pure face-to-face teams and delivered a task performance between that of pure computer-mediated and pure face-to-face teams. Interestingly, mixed-media teams experienced increased conflict over time, while conflict in pure media teams decreased. Our results suggest that practitioners may want to require an initial face-to-face session (i.e., more than just a meet and greet) to prepare members to work together in the future.

Developing a stakeholder-assisted agile CONOPS development process

Concepts of Operations (CONOPS) are documents describing the characteristics and intended usage of proposed and existing systems. They provide information about the requirements and future desired states the project aims to achieve. We reviewed 22 recent CONOPS from government and private sector institutions to ascertain the current approach to CONOPS development. Based on the CONOPS review and research literature, we highlight three key areas, stakeholder involvement, shared mental models, and visualization, through which the development process may be improved. Moreover, we suggest that the development process itself may be transformed into an agile process that addresses current shortcomings in the key areas. To do so, we propose an agile CONOPS development process conducted through three iteration-driven phases and present corresponding research and commercial tools that may be leveraged at each phase. As such, putting this agile process into effect may reduce development time, improve effectiveness, and change the perception of the CONOPS from a burdensome documentation procedure to an invaluable resource throughout the system lifecycle.

Rhythmical bimanual force production: homologous and non-homologous muscles

Abstract The experiment was designed to determine participants’ ability to coordinate a bimanual multifrequency pattern of isometric forces using homologous or non-homologous muscles. Lissajous feedback was provided to reduce perceptual and attentional constraints. The primary purpose was to determine whether the activation of homologous and non-homologous muscles resulted in different patterns of distortions in the left limb forces that are related to the forces produced by the right limb. The task was to rhythmically produce a 1:2 pattern of isometric forces by exerting isometric forces on the left side force transducer with the left arm that was coordinated with the pattern of isometric forces produced on the right side force transducer with the right arm. The results indicated that participants were able to ‘tune-in’ a 1:2 coordination patterns using homologous (triceps muscles of the left and right limbs) and using non-homologous muscles (biceps left limb and triceps right limb) when provided Lissajous feedback. However, distinct but consistent and identifiable distortions in the left limb force traces were observed for both the homologous and non-homologous tasks. For the homologous task, the interference occurred in the left limb when the right limb was initiating and releasing force. For the non-homologous task, the interference in the left limb force occurred only when the right limb was releasing force. In both conditions, the interference appeared to continue from the point of force initiation and/or release to peak force velocity. The overall results are consistent with the notion that neural crosstalk manifests differently during the coordination of the limbs depending upon whether homologous or non-homologous muscles are activated.

“Coyote Was Walking. . .”: Management Education in Indian Time

The authors present a Coyote story to illustrate Native American perspectives on time, teaching, and learning. Coyote stories invoke Indian Time, a traditional Native American perception of time that progresses through events rather than minutes on a clock. Coyote, a trickster, wanders and investigates, interacting with animate creatures and inanimate objects. He inspires us to pursue creative, multidirectional approaches of understanding and reflective, self-discovered approach to learning. Whereas management and management education typically edify a single-time perspective, that of clock time, you may find wisdom in nonlinear Indian Time and reflective learning through timeless stories.