Search results

The purpose of this paper is to examine how the group decision-making process unfolds over time in a transorganizational system (TS) planning change.

A longitudinal qualitative case study was designed to enable researchers to identify different stages in the group decision-making process.

The findings from this case study indicated that the group decision-making process in a TS planning change could be conceptualized to include five distinct steps: working in solitude; starting a dialogue; finding a common goal; suggesting decision alternatives; and deciding among alternatives. The group proceeded through these steps sequentially over time.

The paper offers TS practitioners a framework to follow when making group decisions within TSs.

The study develops a conceptual framework that describes how the group decision-making process unfolds over time in a TS planning change. This framework can be tested in other contexts and advance theory in both the TS and group decision-making areas.

Employees' work in innovation processes generates ideas, but more often it serves to create conditions so that new products or services can be effectively produced or delivered. Self‐organizational activities involve proactively handling new possibilities, unexpected situations, problems or tasks. The aim of this paper is to provide support for a previously proposed model of the determinants of self‐organizational activities in work groups.

Three studies were conducted in organizations where self‐organizational activities are welcomed, and in a nuclear plant where such can endanger safety. The results are based on work analysis (two studies) and questionnaires (all studies) administered to, in total, 104 work groups. The model was tested using LISREL.

The model received substantial support. Dimensions of job design, group processes and group initiative are interrelated and connected to self‐organizational activities. Job design captured by work analysis gives a better model fit and has a larger effect on self‐organizational activities than self‐assessed autonomy.

Five different studies with a relatively small number of groups is not a large sample, but the data could be merged.

Teamwork can benefit the innovation process and give a return on the investment that it takes, providing that groups have a complex task, considerable freedom, and group processes that are characterized by reflectivity. A good argument for investing in teamwork is that it can promote self‐organization. Employees learn to think outside the box and participate in processes that are important for innovation. Work analysis can give input as to how work conditions might be altered to enhance innovation processes. Job design has an effect on group processes that are crucial for learning the competence to handle change.

Detailed work analysis is worthwhile as it provides data regardless of how work conditions are perceived, and gives a solid base for proposing how the work should be designed if it is to support self‐organization. Further, group processes that enhance group initiative and self‐organizational activities are identified.

The study gives further evidence that teamwork can benefit the innovation process and give a return on the investment that it takes, providing that groups have a complex work task, considerable freedom, and group processes that are characterized by reflexivity.

This research aims to examine the relationship between conflict management in the workplace and member satisfaction in work groups at both individual and group levels.

The objectives were achieved by surveying 135 Korean teachers in 28 kindergartens, treating them as small work groups. A multilevel modeling technique was used to examine the impact of conflict management preferences on individual satisfaction with group processes.

For the cooperation style of conflict management, individual‐level preference and group‐level similarity in preference were related positively to individual satisfaction with group processes. Individual‐level preference and group‐level similarity in preference for the avoidance style, however, did not significantly influence individual satisfaction with group processes. It was also found that the positive relationship between individual preference for the cooperation style and satisfaction with group processes was stronger with less variation (i.e. greater similarity) in group‐level preference for the cooperation style and with greater variation (i.e. less similarity) in group‐level preference for the avoidance style. Research limitations/implications – No causality can be established between conflict management style preferences and satisfaction with group processes. Only two styles of conflict management were assessed with a small number of measurement items.

The study shows how useful a multilevel examination of conflict management style preferences and satisfaction with group processes can be for conflict research.

The purpose of this paper is to expose how organizational cybernetics (OC)-related concepts could be used in combination with information and communication technologies (ICT) to facilitate group discussions on complex issues, and to show its impact in a real case.

A software inspired by OC and team syntegrity concepts has been developed with the aim of helping groups of people to deliberate around complex issues through the internet. Two groups of persons with similar backgrounds were chosen to pursue a deliberation process around the same issue. One had the support of ICT while the other did not. The authors used the same questionnaires with both groups, aimed at getting qualitative and quantitative information about the results obtained in each case.

The results obtained show that the group working with ICT support did produce a better output (quality and quantity) than the group not supported with ICT as well as a higher degree of satisfaction in practically all indicators than the second group.

The authors are dealing with only one experiment and therefore cannot make a generalization. It would be desirable to repeat the experiment with various groups and in different contexts.

An internet-based software inspired by OC concepts was created to facilitate the first phases (generation and aggregation of ideas) of a deliberation process and the authors measured, in an experiment with two groups of people with similar backgrounds, the impact of using it on the quality and quantity of information produced through the process.

This paper aims to investigate the interaction of the relationships between group behaviour, group process and learning outcomes in online executive education.

A systematic review of literature in the relevant conceptual domains is performed.

A framework is proposed from the systematic review and proposes a dynamic classroom environment where instructor capability interacts with group process and behaviour to generate new learning outcomes. The impact of institutional context and technology infrastructure are highlighted as drivers of both the classroom and instructor effectiveness.

The systematic review highlights several future research trajectories posing the questions: How disruptive innovation impacts on instructor capability development? How alternative theories explain the routines underpinning instructor capability? What is the role of external partners in the development of learning in context? What is the nature of instructor innovation capability? and How does instructor technology capability impact on learning outcomes?

Human resource development practitioners are presented with insights as to their existing and potential future roles in enhancing group behaviour, process and learning outcomes in executive classrooms impacted by technological change. The subsequent potential for practitioner enabled learning innovation is highlighted.

This paper contributes to contemporary debates regarding the interaction of emerging technologies and the executive online classroom, specifically focusing on the area of group behaviour process and learning.

Projects are one of the main ways used to develop organisations and turn their strategic initiatives into a reality. To support project management, several entities (e.g. associations, institutes, etc.) provide standards, guides and project management methodologies. However, despite its wide coverage of project management knowledge areas, standards currently have no specific processes focused on planning and evaluating success. The absence of these processes can limit the vision of managers and their teams on what most contributes to the success of a project. Aiming at contributing to fill this gap, this paper proposes the integration of success management processes in the ISO 21500 standard.

To develop the integration model, a Design Science Research approach was adopted for the construction and evaluation of the resulting artefact.

The result is an integrated model and insights for its application in practice. The model aims to help managers and their teams to identify which success management activities need to carry out and how to integrate them with the other processes of the ISO 21500 standard.

The integrated model was applied in only one project. Another limitation is the difficulty in comparing the results obtained due to the small number of works focused on success management (namely related to planning, measuring, controlling and reporting success in practice) and its integration with project management standards, guides and methodologies.

The integrated model, based on success management and the ISO 21500 standard, is an important and original contribution to understand and achieve success in projects. This promotes a new vision of balanced management, directing the management effort to the areas that effectively contribute to success in each project.

More and more organisations are using teams to solve problems, plan for the future and improve products, processes and services. One method of enhancing group effectiveness is to use a facilitator. Facilitators, however, need to be trained in order to accomplish their role effectively. This can only be achieved successfully if trainers are aware of the competencies and skills needed to undertake the facilitation process. Explores the facilitation process and presents both the general and specific competencies that are essential for facilitation. General competencies are those that are vital no matter what type of group is meeting. Specific competencies, on the other hand, are those that are distinctive to the level of group development. Groups that are highly experienced and well‐developed will require the facilitator to have more sophisticated skills than groups that are less‐developed.

Hidden profiles are decision‐making tasks in which groups have the potential to outperform individual decision‐makers. This paper has two purposes: first, to provide a conceptual analysis of how the group potential for solving hidden profiles can be measured; second, to empirically determine the solution rates hidden profile groups would achieve: in the absence of any group processes (i.e. the group potential); and in the absence of any dysfunctional group processes.

The group potential was determined by averaging the group members' decision quality prior to the discussion. To determine the hidden profile solution rates in the absence of any dysfunctional group processes, the standard hidden profile procedure was modified so that nothing but the individual‐level constraints could hamper the solution of hidden profiles.

The actual group performance was significantly higher than the group potential, but significantly lower than the performance in the no dysfunctional group processes condition. Hence, dysfunctional group processes interfere with the realization of process gains. However, even in the absence of any dysfunctional group processes, groups did not always solve hidden profiles. Finally, the detrimental group process hampering the solution of hidden profiles does not seem to be biased information pooling favoring shared information but rather insufficient amount of information pooling.

The results indicate that tools, which aim to facilitate the solution of hidden profiles, have to overcome both dysfunctional group processes, and individual‐level constraints.

This is the first attempt to quantify process gains in hidden profile groups.

In this chapter, we attempt to better understand the mechanisms underlying the effects of process conflict on team performance by exploring the role of negative affect in explaining the negative effects of process conflict on performance. Our findings show that negative affect does fully mediate the relationship between process conflict and group performance. Additionally, we investigate a set of conditions relating to fairness concerns and group context, which may have an influence on the relationship between process conflict and negative affect. We find that when voice is high and perceived goal obstruction and subgroup existence are low, the relationship between process conflict and negative affect is ameliorated, thus allowing for more positive effects of process conflict to emerge.