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Muzafer and Carolyn Wood Sherif are among the founders of social psychology. Their theoretical and empirical findings made important contributions to the management literature. This paper aims to attempt to underline these contributions and highlights the Sherifs’ interdisciplinary work and their impact on management research specifically.

Using a citation content analysis, the influence of the Sherifs on management research is detailed by examining how their work has contributed to research published in top management journals.

The Sherifs’ work has influenced numerous research streams related to organisational groups, social norms, assimilation contrast theory and a combination of various other topics. Additionally, these works helped originate team and workgroup research in organisation theory.

This is the first manuscript of its type to examine the influence of the Sherifs on management research. Their story is a testament to the impact that social psychology researchers have had in developing modern thought about organisational issues. This work also addresses potential areas for future research building on the Sherifs’ work.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the dimensionality of intragroup conflict and to develop an instrument with acceptable psychometric properties for the comprehensive measurement of conflict.

This paper strictly follows the standard scale-developing method: first, establish theoretical dimensions of intragroup conflict; then, develop the initial scale through in-depth interviews and coding schemes; third, revise and verify the scale through exploratory factor analysis and confirmatory factor analysis; and, finally, examine the predictive validity of the new intragroup conflict scale.

This study identifies four dimensions of intragroup conflict – cognitive conflict, affective conflict, behavioral conflict, and interest-based conflict – and provides evidence of construct validity for a new measure. The results show that cognitive and interest-based conflict affect group innovation performance positively, whereas affective and behavioral conflict affects it negatively.

This study first detects interest-based conflict as a new dimension and explores a more comprehensive scale (ABCI) that reflects all the connotations of conflict, which deepens the understanding of intragroup conflict, laying a solid foundation for empirical studies of conflict.

The purpose of this exploratory study is to examine the impact of leadership on workgroup climate and performance in a religious/church‐based non‐profit organization.

The impact of leadership is investigated using a questionnaire comprised of established scales such as the transformational leadership scales (TLS), team climate inventory questionnaire (TCI), team effectiveness, workgroup cohesion, and interdependence scales. This is a context based study that considers the unique culture comprised of social, political, economic, technologic, personnel, and personal concerns. Descriptive, correlation, hierarchical regression, and SPSS macro developed by Preacher and Hayes were used as statistical techniques to assess the indirect effects (Sobel Tests) of variables.

Transformational leadership was identified as a key variable for the functioning of workgroup performance whilst transactional leadership was identified as a key influencing factor of workgroup climate. In addition, the study found a significant and positive large effect of workgroup climate on workgroup performance whilst both transformational and transactional leadership did not influence workgroup performance through workgroup climate. This finding provides areas in need of further research.

There is likely to be posing risks of method variance or response biases as all data were drawn from employee surveys. There is also likely to be selection bias as the authors could not directly compare respondents with non‐respondents. The fact that there may be operational differences in other as well as smaller organizations, based on the limited size and the ability to allocate job functions, could limit the generalization of this result to other organizations.

This study makes a significant contribution to both scholarly theory and workplace practice in the non‐profit sector as the findings indicated that the influence of workgroup climate on workgroup performance provided an enabling context for the delivery of leadership in a religious/church‐based non‐profit organization.

In the new post-COVID-19 work order, this study aims to examine whether and how individual-level social distancing interacts with workgroup-level socio-affective support to influence employee exhaustion and performance.

Multi-level analyses of time-lagged multi-source data from 231 employees nested in 34 workgroups were conducted to test our hypothesized relationships.

Analyses revealed a significant relationship between social distancing and employee performance via emotional exhaustion. Further, the positive relationship between social distancing and emotional exhaustion was attenuated by workgroup team orientation and support for innovation, and the indirect effect of social distancing on employee performance was weaker in workgroups with a high team orientation and high support for innovation.

This study extends the job demands-resources theory to the new work order and examines the impact of workplace social distancing on employee outcomes in the context of workgroup membership.

The paper presents an empirical account of self-fulfilling prophecy in a multicultural expatriate context of the Arabian Gulf (Sultanate of Oman). The purpose of this paper is to explore the link between managerial expectations of the effects of cultural diversity and workgroup performance.

This exploratory study uses a qualitative interpretive approach based on the data collected through semi-structured interviews. The participants were Omani managers in charge of multicultural expatriate workgroups.

Managerial expectations of the effects of multiculturalism on workgroup dynamics are linked to three dimensions of performance effectiveness, including the production function, the member support function and the group wellbeing function. The Pygmalion process, as applied to the multicultural expatriate context of this study, emerged as an integral part of positive organizational scholarship.

The data were collected in one country only, which limits the conclusions about the universal applicability of the Pygmalion theory. The boundary conditions were defined by the cultural characteristics of the research setting: collectivism, high power distance, high uncertainty avoidance, moderate masculinity/femininity.

For managers in charge of multicultural workgroups, the study provides motivation to project positive and affirmative expectations of multiculturalism, which is likely to lead to enhanced workgroup performance.

In examining the self-fulfilling prophecy phenomenon, this study transcends Western educational, military and industrial research contexts to investigate the Pygmalion process in a non-Western multicultural expatriate environment. The study contributes to unraveling the inconsistencies in findings on the relationship between cultural diversity and workgroup performance by highlighting the role of managerial expectations of multiculturalism.

In large organizations, space planning relies on workgroup leaders to indicate spatial adjacency preferences. However, many factors affect workgroups’ adjacency preferences, and it is not clear how the choices are made. This paper aims to explore whether the adjacency preferences are influenced by the collaboration relationship or constrained by the organizational structure.

The authors studied a large company’s spatial adjacency planning with an in-depth analysis of its formal organizational structure and collaboration network. A sample of 183 managers was surveyed regarding groups with whom they want to be spatially adjacent and groups with whom they mostly interact. The data enabled us to test three structural factors related to adjacency preference: department affiliation, workgroup’s prestige and collaboration relation. The authors used the quadratic assignment procedure analysis to examine the correlations between network matrices.

The results suggest that department affiliation and collaboration relations are significantly correlated to adjacency preferences. The authors did not find evidence supporting the notion that a workgroup’s prestige affects the preference. Among the three factors, collaboration relation best predicts the preference, which echoes Pena et al.’s (1977) argument that space planners should look into how groups function, rather than merely following the organizational chart.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this research was the first to explore the choice of spatially adjacent workgroup through a detailed network analysis of the formal structure, work collaboration relations and other group-level characteristics. The findings have noteworthy cross-disciplinary implications, given that spatial proximity can be taken as a human resource management strategy to facilitate the overall interactions between workgroups.

This paper aims to explore the effect of perceived “self-to-team” deep-level diversity on team’s creative output from a social identity lens’ view.

An experimental study was designed (n = 30 in each experimental condition, namely, homogeneous, heterogeneous and mixed) and vignettes were used to manipulate the experimental conditions. Employees from four Indian organizations participated in the experimental study.

Results indicated that deep-level homogeneous group perceived higher team creative output as compared to the deep-level heterogeneous group. Perceived team creativity climate was found to mediate the effect of team diversity on team’s creative output. Further, it was observed that the quality of perceived creativity climate (positive and negative) moderated the relationship between diversity and team’s creative output.

The diversity–climate–creativity model presented in the paper may help managers to understand how “deep-level” group composition affects a group’s creative performance. The findings of this study may act as a platform for building effective diversity management policies.

The current research has contributed to the limited team diversity and creativity literature. Based on the experimental study, the paper has uniquely investigated team diversity and creativity link along with examining the role of a mediator (creativity climate) and moderator (quality climate) in the relationship. As the study was conducted in Indian settings, the findings were interpreted based on the typical Indian psycho-social characteristics.

This paper aims to examine the mediating roles of self-efficacy and team commitment in linking service employees’ relative leader-member exchange (RLMX) with customer service behaviors and also the moderating roles of team-level differentiations in leader-member exchange (LMX) and team-member exchange (TMX) in influencing these mediation processes.

Data were collected from 467 customer-contact employees working in hotel restaurants. Hierarchical linear modeling analysis was used to test the mediation hypotheses, and moderated path was used to assess the moderated mediation.

Self-efficacy and team-commitment both mediated the relationship between RLMX and customer service behaviors. The differentiations in LMX and TMX significantly interacted with RLMX in predicting self-efficacy and team commitment and also moderated the indirect effects of RLMX on customer service behaviors.

Future studies need to incorporate customers’ or immediate supervisors’ ratings of subordinates’ customer service behaviors and replicate the findings in different countries and work settings.

Hospitality managers should foster a work environment wherein they develop equal quality relationships with their subordinates in a workgroup and promote high-quality relationships among subordinates in the workgroup to improve subordinates’ self-efficacy, team commitment and, subsequently, their customer service behaviors.

This study incorporates both self-efficacy and team commitment as motivation-based and social exchange-based mediators, respectively, in predicting customer service behavior. It also extends the boundary condition for the mediations by considering the team-level differentiations in both vertical exchange (LMX) and horizontal exchange (TMX).

Previous research has shown that diversity is related to both task and relationship conflict in groups. The purpose of this paper is to posit that leadership is an important factor for maintaining high group performance and morale under conditions of conflict. Specifically, the paper argues that leader conflict management, emotion management, and transformational behaviors determine the impact of conflict on group outcomes.

Data were collected from 585 people in 89 workgroups from eight public service organizations in Australia. The authors used hierarchical regression to test the hypotheses regarding group performance and morale. To test mediation and moderation, the authors followed the procedure outlined by Baron and Kenny. Finally, they used the formulas provided by Preacher, Rucker and Hayes to test for moderated mediation.

Results showed that diversity increased task conflict but was unrelated to relationship conflict. Both task and relationship conflict were negatively associated with group performance and morale, and effective leadership reduced these negative effects to zero. There was also a partial support for the authors’ theoretical model predicting that leadership moderates the indirect effect of diversity on group outcomes occurring through the mediator of conflict.

A greater amount of variation in the diversity of work groups included in the sample would have been useful for overcoming problems of restriction of range, which likely reduced ability to observe an association between diversity and group outcomes. Based on the results, in order to prevent negative emotions from task and relationship conflict from damaging group performance, leaders of diverse groups can act to manage those emotions among their group members. Results from this study implicate conflict management training. While training for conflict management is beyond the scope of this research, further research should examine this issue.

The study extends research in the area of diversity, leadership and group work. In particular, it demonstrates that transformational leadership is an important factor for maintaining high group performance and morale under conditions of conflict. It also offers practical assistance to individuals entrusted with the responsibility of managing culturally diverse workgroups.

Knowledge management (KM) has become a key driver of organisational performance. The existing literature suggests that many organisations fail in their attempts to align their KM strategies with knowledge processes within their organisation. Based on the management literature on alignment, there is a gap in the understanding of how an organisation's KM strategy and KM processes in workgroups can be aligned. The purpose of this paper is to illustrate that alignment in terms of KM is important and underpins the improvement of KM processes in organisations.

A qualitative case study research approach was used to examine alignment between strategy and processes of knowledge in organisations. In total, three case organisations representing different industry sectors were chosen to examine how organisations align their KM strategies with workgroup knowledge processes.

This study proposes a Strategic‐Workgroup Alignment Framework that explains the key alignment enablers and different alignment approaches required to align KM strategy with workgroup KM processes in organisations.

The authors acknowledge the limitations of this paper. Although the proposed framework provides valuable insights with respect to different alignment approaches, it does not specify how each alignment approach can be assessed in terms of effectiveness and efficiency. As part of the alignment approaches, this study's focus was between strategy and processes of knowledge: further research could bring to light new alignment options of knowledge and the associated implications.

This study illustrates that organisations can improve the management of knowledge through alignment between KM strategies and KM processes. Such an improvement is also possible in the absence of a KM strategy emphasis, where alignment would require a deeper examination of workgroup knowledge processes. This study also identifies specific alignment enablers to align KM strategy and KM processes.