Event criticality, urgency, and duration: Understanding how events disrupt teams and influence team leader intervention

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Abstract

Research has begun to recognize the role leaders can play in enhancing semi-autonomous work team effectiveness. One recent approach suggests that leaders enhance team functioning by intervening in the context of specific events, where the effectiveness of active intervention strategies is moderated by event disruptiveness [Morgeson, F.P. (2005). The external leadership of self-managing teams: Intervening in the context of novel and disruptive events. Journal of Applied Psychology, 90 497–508.]. The present study extends this research by examining the relationship between event criticality, urgency, and duration and event disruptiveness as well as the amount of time leaders spend managing different types of events. Using both qualitative and quantitative methods in four different organizations, we found that these three characteristics of events were positively related to team disruption, but only urgency was related to the amount of time leaders spent managing the event. A qualitative analysis of the events revealed that the impact of events on team functioning and leader intervention varied according to the type of event encountered. The implications of these findings for team leadership research are discussed.

Section snippets

The performance environment of semi-autonomous teams

The sine qua non of semi-autonomous teams is that they assume responsibility for managing and executing major production activities (Banker, Field, Schroeder, & Sinha, 1996). As part of managing their own activities, teams will seek to develop routines that specify what behaviors should be performed in different circumstances (Gersick & Hackman, 1990). In the course of routinizing their behavior, teams develop a set of shared expectations and norms that give the team a sense of shared identity

Understanding event characteristics and leader intervention

To identify what event characteristics influence the degree to which an event disrupts team functioning, we drew from the literature on team routines and other event-based research (Dohrenwend et al., 1993, Gersick & Hackman, 1990, Lee & Mitchell, 1994, Olson-Buchanan et al., 1998, Thomas, 1992, Trevino, 1992, Weiss & Cropanzano, 1996). This research concerns the central role events play in a host of different outcomes.

A critical aspect of events concerns their ability to prompt an individual

Research setting

The data used in this study was collected as part of a larger research project, part of which was reported in Morgeson (2005). For the current study, data from one new organization is reported and with the exception of a single measure (disruption to the team), none of the data reported has been previously published. Four different organizations were involved in the present research. All teams had only one formally designated leader. The first organization was a large pharmaceutical company and

Results

Because teams provided multiple ratings of events, there is a lack of independence in team ratings of events (i.e., events are nested within teams). To take this lack of independence into account, the hypotheses were formally tested with hierarchical linear modeling (HLM; Bryk & Raudenbush, 1992, Hofmann, 1997, Hofmann et al., 2000). In addition, there are a variety of factors other than event characteristics that may influence the observed relationships among the study variables. As such,

Discussion

Many have discussed, in general, how events can influence social system functioning (Barley, 1986, Louis, 1980, Schneider & Reichers, 1983). Such events are notable because they can disrupt automated routines and otherwise affect task performance (Gersick & Hackman, 1990, Louis & Sutton, 1991). Considering such events and their relationship to team functioning is particularly important because it provides a justification for the existence of team leaders in self-managing environments and

Acknowledgment

Thanks to the many team leaders and team members who participated in the study. Also thanks to Darren Moeller for his assistance in coding the events and Anne Downey for her proofreading and editing assistance.

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