A century of work teams in the Journal of Applied Psychology.

Work groups are a vital link between individuals and organizations. Systematic psychological research on the nature and effects of work groups dates back at least to the Hawthorne studies of the 1920s and 1930s. Yet little to none of this work appeared in the Journal of Applied Psychology until the 1950s when groups were treated primarily as foils against which to compare the performance of individuals. From the 1990s to the present, the volume of research and the nature of topics addressing work group/teams expanded significantly. The authors review the evolution of team research over the past century with a particular focus on that which has appeared in this journal. They chronicle the shift from a focus on individuals within teams, or on individual versus team comparisons, to a focus on the team itself and larger systems of teams. They describe the major outcomes studied within this literature, and how they relate to the nature of team tasks and structures. Further, the authors consider the roles of team members' characteristics and composition, and team dynamics in terms of processes and emergent states. They close with a call for future research that models dynamic team relationships in context and as they operate in complex systems. (PsycINFO Database Record

A measure of and predictors for veterinarian trust developed with veterinary students in a simulated companion animal practice.

OBJECTIVE: To gain a better understanding of the role of interpersonal trust in veterinarian-client interactions during routine health-care visits, develop a measure of trust uniquely suited to the context of veterinary medicine, and interpret the actions, beliefs, and perceptions that capture client trust toward veterinarians. DESIGN: Correlational study. SAMPLE: 103 veterinary students and 19 standardized clients with pets from a college of veterinary medicine at a large public Midwestern university. PROCEDURES: measure of trust specific to veterinarian-client interactions was constructed on the basis of preexisting conceptualizations of the construct and administered to veterinary students and standardized clients following interactions in 2 medical scenarios in a high-fidelity simulated animal health clinic. Exploratory and confirmatory factor analytic techniques were used to validate the measure of trust, and hierarchic linear modeling was used to explore indicators of standardized client trust perceptions in one of the scenarios. RESULTS: Factor analysis revealed that the measure captured 2 perceptions indicative of trust in veterinary contexts: professionalism and technical candor. Students who had behaviors reflecting these factors as well as those who were perceived as more technically competent were seen as more trustworthy by standardized clients. CONCLUSIONS AND CLINICAL RELEVANCE: The development of trustworthy relationships between clients and veterinarians is important to the continued growth and success of the profession. By identifying characteristics of veterinarian trustworthiness and developing related measurement tools, proactive approaches to monitoring veterinarian-client relations can be implemented and incorporated into veterinary training and practice programs to identify areas for improvement.

Coordinated action in multiteam systems.

This study investigated coordinated action in multiteam systems employing 233 correspondent systems, comprising 3 highly specialized 6-person teams, that were engaged in an exercise that was simultaneously "laboratory-like" and "field-like." It enriches multiteam system theory through the combination of theoretical perspectives from the team and the large organization literatures, underscores the differential impact of large size and modular organization by specialization, and demonstrates that conventional wisdom regarding effective coordination in traditional teams and large organizations does not always transfer to multiteam systems. We empirically show that coordination enacted across team boundaries at the component team level can be detrimental to performance and that coordinated actions enacted by component team boundary spanners and system leadership positively impact system performance only when these actions are centered around the component team most critical to addressing the demands of the task environment.

Not all trust is created equal: dispositional and history-based trust in human-automation interactions.

OBJECTIVE: We provide an empirical demonstration of the importance of attending to human user individual differences in examinations of trust and automation use. BACKGROUND: Past research has generally supported the notions that machine reliability predicts trust in automation, and trust in turn predicts automation use. However, links between user personality and perceptions of the machine with trust in automation have not been empirically established. METHOD: On our X-ray screening task, 255 students rated trust and made automation use decisions while visually searching for weapons in X-ray images of luggage. RESULTS: We demonstrate that individual differences affect perceptions of machine characteristics when actual machine characteristics are constant, that perceptions account for 52% of trust variance above the effects of actual characteristics, and that perceptions mediate the effects of actual characteristics on trust. Importantly, we also demonstrate that when administered at different times, the same six trust items reflect two types of trust (dispositional trust and history-based trust) and that these two trust constructs are differentially related to other variables. Interactions were found among user characteristics, machine characteristics, and automation use. CONCLUSION: Our results suggest that increased specificity in the conceptualization and measurement of trust is required, future researchers should assess user perceptions of machine characteristics in addition to actual machine characteristics, and incorporation of user extraversion and propensity to trust machines can increase prediction of automation use decisions. APPLICATION: Potential applications include the design of flexible automation training programs tailored to individuals who differ in systematic ways.

When can employees have a family life? The effects of daily workload and affect on work-family conflict and social behaviors at home.

This article presents a longitudinal examination of antecedents and outcomes of work-to-family conflict. A total of 106 employees participating in an experience-sampling study were asked to respond to daily surveys both at work and at home, and their spouses were interviewed daily via telephone for a period of 2 weeks. Intraindividual analyses revealed that employees' perceptions of workload predicted work-to-family conflict over time, even when controlling for the number of hours spent at work. Workload also influenced affect at work, which in turn influenced affect at home. Finally, perhaps the most interesting finding in this study was that employees' behaviors in the family domain (reported by spouses) were predicted by the employees' perceptions of work-to-family conflict and their positive affect at home.

Trait configurations in self-managed teams: a conceptual examination of the use of seeding for maximizing and minimizing trait variance in teams.

In this article, the authors argue that there is no one best way to make placement decisions on self-managed teams. Drawing from theories of supplementary and complementary fit, they develop a conceptual model that suggests that (a) maximization principles should be applied to extroversion variance (i.e., complementary fit), (b) minimization principles should be applied to conscientiousness variance (i.e., supplementary fit), and (c) extroversion variance and conscientiousness variance interact to influence team performance. They also argue that previous research has underestimated the effect of extroversion and conscientiousness variance on performance because of suboptimal design. The authors, therefore, present an alternative method for making team placement decisions (i.e., seeding) that can be used to maximize or minimize variance in teams.

Multiple professional identities: examining differences in identification across work-related targets.

Although there is a growing literature on organizational identification, relatively little research has investigated other possible targets of identification. In a sample of veterinarians working in a wide range of organizations, the authors compared their identification with the veterinary profession, their organization, and their workgroup. The authors found different patterns of identification across these targets depending on whether the individual (a) worked in a veterinary medicine or nonveterinary medicine organization and (b) was an owner/partner or an associate. Owners of veterinary medicine organizations identified more with the organization than with either the profession or their workgroup. Associates in veterinary medicine organizations identified more with the organization and the workgroup than with the profession. Veterinarians in nonveterinary medicine organizations identified more with the profession and their workgroup than with the organization. Identification with each of the targets provided independent predictive validity of job satisfaction.

Enhancing the Effectiveness of Work Groups and Teams.

Teams of people working together for a common purpose have been a centerpiece of human social organization ever since our ancient ancestors first banded together to hunt game, raise families, and defend their communities. Human history is largely a story of people working together in groups to explore, achieve, and conquer. Yet, the modern concept of work in large organizations that developed in the late 19th and early 20th centuries is largely a tale of work as a collection of individual jobs. A variety of global forces unfolding over the last two decades, however, has pushed organizations worldwide to restructure work around teams, to enable more rapid, flexible, and adaptive responses to the unexpected. This shift in the structure of work has made team effectiveness a salient organizational concern. Teams touch our lives everyday and their effectiveness is important to well-being across a wide range of societal functions. There is over 50 years of psychological research-literally thousands of studies-focused on understanding and influencing the processes that underlie team effectiveness. Our goal in this monograph is to sift through this voluminous literature to identify what we know, what we think we know, and what we need to know to improve the effectiveness of work groups and teams. We begin by defining team effectiveness and establishing the conceptual underpinnings of our approach to understanding it. We then turn to our review, which concentrates primarily on topics that have well-developed theoretical and empirical foundations, to ensure that our conclusions and recommendations are on firm footing. Our review begins by focusing on cognitive, motivational/affective, and behavioral team processes-processes that enable team members to combine their resources to resolve task demands and, in so doing, be effective. We then turn our attention to identifying interventions, or "levers," that can shape or align team processes and thereby provide tools and applications that can improve team effectiveness. Topic-specific conclusions and recommendations are given throughout the review. There is a solid foundation for concluding that there is an emerging science of team effectiveness and that findings from this research foundation provide several means to improve team effectiveness. In the concluding section, we summarize our primary findings to highlight specific research, application, and policy recommendations for enhancing the effectiveness of work groups and teams.

Teams in organizations: from input-process-output models to IMOI models.

This review examines research and theory relevant to work groups and teams typically embedded in organizations and existing over time, although many studies reviewed were conducted in other settings, including the laboratory. Research was organized around a two-dimensional system based on time and the nature of explanatory mechanisms that mediated between team inputs and outcomes. These mechanisms were affective, behavioral, cognitive, or some combination of the three. Recent theoretical and methodological work is discussed that has advanced our understanding of teams as complex, multilevel systems that function over time, tasks, and contexts. The state of both the empirical and theoretical work is compared as to its impact on present knowledge and future directions.

Team learning: collectively connecting the dots.

This article tests the degree to which personal and situational variables impact the acquisition of knowledge and skill within interactive project teams. On the basis of the literature regarding attentional capacity, constructive controversy, and truth-supported wins, the authors examined the effects of cognitive ability, workload distribution, Agreeableness, Openness to Experience, and structure on team learning. Results from 109 four-person project teams working on an interdependent command and control simulator indicated that teams learned more when composed of individuals who were high in cognitive ability and when the workload was distributed evenly. Conversely, team learning was negatively affected when teams were composed of individuals who were high in Agreeableness. Finally, teams using a paired structure learned more than teams structured either functionally or divisionally. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed, as well as possible limitations and directions for future research.

Backing up behaviors in teams: the role of personality and legitimacy of need.

In this article, the authors developed several hypotheses regarding both the main and interactive effects of 2 types of team inputs on backing up behaviors in teams: (a) team composition characteristics in terms of the personality of the members of the team and (b) team task characteristics in terms of the extent to which the nature of the task is one that legitimately calls for some members of the team to back up other members of the team. Results from a study of 71 4-person teams performing a computerized tactical decision-making task suggest that the legitimacy of the need for back up has an important main effect on the extent to which team members provide assistance to and receive assistance from each other. In addition, the legitimacy of the need for back up also has important interactive effects with both the personality of the back up recipient and the personality of the back up providers on backing up behaviors in teams.

Skills, knowledge, aptitudes, and interests for veterinary practice management: fitting personal characteristics to situational demands.

Recent studies of veterinary practices and services have suggested that more attention must be focused on business practices and on the skills, knowledge, and abilities (SKAs) of veterinarians related to veterinary practice management (VPM). Responses to these concerns have been directed at the selection and education of veterinarians in veterinary school. While this position is supported in the present article, it is argued that the values and interests of persons who are likely to enter the field, as well as the nature of the experiences encountered across the career of veterinarians, will moderate the potential effectiveness of veterinary school practices and experiences regarding SKAs in VPM. The paper explores some potential implications of these moderators on the effectiveness of selection and education for increasing SKAs in VPM.

Structural contingency theory and individual differences: examination of external and internal person-team fit.

This article develops and tests a structurally based, integrated theory of person-team fit. The theory developed is an extension of structural contingency theory and considers issues of external fit simultaneously with its examination of internal fit at the team level. Results from 80 teams working on an interdependent team task indicate that divisional structures demand high levels of cognitive ability on the part of teammembers. However, the advantages of high cognitive ability in divisional structures are neutralized when there is poor external fit between the structure and the environment. Instead, emotional stability becomes a critical factor among teammembers when a divisional structure is out of alignment with its environment. Individual differences seem to play little or no role in functional structures, regardless of the degree of external fit.

Computer-assisted communication and team decision-making performance: the moderating effect of openness to experience.

This study examined the effects of computer-assisted communication on team decision-making performance as a function of the team's openness to experience. Seventy-nine teams performing a multiple-cue probability learning task were randomly assigned to 1 of 2 experimental conditions: (a) verbal communication or (b) computer-assisted communication (which combined verbal and computerized communication). The results indicated that access to computer-assisted communication improved the decision-making performance of teams, but only when the teams were high in openness to experience. This effect was observed using both global openness and more specific openness facets, as well as a variety of team-level aggregation strategies. Moreover, the beneficial effects of openness in computer-assisted conditions were mediated by the efficiency with which teams integrated verbal and computerized forms of communication.