Year: 2011
Type: report
Abstract: Although groups have always been an important tool for accomplishing organizational goals, the form and use of groups is changing rapidly.In response to the accelerating pace of technological and market change, organizations are frequently delegating more responsibility to temporary' teams than they have in the past.Furthermore, organizational units often have to be more closely coupled than in the past, sometimes even working in parallel to complete assignments spanning traditional organizational units (Clark & Fujimoto, 1987; Henderson & Clark, 1990).Thus work group members must frequently interact extensively with non-team members to complete their assignments.As this trend continues, organizational groups can not be viewed as bounded units: rather they must be viewed as open systems interacting with other groups or individuals in the organizational environment.Despite the importance of such externally dependent teams, relatively little reseiu"ch has explored how they interact with other groups and how those interactions can facilitate the accomplishment of their assigned tasks.Over the past half century social psychologists have devoted substantial attention to the fine-grained analysis of behavior within groups.Many frameworks exist for that analysis including models of group decision making (Bourgeois & Eisenhardt, 1988; Isenberg, 1986; Nemeth, 1986), task and maintenance activities (Bales, 1983; Benne & Sheats, 1948; Schein, 1988) , norm development (Bettenhausen & Murnighan, 1985), and evolution (Gersick, 1988, 1989) to name a few.The emphasis in previous research on what goes on within the group has been so strong that definitions of group process have described it solely in terms of the interactions among group members that transform resources into a product (Goodman, 1986; Hackman & Morris, 1975).Gladstein (1984) found, however, that group process entailed both internal group process and boundary managment.Both internal and external components are thought to be necessary to predict the perfomiance to these new organization teams.The purpose of this research is to examine the relatively unknown pattern of groups' external activities with essential others.Specifically, we describe the range of activities team members use to interact with outsiders and form a typology; we test how external activities relate to team performance, and we examine how naturally occurring groups aggregate member activity into strategies for dealing with others. Literature ReviewAlthough the major emphasis in group theory has been on internal team dynamics there has been some attention paid to external interaction.This work has typically focused on the amount of information that the team acquires from its environment (c.f.Galbraith, 1977; Lawrence & Lorsch, 1967;Thompson, 1967).This information processing approach is normative; positing that groups must match their information processing capability to the information processing demands of the external environment (Tushman & Nadler, 1990).Support for this approach comes from studies showing that teams carrying out complex tasks in uncertain environments need high levels of external interaction to be high performing (Ancona & Caldwell, 1991; Gresov, 1988; Tushman, 1977, 1979).For example, in research and development teams, frequency of communication within the teams shows no relation to performance while increased communication between the teams and other parts of the laboratory was strongly related to project performance (Allen, 1984).High-performing teams also showed higher frequencies of comunication with organizational colleagues outside of R & D than their low-performing counterparts.However, by focusing primarily on the frequency of communication, these studies have not addressed the broader questions of the purpose and nature of those communications.In direct contrast to the information processing theorists, researchers examining particular organizational phenomena have concentrated on specific activities enacted by groups.For example, those studying innovation have focused on boundary spanning and the transfer of technical information across team boundaries (Allen, 1984; Aldrich & Herker, 1977; Quinn & Mueller, 1963; Katz & Tushman, 1979), those studying interdependence have focused on coordination among groups (Malone, 1987), and those studying power and resource allocation have focused on political or persuasive activities with external constituents (Dean, 1988;Pfeffer, 1981).Because they were studying specific organizarional phenomena these researchers did not use the group as a focal unit.As such, they have not tried to map the full range of external activities used by groups to deal with a broad set of environmental demands.A recent qualitative study of five consulting teams did examine team strategies toward the environment (Ancona, 1990).Three strategies were identified: informing, parading, and probing.Infomiing teams remain relatively isolated from their environment; parading teams have high levels of passive observation of the environment; and probing teams actively engage outsiders.f*robing teams revise their knowledge of the environment through external contact, seek outside feedback on their ideas, and promote their teams' achievements within their organization.Probing teams were rated the highest performers one year after formation.Although this research specifically examines team-environment relations, it does so using a small sample and a non-profit organization.As such, the author was unable to statistically test how external activities cluster and relate to performance.The generalizability to other kinds of organizations is also unclear.To look at external activities in isolation, however, is to forget that a complete theory of organization teams must look at both internal and external activities.Previous research has been equivocal about the extent to which a particular external mode of operation interfers withor facilitatesthe development of effective internal operations.Certain evidence suggests a negative relationship.The internal cohesion that exists under conditions of groupthink (Janis, 1982(Janis, , 1985) ) promotes external stereotyping and avoidance of external information that interferes with current group consensus.The intergroup literature also suggests a negative realationship between internal and external activities.Groups often become underbounded-having many external ties but an inability to coalesce and motivate members to pull their external knowledge together-or overbounded-where there is great internal loyalty and a complex set of internal dynamics but an inability to reach out to the external world (Alderfer, 1976;Sherif, 1966).Finally, the conflict literature predicts intensified intragroup conflict when group members collect information from outsiders with different goals, cognitive styles, and attitudes (Schmidt & Kochan, 1972; Shaw, 1971).Yet not all studies indicate such a negative relationship.In a study of eight task forces Gersick (1988) found that groups undergo a mid-point change where they fundamentally shift their basic operating procedures.The study suggests that teams may deal with internal and external demands sequentially, first acting on initial information from the environment in isolation, then emerging to get further feedback and updated information fi-om outsiders.A timing effect was also found in a study of five consulting teams where Ancona (1990) found that teams that were initially externally active but internally dissatisfied came to be cohesive as external interaction translated into higher performance. This StudyThis study attempts to fill some of the gaps left from previous research.It is an exploratory study that describes the nature of external activities, their link to performance, and the ways in which real organizational teams deal with both external and internal demands.The Nature of External Activities.Before a complete theory of organization groups can be developed we need to know more about the nature of the external activities these groups undertake.Prior to hypothesis testing, or even hypothesis generating, comes the stage of description and classification (Gladstein & Quinn, 1985).We need to know what these teams do in order to ascertain the relevant variables for such a model.The first goal of this research is to document and classify the range of external activities that one type of highly interdependent organizational group portrays.We want to know not only how much communication takes place between a group and its organizational context, but also the nature of that communication.We do not only want to know how a group transfers technical information, but also other types of communication that may be used to deal with a broad range of demands.External Activities and Performance.While description and classification can be seen as ends in themselves, our second goal is to examine the relationship between external activities and performance.Teams are formed in organizations to meet the needs of individuals and to carry out some assigned task.Therefore, it seems important to understand whether external activities facilitate those outcomes.If they do, we can begin to speculate on the underlying causal factors linking external activities and performance.Then models of team performance can be generated
Authors: Deborah Ancona, David F. Caldwell
Language: English
Subfield: Social Psychology
Field: Psychology
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W1607251878