Group & Organization Management

Mental health has grown increasingly important as an aspect of employee well-being, with organizations expected to address these needs through offerings to support employee mental health. Broad societal forces like stigma and low levels of literacy surrounding mental health make it challenging for many people to understand these offerings. As the marketplace for these offerings grows to meet this demand, employees, HR professionals, and business leaders need better resources to understand, organize, and distinguish among their choices. The current research offers a 3-dimensional taxonomy for organizing these offerings, distinguishing them according to their (a). Primary Purpose-To Restore or Enrich; (b). Delivery Agent Location-External or Internal; (c). Latitude in Providing-Legally Required or Voluntary Provided. We provide theoretical approaches for scholars to consider these offerings’ impact in workplaces, and briefly demonstrate the taxonomy’s value in organizing some of the commonly available offerings in many modern workplaces. Finally, we provide two attainable research avenues for researchers to explore to inform organizational stakeholders on the (1). prevalence, costs, outcomes of these offerings in the workforce and (2). helpers and hurdles to employees' using these offerings.

The topic of bereavement (i.e., the death of someone significant) has long been a neglected area of study in the organizational sciences. The most common outcome of bereavement is grief. Currently, we have little knowledge about relationships among bereavement grief, bereavement leave, other organizational policies and practices, and work-related outcomes (job behaviors, work engagement, perceived organizational support). Using a survey with 388 bereaved employees, results showed that bereavement grief had a significant negative relationship to job behaviors, work engagement and perceived organizational support (POS). Bereavement leave was positively related to POS but unrelated to other work outcomes. Several organizational offerings and practices (e.g., the opportunity to talk about workplace accommodations) were positively related to certain work outcomes while other results were mixed. These findings are discussed, along with implications and future research directions, as well as practical guidance for organizational decision makers.

Employee well-being is a matter of significant concern for both workers and organizations. While many organizations implement costly Stress Management Interventions (SMIs) to improve employee well-being, their efforts are limited by debates as to which SMIs (if any) are effective and how “effectiveness” should be evaluated. The lack of research identifying key predictors of awareness and use of different types of SMIs makes it difficult for researchers and practitioners to draw conclusions with respect to SMI efficacy. Our research addresses these gaps in our understanding by using a contextual effects perspective and a large (n = 1627) sample of employees working in a diversity of jobs within a single organization to identify the key predictors of employee awareness and use of five available SMIs and explore the link between use of these five SMIs and perceived stress. The following conclusions are supported by the findings from this study: (1) the organizational perceived culture is a better predictor of SMI awareness than individual employee attributes or employee well-being, (2) the predictors of SMI awareness are different from those predicting use, (3) employees who would most benefit from access to SMIs are less aware of what organizational benefits are available, and (4) predictions of awareness, use, and efficacy vary depending on SMI type. Using both theory and the results from our research we propose a comprehensive framework that conceptualizes SMI efficacy as a process not an outcome.

There is debate in the literature regarding when impression management motivates networking performance for self and others, and how well individuals perform tasks when the driving motivation is to look good. We take a novel approach to this quandary, integrate social exchange with sensemaking theories and research, and examine how networking group characteristics enable entrepreneurs to make sense of, and interpret, their collective environment and subsequently determine how they should behave to look their best. We identify collective altruism as an important group characteristic affecting how impression management tactics influence entrepreneurs’ willingness to help fellow group members. Findings from a sample of entrepreneurs (n = 189) engaged in Business Network International (BNI) groups (k = 24), illustrate that the relationship between entrepreneurs’ exemplification and the revenue they generate for others’ ventures and their own was more strongly positive when collective altruism was higher. Similarly, the effects of entrepreneur supplication and intimidation on revenue generated for others’ ventures were positive in groups with higher collective altruism. We discuss implications for theory and practice.

Although team processes are conceptualized as temporal phenomena, our theoretical understanding of their unfolding over time is underdeveloped, particularly when “zooming in and out” into their dynamics using different temporal lenses. Team processes might unfold differently over extended project cycles (i.e., macroscale time lens) versus over brief events (microscale time lens). Our goal was to better understand temporal changes of three critical higher-order team processes (i.e., transition, action, and interpersonal processes) over both extended periods (i.e., longer project cycles) and brief time spans (i.e., recurring stand-up meetings). Focusing on two agile software teams, we indexed team processes across these two time spans using computer-aided text analysis (CATA) of meeting transcripts. Macroscale time span processes were captured across 10 sprints (30-week project cycle). Microscale time spans were captured with data from brief stand-up meetings (i.e., using 10 equidistant time intervals from 40 meetings). From a macroscale time lens (i.e., project cycle), an increase in action processes in the early project phase was associated with increases in performance. From a microscale time lens, changes in transition and interpersonal processes around mid-meeting phases were associated with differences in performance. Qualitative analyses of meeting midpoints revealed key differences in proactive planning and interpersonal processes. We discuss how our results provide novel insights for team process dynamics in relation to micro- and macroscale time spans.

The large increase in the average sample size of team studies published in premier management journals over the past decade is concerning. A strict focus on large samples suppresses the study of many teams, particularly less prominent ones; for example, teams in small or medium-sized enterprises, teams in unique contexts, teams containing underrepresented minorities, and teams adopting new technologies. It also impedes our collective understanding of teams by devaluing work relying on philosophies of science that do not prioritize large samples. Large samples allow positivists to establish relationships between constructs. Yet, contextualized, rich data from as few as just one team can help constructivists uncover lived experiences or could be studied by critical realists to identify mechanisms underlying social systems of active agents. In this paper, we review how these three philosophies of science view sample size, addressing how and when small samples are beneficial. Importantly, research from all three traditions is necessary to build an in-depth, practical understanding of teams. We also describe five specific ways small sample research can contribute to team science and lay out four general recommendations for assessing the value of sample size in team research. Throughout, we maintain that scientific progress is collective and pluralistic. A sole reliance on large samples threatens this goal.

Team adaptation is particularly impactful within extreme and isolated environments, where sudden and abrupt events drastically challenge effective teamwork. To advance the team adaptation literature, we examined how event characteristics influence the relationship between team adaptation processes and team adaptive performance. To do so, we conducted an on-site, multi-study research using sequential explanatory mixed methods and a retrospective event history approach. The first study (based on a quantitative multilevel methodology) was designed to understand how the characteristics of the events influenced team adaptation processes and team adaptive performance (we collected data of 86 events described by 56 informants nested within 21 teams) during one Antarctic Summer Campaign at the South Shetland Islands Archipelago, Antarctica. The second study, based on qualitative methodology focused on thematic analysis, was designed to obtain a detailed description of the relationship between adaptation triggers and team adaptation (we collected data from 20 semi-structured interviews). Overall, our findings highlight that different team processes are significant in shaping perceptions of team adaptive performance, making the modification of transition and interpersonal processes the most critical. We additionally show how these relationships are moderated by the characteristics of adaptation triggers. We discuss the implications of these findings for teams within extreme environments and beyond.

Teams operating in isolated, confined, and extreme (ICE) environments are especially rare and difficult to study. Their inaccessibility limits our understanding of the team processes driving effective functioning in ICE environments and our ability to support them. Contributing to this research space, we present a qualitative study of nine teams each deployed to Antarctica during the summer season for approximately six weeks. By analyzing participants’ daily journal entries reflecting on their teamwork and experiences, we generate an ecological model of extreme team functioning. Our model integrates individual, team, leadership, and contextual characteristics and processes to demonstrate how team functioning is often idiosyncratic and emerges from co-evolving relationships within and across levels. Our dynamic perspective helps move beyond the input-process-output organizing heuristic that has guided teams research for decades, but is limited in its ability to provide insights for specific teams. We take an idiographic approach to focus on understanding the unique processes of specific teams to provide insights into how to support a particular team and better direct interventions. Importantly, we find that the social relationships within the team are especially pertinent for determining team functioning in this ICE environment and identify team structures that supported positive psychosocial functioning and the role of leadership in fostering those structures. We discuss implications for future research and suggest teams in extreme environments can be better supported through special attention to the idiosyncratic processes of a given team and ensuring their social lives are considered alongside their taskwork.

Workflow interruptions are skyrocketing in the contemporary workplace, especially in collaborative team environments. The reliance on (communication) technologies and accessibility through email and phone creates increasing avenues for frequent teamwork interruptions. In this study, we investigate in fourteen multidisciplinary team meetings in hybrid healthcare settings (1) which workflow interruptions naturally emerge and (2) how these interruptions influence the communicative processes within the team. We find evidence for an interruptive meeting environment, characterized by videoconferencing issues, disruptive beepers/phones that go off, and people leaving and entering the meeting room during patient discussions. Contrary to what was expected, team members initially respond to the interruption with positive statements (i.e., humor) as a coping mechanism, which decreases significantly in the minutes after the interruptive event. After the interruptive episode, significantly more negative statements, as well as conversational repetitiveness occurs. This research contributes to understanding naturally occurring workflow interruptions in actual organizational healthcare teams, by providing objective and fine-grained empirical insights into how workflow interruptions affect changes in the teams’ communication.

With increasing attention on Lunar and Martian missions, understanding the effects of Isolated, Confined, and Extreme (ICE) environments on human teams becomes critical. Conducting ecologically valid research on team dynamics within these contexts poses challenges due to the unique challenges they operate and stemming scarcity and inaccessibility of such teams. Adopting a mixed-methods approach, this study answers the call for more research to understand the nuances of teams operating in these conditions. Leveraging archival data collected from 36 Antarctic winteroverers, the relationships between challenge characteristics, team dynamics, affective states, and individual differences are investigated. The data’s nuanced nature shows the effect of task challenges on teamwork outcomes and the related increased negative affect. Furthermore, the strong effect of within-person factors on the ICE experience is illustrated in the qualitative and quantitative data. In line with this variability, the study reveals how both higher-level personality facets, as well as their subscales, influence individuals’ experiences in ICE environments. Exploring the connections between a set of challenges characteristics on three affective variables and eight discreet emotions, nine component variables of two latent teamwork constructs, and a suite of individual differences variables, the study contributes to the field by demonstrating the value of combining qualitative and quantitative data within small samples, allowing for in-depth insights into teamwork experiences in ICE. The manuscript also provides insight into temporal aspects of key relationships in ICE and how a set of individual differences relate to the use of journaling as a research methodology.