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This chapter examines the relationship between team routines and temporal entrainment. While the process of entrainment generally reinforces the routines that teams follow temporal entrainment also creates opportunities for externally focused teams to change their routines. Entrainment creates team rhythms that include pauses in activity that can act as triggers to change. These pauses alone are not enough to impel teams to change; managers must also employ temporal design to make use of these opportunities for change. Both the rhythms of temporal entrainment and the pauses that accompany them are part of a team’s task environment. By uncovering key rhythms, as well as by managing the pauses, managers can both reinforce desired routines and change problematic ones.

Research suggests that teaming routines facilitate learning in teams. This paper identifies and details how specific teaming routines, implemented in a virtual team, support its continual learning. The study’s focus was to generate authentic and descriptive accounts of the interviewees’ experiences with virtual teaming routines.

This case study gathered concrete, practical and context-dependent knowledge about virtual teaming routines in a specific environment. The main source of data was narrative expert interviews with working members of the team.

This study illustrates how a mix of face-to-face and virtual routines can ensure organizational learning in virtual teams.

This case study is limited to one virtual team in the information industry. Future research could build on this research to study virtual teams in other industries.

This research offers specific examples of teaming routines that managers of virtual teams might adapt in managing their own teams.

Given that the use of virtual teams is a growing phenomenon, understanding how to help those teams learn effectively is a critical issue.

This case study extends the research on teaming routines to virtual teams.

In this paper, the authors extend their understanding of the internal dynamics of routines in contexts characterized by increased levels of virtuality. In particular, the authors focus on the role of routine artifacts in the internal dynamics of routines to answer the question: How does extensive reliance on information and communication technologies (ICTs) due to physical distance influence the internal dynamics of the new product development (NPD) routine (i.e. interactions between performative, ostensive and artifacts of routines) enacted by a virtual team?

This paper is based on an 18-month ethnographic study of the NPD routine performed by a virtual team. The authors relied predominantly on qualitative, ethnographic data collection and analysis methods, using semi-structured interviews, non-participant observation, and the collection of archival data and company documents (formal procedures, guidelines, application designs etc). Qualitative research offers a valuable means to investigate dynamic processes in organizations due to its sensitivity to the organizational context and potential to focus on activities as they unfold.

The findings highlight the central role of routine artifacts (ICTs) in the routine dynamics of the NPD routine performed by virtual team. In particular, the authors show that the use of the particular types of ICTs enabled team members to confidently and meaningfully relate to the overall routine activity and coordinate their actions in a context characterized by physical distance and extensive reliance on communication and collaboration technologies.

The paper sheds light into role of routine artifacts in the routine dynamics in a context characterized by a high degree of virtuality. This work contributes to the literature on routine dynamics by theorizing about the processes through which routine artifacts (ICTs) afforded routine participants the ability to act confidently and meaningfully to the present and dynamically coordinate their actions with their fellow routine participants.

The authors first examine the extent to which having an accurate understanding of and anticipate on one another’s work routines (defined as crossattuning) explains additional variance of team performance above and beyond other implicit coordination concepts such as team familiarity and transactive memory. Furthermore, the authors aim to propose that social sensitivity interacts with team size and team longevity in supporting the emergence of cross-attuning.

The authors first use a quasi-experimental design with 35 student-teams in Study 1 to test the discriminant validity of their construct. In Study 2, the authors use a field study with 66 work teams to test their hypotheses.

Study 1 shows that cross-attuning has a positive effect on team performance and that it explains additional variance above other implicit coordination-concepts. In Study 2, the authors confirm cross-attuning associates with supervisor-rated team performance and find that team social sensitivity is more positively related to cross-attuning in small teams with low longevity and in large teams with high longevity in comparison to large teams with low longevity.

The study of implicit coordination mechanisms in teams has primarily focused on having knowledge about other team members’ expertise and competencies and how teams cope with unexpected events. How teams deal with individual work routines – repetitive work-related behavior that is limited in considering alternative actions and the task environment – have received limited attention, despite the potential of these individual routines to thwart successful team task completion.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the linkage between self‐managing team (SMT) member perceptions of collective efficacy and customer‐perceived service quality, and the most cost‐efficient way to reliably assess collective efficacy and customer‐perceived service quality, using generalizability theory (G‐theory).

Longitudinal design; employee and customer survey data from 52 teams of a major financial services institution were collected at two points in time.

First of all, results of OLS regression analysis show a positive effect of collective efficacy on customer‐perceived service quality. In addition, taking a G‐theory approach, the results indicate that collective efficacy possesses a higher psychometric quality than customer‐perceived service quality and that the costs of reliably comparing SMTs on collective efficacy are considerably lower compared to customer‐perceived service quality. Finally, for both constructs, the results reveal subtle but relevant differences in psychometric quality and costs of data collection across different types of service (routine versus non‐routine) settings.

To begin with, as a linkage construct, collective efficacy provides managers a mechanism for team intervention by means of task‐focused team building, role‐play exercises, and using feedback to increase service employee confidence. Secondly, when deciding to use survey data as one means to compare performance of organizational units, managers should first determine to what extent the distinct measurement design facets (e.g. items, persons, and occasions) account for variance in measures and sample correspondingly to save money on data collection. In doing so, they should explicitly take into account the type of service context and type of respondent.

This study identifies collective efficacy and customer‐perceived service quality as a set of service SMT performance measures that meaningfully connects employee and customer perceptions at the group level. Secondly, a G‐theory approach was used to assess the psychometric quality of these two measures and how data collection costs can be minimized to achieve a desired level of generalizability.

Members of an organization facing change often struggle to adapt and may create new routines. Drawing on insights from a case study of bariatric robotic surgery, the authors illustrate how a new ecology of space transforms the ostensive and performative aspect of a routine during the introduction of a new technological artifact. The authors discuss two types of space: experimental and reflective. The authors show that the reflective space through debriefings enables practitioners to discuss the new patterns of interdependent actions. Practitioners explore the different aspects of the performative struggle with new artifacts and try to integrate new actions and delineate the boundaries of this change during experimental performances. The findings of this study throw light on the role of the reflective space in addition to the experimental space in routine change, and suggest that socio-material ensembles can produce opportunities for reshaping routines.

Previous literature notes that more remains to be understood about the relationship between organizational knowledge and innovation. In this article the author seeks to argue that innovation depends on efficient knowledge integration, while the latter depends on factors internal and external to product development teams.

This paper proposes a conceptual framework that takes into account firm‐internal knowledge integration of human and technological assets. In particular, the author analyzes and discusses knowledge integration mechanisms which a firm strategically deploys in the innovation process.

Knowledge‐relatedness, the extent to which product development teams are specialized in related scientific or technological fields, is proposed as an important moderator for the relationship between operating routines and innovative performance. If many product development teams perform well, innovative firm performance will increase.

The author notes the need for empirical inquiry which can build on the theoretical model. Other possible moderators, such as the physical proximity of knowledge‐related product development teams and the frequency of knowledge‐related personnel transfer from one product development team to another, would be interesting avenues for further research.

Specifying operating routines with respect to integrating functional and technological knowledge can result in innovative firm performance.

The article adds to the knowledge‐based view of the firm while analyzing how a firm can make use of its heterogeneous knowledge for innovation. The author shows how knowledge‐relatedness moderates the relationship between operating routines for new product development teams and innovative performance.

This paper aims to review the latest management developments across the globe and pinpoint practical implications from cutting-edge research and case studies.

This briefing is prepared by an independent writer who adds their own impartial comments and places the articles in context.

This study illustrates how a mix of face-to-face and virtual routines can ensure organizational learning in virtual teams.

The paper provides strategic insights and practical thinking that have influenced some of the world’s leading organizations.

The briefing saves busy executives and researchers hours of reading time by selecting only the very best, most pertinent information and presenting it in a condensed and easy-to-digest format.

This paper aims to examine how the efficacy of organizational routines varies and the mechanism through which organizational routines improve firm performance.

A theoretical model is proposed and tested using data from 53 interviews with financial services experts and 291 survey responses from financial advisors.

Operational and adaptive routines work through absorptive capacity to positively contribute to firm performance. The positive effects of adaptive routines are magnified under market governance.

The examination of organizational routines is focused on routines at the firm level. Therefore, higher corporate-level routines were not measured. Response rate for the survey is a possible concern, so future research will benefit from increasing the response rate from the focal population.

This study benefits firms facing the dual role of customization and discipline in working with clients toward service delivery. The findings suggest that firms should develop both operational and adaptive routines, particularly when operating under market governance.

This study identified two categories of routines (operational and adaptive) and the circumstances in which the causal link between routines and performance varies. This study examined the potential moderating influence of a governance mode (market vs hierarchy). Absorptive capacity was identified as a mediator between the use of routines and firm performance.

The purpose of this paper is to identify leadership behaviours that appear to be salient in life science firms and to explain them as Darwinian adaptations to the particular characteristics of that industry.

This work used a pragmatist, inductive, mode 2 research methodology. The method used semi-structured, laddered, qualitative interviews with 23 individuals from 22 firms in the pharmaceutical and medical technology sectors.

The work found four aspects of the industry’s external environment that, collectively, distinguish it from other sectors. Further, it found four leadership behaviours that appear to be strongly characteristic of the industry. Further analysis revealed critical antecedents of these behaviours in the form of micro-foundations. Finally, these behaviours and their antecedents appeared to be a Darwinian adaptation to selection pressures created by the external environment.

The findings of this work are limited to the life sciences sector and do not support generalization beyond this sector. The work has three implications. Firstly, that leadership behaviours can be seen as at least partly sector-specific. Secondly, that the specificity of leadership behaviours appears related to identifiable characteristics of the industry environment. Thirdly, that the principles of generalized Darwinism provide a useful lens for understanding leadership behaviour in this sector.

This work implies that leadership training and development should recognize the specific industry context of the leader and not assume that leadership behaviour is a general, non-specific set of behaviours. Further, the work implies that appropriate leadership can be more readily enabled by paying attention to certain micro-foundations.

This work is original in two ways. Firstly, it addresses the leadership behaviours of the life sciences sector specifically. No previous work has done this. Secondly, it applies generalized Darwinism to the topic of leadership, which has not been attempted previously.