Foundation of research methods

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Multiple Team Membership: A Theoretical Model of its Effects on Productivity and Learning for Individuals and Teams Michael Boyer O’Leary, Mark Mortensen & Anta Williams Woolley Academy of Management Review 2011, Vol. 36, No. 3, 461–478. Course instructor: Dr. Y. Badir Presented By: Mir Dost Pandrani

Transcript of Foundation of research methods

Page 1: Foundation of research methods

Multiple Team Membership: A Theoretical Model of its Effects on Productivity and Learning for

Individuals and Teams

Michael Boyer O’Leary, Mark Mortensen & Anta Williams Woolley

Academy of Management Review

2011, Vol. 36, No. 3, 461–478.

Course instructor: Dr. Y. Badir

Presented By: Mir Dost Pandrani

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Step1: Research Questions

1. How are productivity and learning affected by multiple team membership?

2. How can both outcomes be enhanced simultaneously?

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Step2: Knowledge gap

• Firms adopt the approach of multiple team membership to enhance both productivity and learning. (Milgrom & Roberts, 1992).

• The routines put in place to enhance productivity often hinder the practices that foster learning (Adler et al., 2009; Benner & Tushman, 2003).

Given this tension between productivity and learning, understanding when and how both can be optimized in the

context of multiple team memberships would be useful.

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Step3: Main theories applied

Model: multiple team membership & its effects on learning

& productivity

Social Network Theory

Attention

Theory

For every additional team that someone joins, he or she must shift his or her attention and activity at least once from Team 1 to Team 2 (and some individuals will choose or feel compelled to shift their focus back and forth more frequently).

Figure3: theories applied in model of multiple-tem membership &

its effects on learning & productivity.

Social network theories highlight how network enabled exposure to a wider variety of information affects learning and productivity (Reagans & Zuckerman, 2001).

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Step4: The unit of analysis

Individual

Team

Individual:- focusing individual attention

- seek out more efficient work practices

- leading teams to focus on key priorities in their work.

- focusing of attention can enhance productivity while reducing learning.

Team:

more variety there is in the teams, holding the number of team memberships constant, the more learning but the less

productivity there will be.

Figure4: the unit of analysis for the model of multiple-tem membership & its effects on learning & productivity

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Third, Some elements of individual productivity & learning aggregate to affect team productivity & learning, but the mechanisms by which multiple team membership drives productivity & learning at each level are distinct.

Second, separating multiple team membership into its key component parts of number & variety and explicating their distinct theoretical relationships with productivity & learning.

First, multiple team membership can enhance both productivity & learning, but only if the countervailing effects of number & variety are carefully balanced.

Step5: Authors’ theory

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Step6: The research model

FIGURE6: Relationships Between Multiple Team Membership Variety and Number and Productivity and Learning at the Individual and Team Levels

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4 Propositions

P1: The relationship between the number of teams individuals are members of & productivity at the individual & team levels is curvilinear; the positive relationship increases at a decreasing rate and eventually turns negative.

P2: The variety of multiple team memberships is negatively related to individual and team productivity.

P4: The number of teams individuals are members of is negatively related to learning at the individual and team levels.

P3: Holding the number of team memberships constant, the variety of teams individuals are members of is positively related to learning at the individual & team levels, with learning increasing at a decreasing rate.

Propositions

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Step7: Theoretical implications

Authors believe a focus on multiple team membership suggests a number of intriguing & important directions for future research. These include;

• Individual-level research on identity issues & employee skills that are conducive to multiple team membership.

• Team-level research on the connections to geographic distribution.

• Cross-level research on context switching & productivity.

• Multi-level research on information transparency.

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Step7: Managerial implications

• Knowing how multiple team membership affects individual- and team-level learning and productivity, individuals, team leaders, and managers can be more mindful of the implications.

• From a managerial perspective, the effects of multiple team membership on team productivity and learning also will be moderated by the active coordination of schedules across teams.

• Another practice that may be helpful in a multiple team environment is the explicit definition of different types of roles on a team—for example, whether a member is core or peripheral or a “consultant” versus a major contributor.

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Conclusion

Multiple team membership enhance both productivity

and learning only when; its costs and benefits are carefully managed,

Benefits in terms of;

– productivity and– learning

Costs in terms of;

- owing to fragmented attention and

-coordination overhead.

These costs account for the generally negative reaction to multitasking (Rosen, 2008), which spills over to affect impressions of multiple team membership.

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