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This paper aims to examine the effect of shared leadership on both quantity and quality of team performance, predicting that shared leadership enhances performance by affecting quantity (level of performance) as well as quality (team errors). In addition, this paper also investigates the role of perceived task complexity in moderating the effect of sharing leadership on team performance.

In total, 26 teams (N = 78) were asked to work on an interdependent team-task, where they engaged in a laboratory team decision-making exercise.

Results revealed that teams sharing leadership made fewer errors. They achieved higher levels of quality of performance. As predicted, this effect was stronger when team members perceived the task as highly complex, even though objective task difficulty was constant.

This study extends current literature on shared leadership by documenting that sharing the lead in teams can also improve the quality of team performance and that perceived complexity of tasks is an important moderator of this effect.

Based on the findings, influencing perceptions of task complexity can be considered as an important strategy to stimulate shared leadership in teams.

Using social network approach, the authors showed that shared leadership is an important tool for preventing team errors and offer a new explanation for inconsistent findings from recent meta-analyses by showing that perceived task complexity moderates the effects of shared leadership. Additionally, this study offers an original team task for investigating shared leadership in teams.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate new hypotheses regarding potential correlates and underpinnings of emotional dissonance experienced in call centre work. It is argued that prior attempts to measure emotional dissonance are incomplete because such measures often do not specify which emotions are actually not shown (e.g. faked, suppressed, veiled) during work.

A field study with 161 call centre agents was conducted. Positive affectivity (PA), negative affectivity (NA) of agents and customer verbal aggression were conceptualized as correlates of emotional dissonance, whereas job satisfaction, health disorders and burnout were assessed as indicators of agents' work motivation and well‐being. To investigate the emotional underpinnings of emotional dissonance the Frankfurt Emotion Work Scales (FEWS) was used and, in addition, agents were asked to report frequency, intensity and “not showing” of 15 separate emotions.

The results show that emotional dissonance was associated with lower work motivation and well‐being. Moreover, NA and customer aggression correlated positively whereas PA correlated negatively with emotional dissonance. Emotional dissonance measured with the FEWS was significantly related to the frequency of longing, the intensity of anger and the not showing of boredom, affection and anger.

The findings support the construct validity of the FEWS. However, based on correlations with agents' self‐rated ability to perform on a high level and interactions between NA and customer aggression that emerged only when emotion‐specific dissonance measures were analyzed, this paper suggests combining emotion‐specific dissonance measures with the FEWS in future research.

This paper aims to examine the effects of age on counteractive team meeting behaviors (e.g. complaining). Forgiveness is included as a potential buffer against these behaviors. A multilevel model is developed to test individual and team level age effects.

A total of 313 employees nested in 54 teams completed a forgiveness questionnaire and were videotaped during regular team meetings.

Multilevel modeling revealed that both individual age and average team age predicted counteractive team meeting behavior. Team level age diversity was linked to decreased counteractive behavior. Forgiveness moderated the negative link between individual age (but not team average age) and counteractive behavior.

This is the first study examining age effects in the context of counteractive meeting behavior. Although the authors' findings need to be substantiated in further research, they show that older team members engage in significantly more counteractive communication – forgiveness can help alleviate this effect.

Teams with older team members should be sensitized to avoid counteractive behavior. Moreover, team composition should target high age diversity. Managerial interventions should also aim to facilitate forgiveness in the work environment, especially among older team members.

Research on dysfunctional team meeting behavior is sparse, and the role of age effects has not been examined in this context. The authors identify a significant link between age and counteractive meeting behavior. This multilevel model shows differential effects of individual age, team average age, and age diversity on counteractive communication. Furthermore, a buffer against these dysfunctional behaviors is identified: forgiveness.

This paper aims to examine the impact of individual and group-level variables on knowledge exchange and identification in age diverse teams. From a diversity perspective, influences of age-related diversity perceptions and diversity beliefs (level 1) are compared with effects of objective age diversity (level 2). From a management perspective, the paper goes beyond age diversity and investigates the incremental effects of team and individual characteristics from a team learning perspective.

Questionnaire data of 516 team members and their supervisors in 73 organizational teams were analyzed in a multilevel approach.

Objective age diversity had a negative effect on knowledge exchange and identification. Beyond that, age-related diversity perceptions and positive diversity beliefs on the individual level predict the effect of objective diversity. Relativizing the impact of diversity, individual characteristics (knowing the team experts, clear understanding of goals) and team characteristics (team climate, time for knowledge exchange) explain the largest proportion of variance in the dependent variables underlining the importance of team learning variables.

Compared to objective diversity, subjective diversity perceptions and diversity beliefs are relevant predictors of processes and attitudes in heterogenic teams.

There are multiple leverages for management strategies beyond the mostly fixed age diversity in teams on the individual and group level.

This paper evaluates the cross-level interplay between objective diversity, perceived subjective diversity and diversity beliefs and revalues the impact of HR-management in age diverse teams.

Due to demographic changes in most industrialized countries, the average age of working people is continuously increasing, and the workforce is becoming more age-diverse. This review, together with the earlier JMP Special Issue “Facilitating age diversity in organizations – part I: challenging popular misbeliefs”, aims to summarize new empirical research on age diversity in organizations, and on potential ways to support beneficial effects of age diversity in teams and organizations. The second part of the Special Issue focusses on managing mutual perceptions and interactions between different age groups.

A literature review is provided summarizing and discussing relevant empirical research on managing mutual perceptions and interactions between different age groups at work.

The summarized research revealed a number of challenges to benefit from age diversity in organizations, such as in-group favoritism, age norms about appropriate behavior of older workers, intentional and unintentional age discrimination, differences in communication styles, and difference in attitudes towards age diversity. At the same time, managerial strategies to address these challenges are developed.

Together with the first part of this Special Issue, this is one of the first reviews on ways to address the increasing age diversity in work organizations based on sound empirical research.

In recent years, significant demographic changes in most industrial countries have tremendously affected the age distribution of workers in organizations. In general, the workforce has become more age-diverse, providing significant and new challenges for human resource management and leadership processes. The current paper aims to address age-related stereotypes as a major factor that might impede potential benefits of age diversity in organizations.

After a brief review of potential detrimental effects of age-related stereotyping at work, the authors discuss the validity of typical age stereotypes based on new findings from large-scale empirical research with more than 160,000 workers overall.

Although the research summarized in this review is based on large samples including several thousand workers, the cross-sectional nature of the studies does not control for cohort or generational effects, nor for (self-)selection biases. However, the summarized results still provide important guidelines given that challenges due to age diversity in modern organizations today have to be dealt with regardless of the concrete origins of the age-related differences.

This is one of the first reviews challenging popular misbeliefs about older workers based on large-scale empirical research.