Pierre A. Balthazard

Dysfunctional culture, dysfunctional organization: Capturing the behavioral norms that form organizational culture and drive performance

Purpose – This paper aims to describe how organizational culture is manifested in behavioral norms and expectations, focusing on 12 sets of behavioral norms associated with constructive, passive/defensive, and aggressive/defensive cultural styles.Design/methodology/approach – The organizational culture inventory, a normed and validated instrument designed to measure organizational culture in terms of behavioral norms and expectations, was used to test hypotheses regarding the impact of culture. Data are summarized from 60,900 respondents affiliated with various organizations that have used the instrument to assess their cultures. Also presented is a brief overview of a practitioner‐led assessment of four state government departments.Findings – The results of correlational analyses illustrate the positive impact of constructive cultural styles, and the negative impact of dysfunctional defensive styles, on both the individual‐ and organizational‐level performance drivers. The results clearly link the dysfun...

Expertise, extraversion and group interaction styles as performance indicators in virtual teams: how do perceptions of IT's performance get formed?

This study investigates how a personality trait and expertise affect virtual teams interaction, and how that interaction leads to different levels of performance (e.g., solution quality, solution acceptance, cohesion). Teams have been shown to exhibit constructive, aggressive/defensive, or passive/defensive interaction styles that affect communication and thus team performance by facilitating or hindering the exchange of information among group members. These styles reflect an aggregation of the behaviors exhibited by individual team members, which are rooted in their individual personalities. The effects of interaction style on team performance have been well established in face-to-face and virtual teams. Generally, constructive interaction styles produce positive outcomes whereas passive/defensive styles beget negative ones. Aggressive/defensive teams produce solutions that are correlated with the expertise of those that have wrested control of the group but there is often little support for those solutions. The current work explores how different constellations of extraversion and expertise manifest themselves into group interaction styles and, ultimately, outcomes. The study involves 248 professional managers from executive MBA and professional development programs in 63 virtual teams that performed an intellective task. Results show that expertise and extraversion to be curvilinearly related to group interactions and performance, and high levels of extraversion and higher variations in extraversion between team members lead to less constructive and more passive/defensive interaction styles within teams. Results show that although expertise is the best predictor of task performance, it is primarily group interaction styles that predict contextual outcomes (e.g., solution acceptance, cohesion, effectiveness) in virtual teams.

Organizational culture and knowledge management success: assessing the behavior-performance continuum

Traditionally, culture has been assessed by qualitative methods. However, quantitative approaches such as culture surveys offer important advantages for both cross-sectional organizational research and knowledge-based cultural change initiatives. The organizational culture inventory/spl copy/ (OCI), an instrument designed for such uses, profiles the culture of organizations and their sub-units in terms of behavioral norms and expectations. Following a review of seminal concepts relevant to organizational culture, this paper presents a framework depicting the relationship between culture and outcomes that are consistent with successful KM environments. An examination of the data provided by approximately 60,000 OCI respondents indicates that the inventory is a powerful indicator of outcomes, which are related to both individual and organizational criteria.

The role of individual memory and attention processes during electronic brainstorming

Electronic brainstorming (EBS) applications and their methodologies may have achieved the benchmark of enabling interactive users to perform as well as nominal groups. The current challenge is to view this as a plateau and not an endpoint, and to seek ways of improving EBS performance.

Virtual team interaction: assessment, consequences, and management

Virtual teams are typically made up of geographically dispersed experts, supported by computer‐based communication technologies. Though increasingly popular this is still a relatively unstudied organizational form. Virtual team membership is typically based solely on needed expertise; the teams rarely have any history of interaction and their performance potential is unknown. Research shows that teams exhibit constructive, passive, and aggressive interaction styles, which have significant effects on the decisions the teams produce as well as the teams’ satisfaction with those decisions. We present managerial tools for the assessment of conventional and virtual team interaction styles. We detail how the tools are used, and we also discuss how the styles manifest in each medium, and their effects. We give suggestions to team managers on how to use the insights the tools provide to manage their virtual teams for optimal performance.

The effects of extraversion and expertise on virtual team interaction and performance

Investigates the effects of extraversion and team-member expertise on virtual team interaction and performance. 63 virtual teams of professional managers participated in an intellectual decision-making task using a Web-based conferencing tool. The results revealed the level of extraversion to be positively and significantly correlated with aggressive and constructive interaction styles. Differences in extraversion levels within virtual teams were positively and significantly correlated with a passive interaction style and negatively and significantly correlated with solution acceptance and perceived effectiveness. Average expertise was negatively and significantly correlated with a constructive interaction style and team errors. Average expertise also correlated highly and positively with the best members expertise. In virtual team settings, extraversion was found to promote effective team interactions; teams with lower variances in extraversion did best, especially in teams with good knowledge to start off with. However, for the most part, group styles, and not individual personality or expertise, have predictive power on performance outcomes.

Neuroscience of Leadership

Abstract This chapter overviews how neuroscience can provide a new lens to understand leadership processes in organizations. We describe how neurological scanning can be applied to leadership research, as well as its potential advantages over more traditional techniques, such as surveys. Research to date is summarized pertaining to how neuroscience can inform such conceptualizations as transformational, complex/adaptive, and ethical forms of leadership. Findings indicate that effective versus not-so-effective leaders can be distinguished neurologically, and such assessment can benefit the prediction of important leadership outcomes. We caution that context needs to be taken into account in that not only can neurological variables associated with leaders affect organizational behavior and outcomes, but it is equally important to understand how the context can affect neurological qualities of individuals. Finally, we describe how it may be possible to use neurofeedback techniques to help develop leadership qualities of people in industry and in education programs, such as those in business schools.

Neuroimaging Modalities and Brain Technologies in the Context of Organizational Neuroscience

Abstract Through a review of historically famous cases and a chronicle of neurotechnology development, this chapter discusses brain structure and brain function as two distinct yet interrelated paths to understand the relative contributions of anatomical and physiological mechanisms to the human brain–behavior relationship. From an organizational neuroscience perspective, the chapter describes over a dozen neuroimaging technologies that are classified under four groupings: morphologic, invasive metabolic, noninvasive metabolic, and electromagnetic. We then discuss neuroimaging variables that may be useful in social science investigations, and we underscore electroencephalography as a particularly useful modality for the study of individuals and groups in organizational settings. The chapter concludes by considering emerging science and novel brain technologies for the organizational researcher as we look to the future.

Conclusions and a look forward

Abstract While reiterating the benefits of applications of neuroscience to both research and practice, we also acknowledge in this concluding chapter the potential issues that will continually need to be addressed. Specifically, we overview ontological and epistemological concerns, such as the potential for excessive reductionism. We also address ethical issues that could come into play for both researchers and practitioners. Finally, we conclude with a look forward to the future by suggesting that the “approach,” rather than the “avoidance,” of organizational neuroscience is likely to grow over time. One exciting possibility is how an examination of the human brain in work and organizational settings is likely to be a prime example of the “big data” trends that the future will bring.

Neurophysiological Predictors of Team Performance

Objective: To identify benchmark neurophysiological measures that predict performance at a teaming level. Advanced Brain Monitoring has a track record of success in identifying neurophysiological metrics that impact expert behavior. For example, we characterized negative and positive predictors for marksmanship skill; persons with higher HF:LF Norm metrics of Heart rate variability (HRV, an indication of anxiety) during a benchmarking auditory passive vigilance task did not achieve expert marksman performance while those with above average visuospatial processing ability achieved greater levels of expertise. In the current research, we explored the ability of benchmark neurophysiological metrics to predict team performance in two large scale studies. Significance: Identifying neurophysiological metrics of teaming ability and performance as part of a team can provide potential screening mechanisms or developmental data to help build optimal teams and improve team interactions for different types of contexts in which teams may operate.