Heidi K. Gardner

Performance Pressure as a Double-Edged Sword: Enhancing Team Motivation While Undermining the Use of Team Knowledge

In this paper, I develop and empirically test the proposition that performance pressure acts as a double-edged sword for teams, providing positive effects by enhancing the team’s motivation to achieve good results while simultaneously triggering process losses. I conducted a multimethod field study of 78 audit and consulting teams from two global professional firms, revealing an irony of team life: even though motivated to perform well on a high-stakes project, pressured teams are more likely to engage in performance-detracting behaviors. Survey results show that, as performance pressure increases, team members begin to overly rely on general expertise while discounting domain-specific expertise, leading to suboptimal performance. I then use longitudinal qualitative case studies of six project teams across two firms to explore the underlying behavioral mechanisms that generate this outcome. Results reveal four limiting team processes: (1) a drive toward consensus, (2) a focus on common knowledge, (3) a shift from learning to project completion, and (4) increased conformity to the status hierarchy. Results also show that only domain-specific expertise—the kind that teams underuse when facing higher pressure—increases client-rated team performance. I thus find, paradoxically, that when teams need domain-specific expertise the most, they tend to use it the least, despite evidence suggesting they are highly motivated to do well on their task.

Collaboration among Highly Autonomous Professionals: Costs, Benefits, and Future Research Directions

Abstract Purpose This chapter examines collaboration among highly autonomous, powerful, professional peers to explain why the benefits of teamwork that scholars typically find in traditional teams may not apply. The chapter analyzes the perspectives of individual professionals to show that, in this setting, collaboration is often seen as more costly than rewarding for the individuals involved. It presents a conceptual framework exploring this paradox and suggests directions for future research to elaborate an underlying theory. Methodology/approach The chapter draws on extensive qualitative data from surveys and interviews in three professional service firms, including a top 100 global law firm, a boutique executive search firm, and a large, US-based commercial advisory firm. Findings are married integrated with organizational theory to develop testable propositions for future research. Findings Because senior professionals collaborate with peers who have the autonomy to choose to work collectively or independently, power and authority are not means to create a team or make it effective. Findings show how professionals interpret the relative costs and benefits of collaboration, and suggest that in most cases, senior professionals will not attempt it or give it up before collaborations can reap important benefits. Thus, short-term costs prevent opportunities to experience longer term benefits for many professionals. Yet, some professionals have figured out how to use “instrumental collaboration” to shift the balance in their favor. The chapter’s conceptual framework uses a longitudinal perspective to resolve this seeming paradox. Research implications The chapter presents a nascent theory of instrumental collaboration, including five testable hypotheses, an emergent conceptual framework, and suggestions for specific future research directions.

Disagreement about the Team's Status Hierarchy: An Insidious Obstacle to Coordination and Performance

Hierarchies are pervasive in groups, generally providing clear guidelines for the dominance and deference behaviors that members are expected to show based on their relative ranks. But what happens when team members disagree about where each member ranks on the status hierarchy? While some research has examined overt status rivalries (Sutton & Hargadon, 1996), typically focusing on battles for the top positions (Groysberg, Polzer & Elfenbein, 2009; Overbeck, Correll, & Park, 2005), our study contributes novel findings on the effects of disagreement amongst all members’ perceptions of their team’s status hierarchy. This paper develops and tests a theory to explain how even small differences in members’ status perceptions - differences that may not be apparent to the members themselves - can diminish coordination, generate task conflict, and weaken performance.We identify two conditions - time pressure and intragroup familiarity - under which team members’ disagreements on the status hierarchy are more likely to lead to poor coordination and increased conflict. Survey data from a longitudinal field study of 89 consulting and accounting teams from a Big Four firm allow us to examine how teams experience status disagreement over time. Independent, third-party performance data for each team demonstrates how coordination and conflict ultimately affect performance with clients. These findings contribute both to the micro-status literature (especially to the growing body of research on the role of status in shaping team dynamics and outcomes) and more broadly to the team effectiveness literature.