Search results

Though geographically distributed teams are rapidly increasing in prevalence, empirical research examining the effect of distance on group process has not kept pace. In a study of 24 product development teams located within five companies, we attempt to bridge the gap between research and practice by comparing the amount of affective and task conflict reported in collocated versus geographically distributed teams. We further examine how conflict is impacted by shared team identity, cultural heterogeneity, and reliance on technology for communication. As hypothesized, shared team identity was associated with less task conflict within distributed, but not collocated teams. Similar effects were found for affective conflict, suggesting that a shared identity may help distributed teams to better manage conflict. Our results also suggest more task conflict on teams that rely heavily on technology to mediate their communications. In examining performance, we found some support for our hypothesis that conflict would be more detrimental for distributed than collocated teams.

The Global Networks Company (GNC), headquartered in Boston, Massachusetts, made its global footprint in India in 1994 by establishing a presence in Bangalore. Although mainly a sales support office, GNC grew name recognition from its contracts with India’s government to help build nationwide networks. Not quite 20 years later, GNC decided to further invest in India and tapped a manager from the Boston office, Jim Notrika, to establish and then manage GNC’s first global software center in Mumbai. Split between Mumbai and Boston, the project team successfully completed several minor projects, but only months into its first major project, the team was struggling to meet deadlines. Blame was being passed in both directions, and when three talented engineers in Mumbai quit, Notrika makes an emergency trip to Mumbai to better understand the problem.

This case describes three common cross-cultural communication obstacles in teams: a preference for direct versus indirect confrontation of problems; a clash of collectivist versus individualistic cultural values related to reporting bad news or giving negative feedback; and different expectations of team leaders based on power-distance values.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the racial and ethnic aspects of the doctoral socialization to provide a meaningful insight into the belief systems and decision-making processes related to academic success and degree completion. This paper addresses a gap in literature focusing on the racial and ethnic aspects of the doctoral student experience as they relate to student agency.

This narrative research of four doctoral students uses a postmodern active interview method to foreground the role of a doctoral agency as manifested in the ways students make meaning of their experiences as members of the science, technology, engineering, agriculture and math academic community. A dialectical approach to the traditional socialization models provides the framework for understanding the meaning-making processes within a critical context of academia.

Findings present the intrinsic foundations for a doctoral agency and forces that shape key decision-making processes for doctoral students.

Implications for research and practice provide guidance for faculty, graduate school administrators and organizations interested in supporting degree completion for historically marginalized doctoral students.

This study examines doctoral socialization as a meaning-making process of racial/ethnic students in engineering and agricultural programs. Narrative research design provides depth into the individual experiences and the role of racial/ethnic histories in students’ socialization (meaning-making) processes in a predominantly White academic environment.

The public relies upon the government for many areas of their lives such as: obtaining a driver’s license, applying for a job, licensing pets, applying for a business license, paying taxes, buying a home, or even applying for college admission. Starting from humble beginnings the invention of the computer system opened pathways for the community to interact with government agencies. In the early years of the computer and internet the federal government was known for their advances and for being at the forefront of technology. However, the same was not true for state and local governments who found themselves left behind the technological race. Somewhere in the early 2000’s even the federal government found themselves behind the private sector as integration and innovation became stagnate within government agencies. The workforce of these agencies did not change into a highly technical workforce until the costs of technology lowered and access and availability were more widely distributed to conduct business (Moon, 2002). Once technology started to trickle down to state and local governments it began to expand to all avenues of public service. In addition, the processes were streamlined for the public. However, issues such as lack of access, lack of computer skills, lack of government trust, and the risk to safety of personal information still hinder technological use at this level.

The service-profit chain model (Heskett, Jones, Loverman, Sasser, & Schlesinger, 1994) highlights the well-documented relationship between employee and customer attitudes suggesting that employees who are satisfied and engaged with their work provide better customer service resulting in higher levels of customer satisfaction and, ultimately, driving firm revenue. The authors propose an expansion of the service-profit margin identifying the leadership behaviors that create positive employee attitudes and engagement. Specifically, the authors suggest that leaders who focus on recognition, involvement, growth and development, health and safety, and teamwork (Kelloway, Nielsen, & Dimoff, 2017) create a psychologically healthy workplace for customer service providers and, ultimately, an enhanced customer experience.

“Which advertisement fits reality?” asked Pamela Butler, researcher into gender communication. The top ad represents selected adjectives used to describe feminine characteristics in the Bern Sex Role Inventory (BSRI), a psychometric testing instrument, while the bottom ad represents so‐called masculine personality characteristics. The ads were adapted from Butler's advertisements for “Insurance Executives” in Self‐Assertion for Women.

The “hypercompetitive environment” within which businesses are now operating demands that organizations look for ways to continually improve their competitiveness if they are to remain viable and successful. This paper integrates ideas on competitive strategies and effective mentoring to demonstrate the link between employee mentoring and organizational competitiveness. It is proposed that mentoring can offer a unique opportunity to enhance competitiveness through a carefully designed and structured program that both supports and drives an organization’s business strategy.

Global virtual teams (GVTs), also known as transnational or distributed teams, are increasingly common as organizations strive to maintain a global presence, find top and diverse talent, and cope with economic constraints. Despite increasing adoption of GVTs, there is a dearth of research addressing whether GVTs are an effective coping strategy for dealing with the world economic crisis and if there are unintended negative consequences on employee well-being as a result of their use. Thus, a focal question guiding the development of this chapter is whether or not GVTs are a sustainable solution for organizations? In this chapter we present a generic framework depicting the cycle by which macroeconomic demands impose changes on organization's structures, which trickle down to the level of the individual who has to cope with the demands the new structure has imposed. We discuss GVTs as an intervention (or cure) for organizations’ dealing with the current world economic crisis and how this organizational intervention inevitably becomes the context (or cause) for the kinds of stressors or demands employees face.