Can a team have too much cohesion? The dark side to network density
Introduction
Despite the increase of teams and work groups within an organization there has been relatively little social network research on the structural properties of work groups and their consequences for team performance (Cummings and Cross, 2003, Lechner et al., 2010). This research attempts to address this deficiency. This research focuses on network topology, in particular the measure of group cohesion, and how such impacts team performance. The Theory of Task Contingency (Donaldson, 2001) postulates that some network topologies are better suited to exploration practices, while others are more suited to exploitation practices. That research finds that social network topology can be optimized to generate performance gains (Donaldson, 2001, p. 2). The Theory of Task Contingency (Donaldson, 2001) was extended by Lechner et al. (2010) to create the Dark Side of Social Capital theory. Under the Dark Side of Social Capital theory (Lechner et al., 2010) too much of any social network measure is as bad as too little. Put more explicitly, the same network structures that help some teams achieve fit with their environment and accomplish goals reach a point of diminishing returns, after which increasing that social measure further leads to negative performance consequences for groups (Lechner et al., 2010). Fig. 1 below illustrates some of the negative and positive influences of intergroup relations on performance.
This research seeks to explore the relationship between a group’s cohesion level and that team’s financial performance, while holding task contingency constant across teams and controlling for team size. By doing so, this research attempts to determine if the relationship between group cohesion and team performance is always positive as found by prior scholars (Beal et al., 2003, Carron et al., 1998, Evans and Dion, 2012) or if the relationship between these variables is actually inversely curvilinear and as found by Hardy, Eys, and Carron (2005) and as first suggested by Carron, Prapavessis, and Grove (1994). Further, this research seeks to affirm that Lechner et al. (2010) Dark Side of Social Capital theory holds true for group cohesion and team performance.
Section snippets
Theoretical background
Prior research has called on scholars to refine our understanding of how network relations contribute to team performance (Lechner et al., 2010). Firms (e.g., Teams or Groups), in the twenty-first century, may be viewed as actors, or indeed players, in evolving socio-economic networks (Hite & Hesterly, 2001). Increasingly, these networks are digitally-enabled, and this rapid, online communication growth provides rich data platforms for social network scholars (Johnson, Kovács, & Vicsek, 2012).
Methods
Today, gaining access to data held on electronic networks (e.g., email servers) is, from a technological perspective, relatively straightforward though there are of course, a number of ethical issues to consider. The surge in data availability, combined with the development of non-intrusive interrogation instruments, allows twenty-first century network scholars to explore the structure of communities through email (Grippa et al., 2006, Kleinbaum et al., 2008, Quintane and Kleinbaum, 2011),
Visual
As predicted by the Theory of Task Contingency, high performing teams shared a similar network topology. Fig. 2 below visualizes the social networks of several high performing teams in the national travel network. Note the dense and redundant number of ties between team members in the social graphs below.
As predicted by the Theory of Task Contingency, lower performing teams shared a similar network topology. Fig. 3 below visualizes the social networks of several low performing teams in the
Discussion and conclusions
This research explored the relationship between a group’s cohesion level and that team’s financial performance, while holding task contingency constant across teams and controlling for team size. The relationship between group cohesion and team success has been widely explored (Beal et al., 2003, Carron and Chelladurai, 1981, Carron et al., 1998, Evans and Dion, 2012, Landers and Lüschen, 1974, Lenk, 1969, Mullen and Copper, 1994) all of which found a strictly positive relationship between
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