Search results

Stagl, Salas, Rosen, Priest, Burke, Goodwin, and Johnston (this volume) conducted a review of distributed team performance and discussed some of the implications of distributed, multicultural operations for individual, team, and organizational decision making. Expanding upon Stagl and colleagues’ discussion, Alutto (this volume), and Coovert and Burke (this volume) provided thought-provoking commentary on these issues. The current note briefly responds to some of the questions posed and comments made by Alutto, Coovert, and Burke and concludes by calling for a continued dialogue by all stakeholders concerned with fostering effective distributed teams.

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 purpose of this paper is to show how workers successfully address constraints posed by distributed work – specifically, the lack of cognitive common ground or “mutual knowledge” – through emergent practices.

The authors draw on archival and interview data collected over a ten-month period, from two matched product development teams, one working side-by-side in the USA and the other distributed between the USA and India.

The paper illustrates how distributed team members compensate for the difficulties presented by the lack of mutual knowledge by modifying their use of knowledge management systems and communication technologies to coordinate work, and using temporal and task-based differences to facilitate problem solving.

This study answers calls to examine how distributed teams actually work. By emphasizing the creation of new practices over knowledge transfer and employees’ perspectives over managers, the paper adds to current understandings of how aspects of the mutual knowledge problem can be alleviated. Since emergent practices are not dependent on shared values or identities, they can coordinate action without compromising the distinct perspectives of workers or constraining the diversity that inspires innovation. In addition, the attention to problem solving in distributed teams – particularly tacit knowledge recombination – extends a literature primarily focussed on communication and coordination processes.

In this paper, the authors shift the focus from managerial and organizational policies to the emergent practices of workers themselves, by showing how the authors successfully coordinate and innovate in a changing organizational context.

Distributed performance arrangements are increasingly used by organizations to structure dyadic and team interactions. Unfortunately, distributed teams are no panacea. This chapter reviews some of the advantages and disadvantages associated with the geographical and temporal distribution of team members. An extended discussion of the implications of distributed team performance for individual, team, and organizational decision making is provided, with particular attention paid to selected cultural factors. Best practices and key points are advanced for those stakeholders charged with offsetting the performance decrements in decision making that can result from distribution and culture.

Knowledge work (KW) is a well‐researched topic. However, KW is difficult to measure and little consensus has been reached on elements that affect knowledge work productivity on a team level. The current theories neglect teams working in distributed geographical areas. The purpose of the paper is to integrate recent literature on knowledge work productivity (KWP) in distributed teams and give an overview of the elements affecting it.

The paper presents an overview of research performed in the field of knowledge work productivity. The authors integrate theories of different fields of management theory (knowledge management, intellectual capital and learning), and work and organizational psychology. This paper answers three questions: What is knowledge work? What is knowledge work productivity? Which elements hinder or enable knowledge work productivity in distributed teams of global technology companies?

The authors define the crucial elements that either hinder or enable KWP: team tasks, team structure and processes, the physical, virtual and social workspaces as well as organizational context. The paper presents an integrative model of KWP in distributed teams of global technology companies.

Distributed teams are common in global companies. By understanding the elements that affect KWP, companies can stimulate or decrease specific elements in order to improve productivity of their distributed knowledge workers.

This paper integrates theories from different disciplines in order to create an understanding about knowledge work and its productivity for further research.

Work in distributed project teams is always a challenge for organizations. Many researchers have studies different aspects of distributed project teams, as witnessed by the impressive number of papers published in the last decade. However, it appears that the dimensions related to organizational support have still not received much attention in empirical studies. This study investigates the dimensions of organizational support in distributed project teams that contribute most to the quality of the decision‐making process and teamwork effectiveness in distributed project teams.

The initial intent of this research was to test a theoretical model on the basis of data from the field, namely real‐life situations. A two‐step approach (qualitative and quantitative method) was used. The research model was tested in a sample of experienced project managers on distributed project teams.

The results suggest that strategic staffing and training and tools provided to team members have a positive impact on the quality of decision making and teamwork effectiveness. Team autonomy is more salient and influential in fostering decision quality in a highly culturally diverse context. Our findings also re‐confirm the link between the quality of decision making and team effectiveness. Thus, teams are perceived as vehicles for identifying and integrating various individual viewpoints and combining knowledge.

This study underscores the importance of selecting practices that enhance the recognition of team members’ contributions in the context of distributed project teams. It is now clear that managers cannot treat these distributed project teams in the same way as conventional teams. Several intervention and support methods are possible. This research contributes to identifying which of them are the most appropriate in this context.

This study contributes to research on distributed project teams and on organizational support theory. It highlights the importance of understanding the processes or dimensions underlying the consequences of perceived organizational support. It bolsters the need to select practices that enhance the recognition of team members’ contributions and treat them favourably in the context of distributed project teams.

This paper synthesizes the extant geographically distributed work literature, focusing on how geographic distribution affects coordination and communication, knowledge sharing, work design, and social identity. Geographically distributed audit arrangements, such as group audits and offshoring, are becoming increasingly prevalent in audit practice. However, little empirically is known about how working across cities, countries, and continents affects auditors, the audit process, or audit quality. To this end, the synthesis seeks to stimulate research investigating the implications of geographically distributed work arrangements in auditing, by surveying the extant literature within the management and social psychology disciplines and developing eighteen research questions for future audit research to consider. The synthesis reveals that geographically distributed audit work is likely to be very different from work performed in more traditional arrangements and therefore cannot be treated by audit researchers, practitioners, or standard setters as replications of domestic processes abroad. As a result, the synthesis focuses on building a greater understanding of the changes in day-to-day auditing, the consequences of such changes, and interventions that may moderate the challenges encountered in geographically distributed audit arrangements.

The purpose of this paper is to analyse the introduction of distributed leadership and team working in a therapy department in a healthcare organisation and to explore the factors that enabled the introduction to be successful.

This paper used a case study methodology. Qualitative and quantitative information was gathered from one physiotherapy department over a period of 24 months.

Distributed leadership and team working were central to a number of system changes that were initiated by the department, which led to improvements in patient waiting times for therapy. The paper identifies six factors that appear to have influenced the successful introduction of distributed learning and team working in this case.

This is a single case study. It would be interesting to explore whether these factors are found in other cases where distributed leadership is introduced in healthcare organisations.

The paper provides an example of successful introduction of distributed leadership, which has had a positive impact on services to patients. Other therapy teams may consider how the approach may be adopted or adapted to their own circumstances.

Although distributed leadership is thought to be important in healthcare, particularly when organisational change is needed, there are very few studies of the practicalities of how it can be introduced.

The purpose of this paper is to propose Knowledge4Scrum, a novel knowledge management tool for agile distributed teams. Agile software development (ASD) refers to a group of software development methodologies based on iterative development, where requirements and solutions evolve through collaboration between self-organizing cross-functional teams. The two most widely used methodologies based on the agile philosophy are scrum and extreme programming. Whichever methodology is considered, agile teams usually consist of few members and are collocated under the same roof. However, nowadays, agile practices for distributed development are gaining much momentum. The main reasons behind such practice are cheaper skilled labour, minimizing production cost, reducing time to market and increasing the quality and performance of projects. Along with the benefits obtained through globally distributed development, there are, however, many difficulties faced by various organisations. These problems are caused mostly due to distance, time and cultural differences. To meet up with the level of complexity of projects, ASD also has to keep up with many challenges, especially in cases of distributed teams. Four major challenges have been identified. First, the introduction of global software development entails a number of difficulties, especially related to knowledge sharing. For instance, lack of transparency is frequently observed within such teams, whereby a team member is totally unaware of the activities of his/her colleagues. Second, the unavailability of team members due to time zone differences adds up to the list of problems confronted by distributed teams. Third, there can be misunderstanding amongst the team member due to communication problems, especially in cases where the mother language of the team members is different. Fourth, a common issue faced by distributed teams is the loss of knowledge when an employee resigns from his/her post.

Based on the main problems outlined above, what has been proposed is Knowledge4Scrum, a novel knowledge management tool for agile distributed teams. Knowledge4Scrum will act as a global repository for knowledge sharing in Scrum distributed teams with the possibility of creating new knowledge through data mining techniques. Valid past projects data have been collected to train and test the data mining models. The research also investigates the suitability of knowledge management in Scrum distributed teams to address the various challenges addressed above.

Knowledge4Scrum supports the four knowledge management processes, namely, knowledge creation/acquisition, knowledge storage, knowledge dissemination and knowledge application. It has been found that the aforementioned tool satisfactorily addressed issues of distance, time and cultural differences that crop-up in distributed development teams. Data mining has been the main aspect for the knowledge creation and application processes, whereby new knowledge has been determined by examining and extracting patterns from existing data found in the repository.

A major feature of the Knowledge4Scrum tool lies in the knowledge creation and application section, where a number of data mining techniques have been utilised to identify trends and patterns in past data collected. When compared to the COnstructive COst MOdel to estimate project duration, Knowledge4Scrum gives more than satisfactory results. Such functionalities will actually help managers for future project planning and in decision-making.

Existing research on collaborative innovation mechanisms from the perspective of global operation is very limited. This paper aims to address the research gap by studying the factors influencing globally distributed teams’ innovation performance, especially how effective knowledge sharing between distributed teams promotes collaborative team innovation.

This research proposes a model to investigate how collaborative knowledge sharing affects global operations [team dispersion, task orientation, information and communication technology (ICT) usage] and innovation performance based on the data collected from 167 managers in 40 local Chinese IT and offshoring firms. Using the theory of Cognitive Diversity and Innovation Diffusion and Synergy, separate hierarchical regression analysis was used to test the proposed model.

The findings of this study demonstrate that effective collaborative knowledge sharing plays a crucial role in enhancing innovation performance in a global operation. Specifically, innovation capacity can be improved by task orientation, ICT usage and team dispersion.

This research study contributes to the development of global distributed operations and innovation among distributed teams in multinational corporations.