Integration of Knowledge into Groups - Research Paper Example

?Building Sustainable, High Impact, Cohesive Teams Introduction Gardner, Staats, and Gino studied the effects of “knowledge-integration capability” (p. 998) and how it influenced groups to perform at a higher level. The authors were most interested in how teams working together bring about sustainable change. The authors wanted to answer two questions. The first question had to do with why teams are not able to take information they learn and turn it into an expertise that helps them perform better. The second question had to do with what resources employees need to help them develop as a team, and under what conditions this can happen. Gardner et al. (2012) did extensive research on how organizations use knowledge to build an effective team. They found that there were basically three things that happened when employees had the right amount of knowledge: 1) The group was able to improve performance when they had the right amount and right level of knowledge about the task and the process; 2) When employees become aware of the other knowledge that people have that will help them, they will have better outcomes; 3) The way that teams distribute this information will have an effect on the way that information is shared and brought together by all members. In the second article, Pless, Maak and Stahl (2011) provided a study about a program called The Ulysses Project that was geared toward building global leaders. The way they chose to create global leaders was to develop several teams to go into other countries together. The project is a service learning opportunity that provides participants with hands-on insight into the process that is involved in creating strong teams. The authors wanted to understand how the participants in the program learned from their specific experiences. The final article by Tuuli and Rowlinson (2009) provided information on teams and how they can be used to maintain employees. Although many people do not like working on teams, Tuuli and Rowlinson state that teams can be important to make employees feel a part of the organization; the more that they feel a part, the easier it will be to keep them at the organization. The research used a social cognitive theory foundation to build their research on, and they organized. The authors believed that if an organization created a climate that felt empowering to the employees, that they would be more prone to do their best work. Tuuli and Rowlinson (2009) also stated that the cognitive aspect of teams was that teams needed a sense of accomplishment to their work. This meant that they wanted to feel competent, they wanted to have an impact on their jobs, a sense of what the job meant, and these factors would create in them a sense of self-motivation. Methodology Gardner, Staats, and Gino (2012) provided a theoretical model that was to provide information about how information was shown and provided to employees. The model was to stop the research from having a “same source bias” (p. 1007) during the research. They collected several types of data from different places. They collected data about the team process from the teams and contextual and data about performance from partners of the company, but these were partners that were not involved in projects that the company was involved in on a daily basis. They also conducted data so they could construct the independent and control variables from specific archival information. The sample size was taken from the “audit and consulting” divisions in a “Big Five” accounting firm (Gardner et al., 2012, p. 1007). They chose this firm because they wanted it to provide realistic information about the issues that an auditing company had when they were working daily. A list of project teams was constructed and the teams were contacted according to specific criterion that was created ahead of time. The biggest criterion was that the employees had to be working for AuditCo (the name given to the business for their project) and who were responsible for at least 50% of the project. Pless, Maak and Stahl (2011) used a series of interviews with participants of the Ulysses Project because they wanted to understand how they learned from their experiences. The authors provided a large amount of information about the Ulysses Project, what it did and how the teams worked together. There were six phases to the program starting with a nomination phase where the senior managers nominated employees for the Project to the Debriefing Phase when the participants are able to talk about the various aspects of the learning and what they actually learned from the process. Tuuli and Rowlinson (2009) used a long list of 526 key people in 526 organizations. In all, they interviewed 105 clients and 158 consultants in 263 contractor organizations. They used pre- and post-tests with all participants. They sent a questionnaire packet to each of the interviewees that included a cover letter, five questionnaires to each organization and five FREEPOST return envelopes to make sending back the information easier. They sent these packets out twice. The first time they sent out the packets, they received 232 questionnaires back (78 from clients, 104 from contractors and 50 from the consultant group). They sent a second set of packets out to those people that had not returned the questionnaires the first time and their received another 150 responses (34 from clients, 52 from contractors and 29 from the consultant group; this yielded a response rate of 23% and meant that they received 382 responses to the questionnaire with 115 organizations in total. The researchers used a variety of scales to measure different aspects of the study in order to eliminate bias. As an example, they used a short version of a scale called the Marlowe-Crowne which consisted of 10-items and another 33-item scale that measured desirability. There were also five questions that were to be answered True or False –these five were written in a positive way and each respondent was to answer whether they felt the statement was true or false. This was a quantitative study that used several statistical measures like Cronbach’s Alphas to measure the data. Discussion All three studies had similar themes and they were about team work and how to construct a team that would be cohesive. One theme that all three studies suggested was that teams want to understand that they are needed and that they are making a contribution to the organization. They also want to have an idea that they are doing something that will benefit the company. The company in turn wants to know that they can have a team that will stay in the organization and help the organization grow. All three studies asked research questions and then they attempted to find out whether these questions or assumptions were true or not. One of the studies used a program that showed how teams could work in a global environment. The specific program they used was a model program that could be used in a variety of situations when working in a global setting. Another study used a theory instead of the model, and one of the studies used no program or specific theory. Although all three studies used questionnaires, they were done differently. As an example, Gardner, Staats, and Gino (2012) studied how knowledge was integrated into the group so they could understand the purpose of gaining knowledge for an organization and their employees. Pless, Maak and Stahl (2011) studied a global team of people and they were more hands-on in their approach to their study. They wanted to know the stories that people had accumulated at the beginning, middle and end of their interaction in a foreign company. The final study wanted to understand how the construction workers built a cohesive team to work directly with their managers. In each study, leadership was another common theme that was important to gain an understanding of how leadership created a sustainable team. The leader must be able to show the employees that he or she is a part of the company and this attitude motivate the employees and help them to perform better. When everyone is engaged in the process when they are working on a project, they are more inclined to perform well. True sustainability comes because the employees are invested in the project and open to new ways of doing things. Another dynamic of forming these teams seemed to be that there should be communication throughout the time of the project and that managers must be able to communicate well with their employees about what is going on with the project. All phases of the project should be covered when they are working together so that everyone is on the same page with what they are doing. This seemed to be one way to encourage people to stay involved in the process of a group and to keep them moving through more than one project. The authors also provided insight into how knowledge must be determined at the cognitive level for people to really grasp and accept the information. As Pless, et al.(2011) state, learning occurs on several different levels. A person learning inside a company must also have an understanding of different cultures and how their own culture fits into the culture they are working within (or those they are working with), they must have an open mind, and have a sense of community building as they are working with teams. All three articles also talked about the need for a specific climate inside the organization. Tuuli and Rowlinson (2009) called this a need for an empowerment climate. This seemed to mean that the culture within the organization should give employees the feeling of empowerment. In this climate, they would have the opportunity to collaborate with a team of people who were more focused on getting the job done because they felt a part of the process. Empowering employees to take charge of projects also was an interest point for each of the studies. The researchers found that employees related that working in an atmosphere that allowed them to work independently in the group and provided them with constructive team feedback was important to those who were developing projects. Conclusion I found the articles to be very good in that they provided information about how different types of teams operate. I had not thought about how people work together for on a cognitive level, so that was new information for me. I also found it interesting that although all three studies used similar ways of working, they gathered data in many different ways. One thing I thought about was that when teams are working together, there are several different personalities that come together to work on a team. I would think that each one having a sense of community would help them resolve any problems that would come up. I have been on teams that worked very well together because they felt that everyone was a part of the group and they had an equal say in how the project was created. I agreed with the authors on many points. I agree that people have to have good communication inside a group for it to work well together. I also agree that there are many different ways to understand each other and that the better the communication, the more motivated people are to do the work. References Gardner, H. K., Staats, B. R., & Gino, F. (2012). Dynamically integrating knowledge in teams: transforming resources into performance. Academy Of Management Journal, 55(4), 998-1022. DOI: doi:10.5465/amj.2010.0604 Pless, N. M., Maak, T., & Stahl, G. K. (2011). Developing responsible global leaders through international service-learning programs: The Ulysses experience. Academy Of Management Learning & Education, 10(2), 237-260. doi:10.5465/AMLE.2011.62798932 Tuuli, M., & Rowlinson, S. (2009). Empowerment in project teams: a multilevel examination of the job performance implications. Construction Management & Economics, 27(5), 473-498. doi:10.1080/01446190902729713 Read More