François Chiocchio

Project Team Performance: A Study of Electronic Task and Coordination Communication

Communication is a key factor in team performance, successful project completion, and effective project management. Collective asynchronous electronic messages on task and coordination sent among members of 34 teams were analyzed using time-series analysis. Results suggest that compared to low-performing teams, high-performing teams exchanged more messages, modified their exchanges around milestones, and were more prone to self-organize prior to project completion. Also, high-performing teams started to coordinate themselves later but maintained higher levels of coordination afterward. Project managers could benefit from monitoring the amount and the way their team members discuss task and coordination in order to ensure high team and project performance.

Teamwork in integrated design projects: Understanding the effects of trust, conflict, and collaboration on performance

Teamwork during integrated design projects is complex. We address this by investigating how trust, collaboration, and conflict evolve over time to affect performance. Our results stem from data gathered using validated self-report questionnaires with 38 participants in 5 multidisciplinary teams at three points in time during a 6-week integrated design competition. Results show that without collaboration, trust and conflict have no bearing on performance. In addition to an unambiguous practical outcome—fostering collaboration helps build trust and manage conflict—our study points to theoretical developments: as trust- and conflict-performance relations grow over time, so does collaborations mediating effect.

Nonverbal Behavior and Communication in the Workplace A Review and an Agenda for Research

Nonverbal behavior is a hot topic in the popular management press. However, management scholars have lagged behind in understanding this important form of communication. Although some theories discuss limited aspects of nonverbal behavior, there has yet to be a comprehensive review of nonverbal behavior geared toward organizational scholars. Furthermore, the extant literature is scattered across several areas of inquiry, making the field appear disjointed and challenging to access. The purpose of this paper is to review the literature on nonverbal behavior with an eye towards applying it to organizational phenomena. We begin by defining nonverbal behavior and its components. We review and discuss several areas in the organizational sciences that are ripe for further explorations of nonverbal behavior. Throughout the paper, we offer ideas for future research as well as information on methods to study nonverbal behavior in lab and field contexts. We hope our review will encourage organizational scholars to develop a deeper understanding of how nonverbal behavior influences the social world of organizations.

Informational role self-efficacy: a validation in interprofessional collaboration contexts involving healthcare service and project teams

BackgroundHealthcare professionals perform knowledge-intensive work in very specialized disciplines. Across the professional divide, collaboration becomes increasingly difficult. For effective teamwork and collaboration to occur, it is considered necessary for individuals to believe in their ability to draw on their expertise and provide what others need to perform their job well. To date, however, no instruments exist to measure such a construct.MethodsA two-study design is used to test the psychometric properties, factor structure and incremental validity of a five-item questionnaire measuring informational role self-efficacy.ResultsBased on parallel analysis and exploratory factor analysis, Study 1 shows a robust and reliable one-dimensional construct. Study 2 cross-validates this factor structure using confirmatory factor analysis. Study 2 also shows that informational role self-efficacy predicts proactive teamwork behaviors over and above goal similarity, interdependence, coordination and intra-team trust.ConclusionsThe instrument can be used in research to assess an individual’s capability beliefs in communicating his/her informational characteristics that are pertinent to the task performance of others. The construct is also shown to have value in team-building exercises.

Role conflict and well‐being among employed mothers: the mediating effects of self‐efficacy

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to examine the importance of self‐efficacy in facilitating the joint management of work and family and in predicting the well‐being of employed mothers.Design/methodology/approach – Via a self‐report questionnaire, data were obtained from 300 full‐time professional women on measures of: work interfering with family (WIF), family interfering with work (FIW), self‐efficacy, emotional health, organizational commitment, and turnover intentions. Multiple regression analysis was used to examine the relations among these variables and to test for the mediation effects of self‐efficacy.Findings – Three key findings emerged: self‐efficacy was a significant predictor of FIW and WIF, and of all three indices of well‐being; the greater the interference between work and family, the more women felt emotionally exhausted, the less committed they were, and the more likely they were to consider changing jobs or opting out of the market; and self‐efficacy mediated the relationships be...

Multi-Level Efficacy Evidence of a Combined Interprofessional Collaboration and Project Management Training Program for Healthcare Project Teams

Project work is essential for the improvement of healthcare organizations; yet, project management and collaboration in the project context are not taught to healthcare professionals. Three half-day training workshops integrating project management and collaboration were designed and delivered to 14 interprofessional healthcare project teams. Multivariate measures were taken over the course of 36 weeks. Individual, team, and project-level results showed high satisfaction and perceptions of utility; improved self-efficacy for project-specific task work and teamwork; increased goal clarity and coordination; and a significant impact on the functional performance of projects. This study provides initial benchmark measures regarding the pertinence of project management and interprofessional collaboration training for healthcare project teams.

The Difficult but Necessary Task of Developing a Specific Project Team Research Agenda

Project teams are central to organizations everywhere; however, there is a knowledge gap between project management scholars on the one hand and organizational behavior and industrial–organizational (OB/IO) scholars on the other. This gap seriously impedes the advancement of knowledge, because scholars from both fields have not leveraged each others considerable knowledge and might be relying on outdated models and evidence to study project team phenomena, manage project teams, or develop university curricula. A call is made for interdisciplinary research projects devoted specifically to developing a research agenda on project teams.

Modelling the effect of perceived interdependence among mental healthcare professionals on their work role performance

ABSTRACT The purpose of mental healthcare system reform was to enhance service efficiency by strengthening primary mental healthcare and increasing service integration in communities. Reinforcing interprofessional teamwork also intended to address the extensive and multidimensional needs of patients with mental disorders by bringing together a broader array of expertise. In this context, mental healthcare professionals (MHCPs) from various health and social care professions are more interdependent in many aspects of their work (tasks, resources, and goals). We wanted to examine the effect of perceived interdependence among MHCPs on their work role performance in the context of mental healthcare. For this purpose, we developed and tested a model coherent with the Input-Mediator-Outcome-Input (IMOI) framework of team effectiveness. Data from questionnaires administered to 315 MHCPs from four local health service networks in Quebec, Canada were analysed through structural equation modelling and mediation analysis. The structural equation model provided a good fit for the data and explained 51% of the variance of work role performance. Perceived collaboration, confidence in the advantages of interprofessional collaboration, involvement in the decision process, knowledge sharing, and satisfaction with the nature of the work partially mediated the effect of perceived interdependence among team members on work role performance. Therefore, perceived interdependence among team members had a positive impact on the work role performance of MHCPs mostly through its effect on favourable team functioning features. This implies, in practice, that increased interdependence of MHCPs would be more likely to truly enhance work role performance if team-based interventions to promote collaborative work and interprofessional teaching and training programs to support work within interprofessional teams were jointly implemented. Participation in the decision process and knowledge sharing should also be fostered, for instance, by adopting knowledge management best practices.

From Multi-professional to Trans-professional Healthcare Teams: The Critical Role of Innovation Projects

This chapter addresses change and interprofessional collaboration in health care by contrasting two forms of collaborations. The first occurs in ongoing service delivery while the other takes place in project teams that are by definition temporary. Most practitioners and scholars discuss the many challenges of interprofessional collaboration in the context of continuous change efforts. However, collaboration differs when the need for change is more radical and innovative. The chapter explains why, and offers insight on how to manage projects interprofessionally.

An analysis of the adaptability of a professional development program in public health: results from the ALPS Study

BackgroundProfessional development is a key component of effective public health infrastructures. To be successful, professional development programs in public health and health promotion must adapt to practitioners’ complex real-world practice settings while preserving the core components of those programs’ models and theoretical bases. An appropriate balance must be struck between implementation fidelity, defined as respecting the core nature of the program that underlies its effects, and adaptability to context to maximize benefit in specific situations. This article presents a professional development pilot program, the Health Promotion Laboratory (HPL), and analyzes how it was adapted to three different settings while preserving its core components. An exploratory analysis was also conducted to identify team and contextual factors that might have been at play in the emergence of implementation profiles in each site.MethodsThis paper describes the program, its core components and adaptive features, along with three implementation experiences in local public health teams in Quebec, Canada. For each setting, documentary sources were analyzed to trace the implementation of activities, including temporal patterns throughout the project for each program component. Information about teams and their contexts/settings was obtained through documentary analysis and semi-structured interviews with HPL participants, colleagues and managers from each organization.ResultsWhile each team developed a unique pattern of implementing the activities, all the program’s core components were implemented. Differences of implementation were observed in terms of numbers and percentages of activities related to different components of the program as well as in the patterns of activities across time. It is plausible that organizational characteristics influencing, for example, work schedule flexibility or learning culture might have played a role in the HPL implementation process.ConclusionsThis paper shows how a professional development program model can be adapted to different contexts while preserving its core components. Capturing the heterogeneity of the intervention’s exposure, as was done here, will make possible in-depth impact analyses involving, for example, the testing of program–context interactions to identify program outcomes predictors. Such work is essential to advance knowledge on the action mechanisms of professional development programs.