Richard E. Potter

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.

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.

Programming by example: visual generalization in programming by example

When a user selects a graphical object on the screen, for example, most PBE systems describe the object in terms of the properties of the underlying application data. If the user selects a link on a Web page, the PBE system might represent that selection based on the link’s HTML properties. Here, we explore a different, and radical, approach—using the visual properties of the interaction elements themselves, including size, shape, color, and appearance—to describe user intentions. Only recently has the speed of image processing made feasible PBE systems’ real-time analysis of screen images. We have not yet realized the goal of a PBE system that uses “visual generalization” but feel this approach is important enough to warrant describing and promoting the idea publicly. (Visual generalization means the inference of general patterns in user behavior based on the visual properties and relationships of user interface objects.) Visual information can supplement the information available from other sources, suggesting new kinds of generalizations not possible from application data alone. In addition, these generalizations can map more closely to user intentions, especially beginning users, who rely on the same visual information when making selections. Moreover, visual generalization can sometimes remove one of the main stumbling blocks—reliance on application

Visual generalization in programming by example

Publisher Summary In programming-by-example (PBE) systems, the system records the actions performed by a user in the interface and produces a generalized program that can be used later in analogous examples. A key issue is how to describe the actions and objects selected by the user, which determines what kind of generalizations will be possible. This chapter explores an approach using visual properties of the interaction elements themselves, such as size, shape, color, and appearance of graphical objects to describe user intentions. Visual information can supplement information available from other sources and opens up the possibility of new kinds of generalizations not possible from the application data alone. In addition, these generalizations can map more closely to the intentions of users, especially beginning users, who rely on the same visual information when making selections. Finally, visual generalization can sometimes remove one of the worst obstacles preventing the use of PBE with commercial applications—that is—reliance on application program interfaces (APIs). When necessary, PBE systems can work exclusively from the visual appearance of applications and do not need explicit cooperation from the API.

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.

A (closer) look at collaboration using wikis

Purpose – Wikis have been gaining attention in the practitioner and academic literature, suggesting their use as knowledge repositories in organizational environments and even as collaborative tools for reviewing scholarly publications. And yet, little is known about factors that foster or discourage use of this technology. The purpose of this paper is to take a closer look at collaboration using wikis. Design/methodology/approach – The authors look at an academic exercise using wikis in a college classroom to leverage collaboration among students. Taking elements from similar artifacts such as groupware technology, this research evaluates a model that explores the significance of perceptions of complexity and critical mass on wiki adoption. Findings – Results show a strong acceptance of wikis among students despite not being familiar with this type of technology. Furthermore, outcomes show that students were influenced by the actions taken collectively by their peers, resulting in improved collaboration ...

Strategic Maneuvering in Healthcare Technology Markets: The Case of Emdeon Corporation

Healthcare technology markets have been recently identified as potential investment targets. Having survived a major environmental shock, the dot.com bust, firms in the healthcare technology industry are presently experiencing an impressive revenue growth. In this study, we investigate the strategies of Emdeon Corporation, a healthcare technology firm whose e-business model provides clues for achieving a sustained revenue growth and profitability. We trace the current sustainability of Emdeon’s e-business model to a related diversification strategy that the firm’s upper management has pursued via mergers and acquisitions (M&As). We also address the motivation behind current restructuring of Emdeon’s e-business model. We argue that maturation of diversified e-business models leads to the transformation of individual segments into distinct entities focusing on specific technology markets.

Toward inclusive dialogue: participation and interaction in face-to-face and computer-mediated discussions

In recent years, there has been a growing interest in the use of IT to support organizational knowledge management by mediating discourse through GSS, E-mail, listservers, Lotus Notes, chat rooms, threaded discussions, and the like. But do these technologies foster more inclusive dialogue? Educational research has found that conventional classroom discussions often demonstrate a gender bias. Male participants are much more likely to dominate, often precluding meaningful participation by female members. These technologies may have the potential to reduce this gender bias, but there is little direct research that examines how the nature of the interaction changes in virtual settings and how efficiently or effectively these tools support inclusive participation and interaction. Using a Latin square design, this study compares the participation and interaction of 57 subjects discussing sensitive issues in a traditional face-to-face classroom discussion, supported by a synchronous EMS (GroupSystems), and an asynchronous Web-based threaded discussion. EMS users participated more and Web-based threaded discussion users less than regular classroom subjects. Subjects using technology produced discussions with the least gender bias in participation: EMS discussions produced the most uniform participation. Subjects preferred the EMS, they revealed more in the EMS, perceived higher quality participation with the EMS, and reported higher satisfaction levels with the EMS. Implications for systems developers and organizations are discussed.