Lionel P. Robert

Social Capital and Knowledge Integration in Digitally Enabled Teams

To understand the impact of social capital on knowledge integration and performance within digitally enabled teams, we studied 46 teams who had a history and a future working together. All three dimensions of their social capital (structural, relational, and cognitive) were measured prior to the team performing two tasks in a controlled setting, one face-to-face and the other through a lean digital network. Structural and cognitive capital were more important to knowledge integration when teams communicated through lean digital networks than when they communicated face-to-face; relational capital directly impacted knowledge integration equally, regardless of the communication media used by the team. Knowledge integration, in turn, impacted team decision quality, suggesting that social capital influences team performance in part by increasing a team’s ability to integrate knowledge. These results suggest that team history may be necessary but not sufficient for teams to overcome the problems with the use of lean digital networks as a communication environment. However, team history may present a window of opportunity for social capital to develop, which in turn allows teams to perform just as well as in either communication environment.

Team Size, Dispersion, and Social Loafing in Technology-Supported Teams: A Perspective on the Theory of Moral Disengagement

Social loafing is the tendency of individuals to withhold contributions to a task in a team setting. Team size and dispersion are two primary drivers of social loafing in technology-supported team settings. However, the mechanisms through which these drivers affect social loafing are not well understood. Consequently, the objective of this study is to identify the cognitive mechanisms that mediate the effect of team size and dispersion on social loafing in technology-supported teams. Drawing on the theory of moral disengagement, we posit that three primary cognitive mechanisms—diffusion of responsibility, attribution of blame, and dehumanization—will mediate the effect of team size and dispersion on social loafing. We conducted a laboratory study involving 140 students randomly assigned to 32 teams performing a brainstorming task using group systems software. The results show that diffusion of responsibility, attribution of blame, and dehumanization all mediate (partially) the effects of team size on social loafing. Meanwhile, only dehumanization mediates (fully) the effect of dispersion on social loafing.

A multi-level analysis of the impact of shared leadership in diverse virtual teams

Although organizations are using more virtual teams to accomplish work, they are finding it difficult to use traditional forms of leadership to manage these teams. Many organizations are encouraging a shared leadership approach over the traditional individual leader. Yet, there have been only a few empirical studies directly examining the effectiveness of such an approach and none have taken into account the team diversity. To address this gap, this paper reports the results of an empirical examination of the impacts of shared leadership in virtual teams. Results confirm the proposed research model. The impacts of shared leadership are multilevel and vary by race and gender. In addition, while shared leadership promotes team satisfaction despite prior assumptions, it actually reduces rather than increases team performance.

Crowd Size, Diversity and Performance

Crowds are increasingly being adopted to solve complex problems. Size and diversity are two key characteristics of crowds; however their relationship to performance is often paradoxical. To better understand the effects of crowd size and diversity on crowd performance we conducted a study on the quality of 4,317 articles in the WikiProject Film community. The results of our study suggest that crowd size leads to better performance when crowds are more diverse. However, there is a break-even point -- smaller, less diverse crowds can outperform more diverse crowds of similar size. Our results offer new insights into the effects of size and diversity on the performance of crowds.

Monitoring email to indicate project team performance and mutual attraction

Many managers and mentors for project teams desire more efficient and more effective ways of monitoring and predicting the quality of social relationships and the performance of teams under their purview. A previous study found that one form of linguistic mimicry, linguistic style matching, and some lexical features indicated team performance and mutual attraction in short-term, laboratory tasks. In this paper, we evaluate whether these measures also work as indicators for performance, shared understanding, and team trust in longer-duration project teams, using only limited, unobtrusively obtained communication traces. In our four-month evaluation using student project team emails, we found no support for LSM or most of the previously identified measures as practical indicators in our field setting. We did find some support for using future-oriented words to indicate team performance over time.

DIVERSITY AND CONFLICT IN TEAMS: A FAULTLINE MODEL PERSPECTIVE.

Although the relationship between diversity and conflict in teams has received much attention in the past two decades, prior research has yielded inconsistent results. Drawing from the conceptual w...

Idea Generation in Technology-Supported Teams: A Multilevel Motivational Perspective

In this research, we draw on multilevel theory to understand the interplay between team characteristics-team size and team dispersion-and individual goal striving in influencing individual idea generation performance. We conducted a laboratory study involving 185 individuals nested in 34 brainstorming teams and found that individual goal striving is a stronger predictor of individual idea generation performance in dispersed team contexts compared to co-located team contexts and in larger teams than in smaller teams. The implications of the findings for theory and practice are discussed.

Are You Satisfied Yet? Shared Leadership, Trust and Individual Satisfaction in Virtual Teams

Abstract Virtual teams provide organizations with numerous advantages by allowing them to assemble individuals irrespective of their physical location. Unfortunately, dispersion and reliance on virtual communications are two characteristics of virtual teams that can reduce team member’s satisfaction. Promoting satisfaction is important because it is associated with increases in individual behaviors that promote team performance. To address this issue, this paper conducts a multi-level analysis that investigates the influence of shared leadership and individual trust on individual satisfaction in virtual teams. Results indicate that both shared leadership and individual trust increase individual satisfaction. In addition, the significance of a cross-level moderation effect between shared leadership and individual trust indicates that the two act as substitutes for one another. In essence, either shared leadership or trust can be used to facilitate individual satisfaction in virtual teams.

Influencing individual perceptions of deep level diversity in virtual learning teams (VLT)

Two emerging trends are impacting both universities and corporate training programs: virtual learning and diversity. Virtual Learning Teams (VLT) learn by solving intellectual and cognitive tasks that require the sharing and utilization of information to achieve learning objectives. VLT members are separated by spatial distance and do not have the same opportunities to communicate as do traditional learning teams. Compounding the operational challenge of establishing and maintaining VLT member relationships is the fact that their members are often non-traditional students who tend to be diverse in terms of demographics, work experience, and beliefs compared to traditional teams. Naturally, this creates challenges in facilitating social integration. One way in which social integration may be enhanced is through leveraging the very communication technology that VLTs are reliant upon. Results of our study provide insight into how communication technology can support learning.

Third generation wireless network: the integration of GSM and Mobile IP

Consumers are demanding world-wide cellular access to the Internet. This requires a global standard and effective means of accessing the Internet from wireless devices. The IMT-2000 project attempted to fix the first problem by harmonizing all wireless interfaces into one global standard. However, this attempt failed and a new family of standards was issued. In response, the Operator Harmonization Group (OHG) is currently harmonizing two of the most popular CDMA standards: WCDMA and cdma2000. One major issue holding back complete harmonization is mobility management. WCDMA is used in Global System for Mobile Communications (GSM) systems where General Packet Radio Service/enhanced data for GSM evolution (GPRS/EDGE) protocols are currently being developed to act as the mobility manager. cdma2000 is designed for IS-95 and currently uses Mobile IP as its mobility manager. If one global standard is to be achieved, the same mobility management system has to be used by both WCDMA and cdma2000. The second problem deals with providing reliable access over unreliable wireless links. In this paper, a conceptual model integrating GSM and TCP/IP using Mobile IP as the mobility manager is presented. This model presents a method to implementing mobile IP over a GSM cellular network. The conceptual model also provides a solution to deploying TCP over wireless links. This model can serve as a useful starting place to harmonizing one global 3G standard.