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Due to the current shortage of skilled employees, there is a growing need to cope with given team settings and to offer appropriate team training. For team training, it is important to know how different competences influence team performance. Therefore, this study aims to examine the influence of social and cognitive competences on team performance and the relationship of the different competence dimensions to each other.

Data of 53 student and work teams was collected through a digital simulation laboratory, designed as an escape game. Competences of 228 team members were assessed through questionnaires prior to the simulation. Team performance was measured through short-term performance indicators. Additionally, a postsimulation survey regarding a long-term performance indicator was carried out. Three multiple regression analyses and mediation analyses were conducted.

A tradeoff between cognitive and social competences regarding their impact on short- and long-term team performance is observed. Facets of cognitive competences enhanced short-term performance, whereas facets of social competences reduced short-term performance while enhancing long-term performance. Although cognitive competences show a positive direct effect on short term performance, a negative indirect effect, mediated by social competences, became apparent.

This paper contributes to harmonizing contradictory findings on the impact of high achievers in teams. Although they can have an impact on rapid problem solving, long-term performance depends more on facets of social competences than cognitive competences. Furthermore, social and cognitive competences are positively correlated, showing that teams with higher cognitive competences tend to become stronger in terms of their social competences over time.

The aim of this paper is to outline how artificial intelligence (AI) can augment learning process in the workplace and where there are limitations.

The paper is a theoretical-based outline with reference to individual and organizational learning theory, which are related to machine learning methods as they are currently in use in the workplace. Based on these theoretical insights, the paper presents a qualitative evaluation of the augmentation potential of AI to assist individual and organizational learning in the workplace.

The core outcome is that there is an augmentation potential of AI to enhance individual learning and development in the workplace, which however should not be overestimated. AI has a complementarity to individual intelligence, which can lead to an advancement, especially in quality, accuracy and precision. Moreover, AI has a potential to support individual competence development and organizational learning processes. However, a further outcome is that AI in the workplace is a double-edged sword, as it easily shows reinforcement effects in individual and organizational learning, which have a backside of unintended effects.

The conceptual outline makes use of examples for illustrating phenomenon but needs further empirical analysis. The research focus on the meso level of the workplace does not fully refer to macro level outcomes.

The practical implication is that it is a matter of socio-technical job design to integrate AI in the workplace in a valuable manner. There is a need to keep the human-in-the-loop and to complement AI-based learning approaches with non-AI counterparts to reach augmentation.

The paper faces workplace learning from an interdisciplinary perspective and bridges insights from learning theory with methods from the machine learning community. It directs the social science discourse on AI, which is often on macro level to the meso level of the workplace and related issues for job design and therefore provides a complementary perspective.

This paper makes a contribution to the discussion on micro-foundations of dynamic capabilities – actions and interactions in organizations that enable continuous organizational renewal. More specifically, we propose the idea that dynamic capabilities of an organization are a positive function of corresponding dynamic capabilities of individual and collective actors in the organization. Further, we develop the assumption that not only individual acts of managers but also those of individuals and teams without managerial responsibility relate to dynamic capabilities of the organization. Following a holistic view, we also take into consideration empowering working conditions as an enhancing factor of this function. To examine these roots of dynamic capabilities, we use a multi-level model of competence provided by Wilkens, Keller, and Schmette (2006) that operationalizes the concept of dynamic capabilities provided by Teece (2007) on a concisely behavioral base. We investigated our hypotheses with a standardized questionnaire in a case study of a German plant engineering company with 112 participants and found primary support for our assumptions. Our results show an impact of individual dynamic capabilities on dynamic capabilities of the organization that is mediated by team dynamic capabilities. Psychological and social–structural empowerment moderated this relationship. A case-specific interpretation and implications for future research and practice are discussed.

This focused issue (Volume 6) of Research in Competence-Based Management provides a number of research papers – both theoretical and empirical – on what we have characterized in the volume title as “new industry dynamics.” It also contains papers that might just as accurately be described as providing “new competence perspectives” on industry dynamics. In effect, this volume both applies existing competence theory to the analysis of new industry dynamics, and provides new conceptualizations for representing and analyzing industry dynamics that are now emerging in many industries and product markets. While much competence theory has been developed through analysis of micro-level phenomena in individual organizations, we expect that the papers included in this volume will help point the way to further development of competence theory relevant to the macro-levels of industry and product-market phenomena.

The purpose of this paper is to introduce the notion of crossvergence from international human resource management (IHRM) as a conceptual lens for understanding and analyzing the formation of socially (ir)responsible employment practices in supplier firms in global production networks (GPNs). The crossvergence perspective can particularly contribute to understanding how the agency of suppliers is influenced by the interaction of global–local dynamics.

The paper illustrates how the formation of socially (ir)responsible employment practices can be understood as a process of crossvergence. Subsequently, it reviews and structures insights from GPN and IHRM literature to detail the process.

The paper underscores the complicated role of suppliers in ensuring decent work in GPNs. Suppliers face a multitude of global and local interacting, and partially conflicting, demands. They process these demands as active agents and need to develop suitable employment practices in response.

The paper supports the nascent discourse on supplier agency in forming socially responsible employment practices. It connects different streams of literature to illuminate the perspective of suppliers, introduces IHRM insights to the debate and offers conceptual guidance for analyzing interacting global and local pressures on suppliers.

While industrial marketers have long bundled their products and services to sell them as packages, to what extent should negotiators also rely on packaging their offers? Clearly, negotiating at a package level can tax the cognitive capacity of the involved parties at some point. Therefore, this study aims to analyze the impact of the number and type of issues that should be negotiated simultaneously to leverage the package strategy efficiently and effectively in multi-issue buyer-seller negotiations.

The authors conducted and analyzed negotiation simulations with 676 students from 2 public universities.

The authors’ results suggest that negotiating three out of six issues simultaneously is the least efficient but most effective strategy in multi-issue buyer-seller negotiations. Moreover, they found that bundling distributive and integrative issues is more efficient and effective than only bundling distributive or integrative negotiation issues in a package offer.

Past research has examined the impact of negotiating a package as compared to each issue separately; however, little empirical attention has been directed toward understanding how to apply a package strategy in complex multi-issue negotiations.

Consumers worldwide are increasingly adopting mobile payments. However, despite its global popularity, this innovation did not diffuse among American consumers extensively. As of 2019, less than 30% of smartphone users in the USA engaged in mobile payments. The purpose of this paper is to investigate drivers of mobile payment adoption in the USA and to explore the mediating factors of consumers’ attitudes toward mobile payments.

Data were collected through Amazon M-Turk in the USA with 222 final respondents. Participants received an incentive to participate in this study. The measurement and structural models were evaluated by the component-based partial least squares (PLS) approach using Smart-PLS 3 software.

The study shows several factors affecting consumers’ attitudes toward mobile payments. Specifically, relative advantage, compatibility, observability, perceived security and convenience influence attitudes toward mobile payments and, consequently, behavioral intent to use mobile payment technology. This investigation contributes to the ongoing inquiry on the adoption of mobile payment technology in the USA. It offers specific insights for managers on how to increase mobile payment adoption. The study establishes a modified diffusion of innovations (DOI) model of consumer attitudes toward the use of mobile payments.

The objective of this study is to focus mainly on consumers in the USA, and it limits the generalizability of this study.

This study contributes to the current research on mobile payment adoption. Based on theoretical considerations, the authors derived a research model specifying critical drivers of an individual’s intentions to use mobile payments. Specifically, we establish a modified DOI-based model of consumer attitudes towards mobile payments. It shows several contributing factors affecting consumers’ attitudes toward mobile payments. The paper has important managerial implications aimed at the increase of the diffusion of mobile payments in the USA.