Managing unit human capital resources: Integrating insights from human resource management and unit leadership literatures.

Unit human capital resources (HCR) are vital to performance across organizational levels. Crucially, the benefits of unit HCR often hinge on resource access and effective resource management. Yet, how units manage HCR remains unclear. We first review findings from human resource management (HRM) and unit leadership literatures relating to unit HCR, which have evolved separately despite their shared goals. Using our review as a foundation, we offer an integrative model highlighting the ways unit leaders can leverage HRM practices and their leadership behaviors for the greatest impact on unit HCR. In so doing, we identify a potentially potent nexus for scholars of both disciplines to focus their integrative efforts on-unit leaders-given their responsibility for HRM practice delivery (e.g., implementing a job rotation program) and their own leadership behaviors (e.g., composing teams). We conclude by highlighting future research questions, opportunities for theoretical integration, and expanding empirical examination. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved).

Indexing dynamic collective constructs using computer-aided text analysis: Construct validity evidence and illustrations featuring team processes.

Organizational processes have been widely recognized as both multilevel and dynamic, yet traditional methods of measurements limit our ability to model and understand such phenomena. Featuring a popular model of team processes advanced by Marks et al. (2001), we illustrate a method to use individuals' communications as construct valid unobtrusive measures of collective constructs occurring over time. Thus, the purpose of this investigation is to develop computer-aided text analysis (CATA) techniques that can score members' communications into valid team process measures. We apply a deductive content validity-based method to construct CATA dictionaries for Marks et al.'s dimensions. We then demonstrate their convergent validity with subject matter experts' (SMEs) hand-coded team communications and different SMEs' behaviorally anchored rating scales based on video recordings of team interactions, using multitrait-multimethod analyses in two samples. Using a third sample of paramedics performing a high-fidelity mass casualty incident exercise, we further demonstrate the convergent validity of the CATA and SME scorings of communications. We then model the relationships among processes across episodes using all three samples. Next, we test criterion-related validity using a longitudinal dual-discontinuous change growth modeling design featuring the paramedic CATA-scored team processes as related to a dynamic performance criterion. Finally, we integrate behavioral data from wearable sensor badges to illustrate how CATA can be scored at the individual level and then leveraged to model dynamic networks of team interactions. Implications, limitations, directions for the future research, and guidelines for the application of these techniques to other collective constructs are discussed. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).

Dynamic team composition: A theoretical framework exploring potential and kinetic dynamism in team capabilities.

Organizations are increasingly called upon to solve complex problems in changing conditions that require the combined knowledge, skills, perspectives, and efforts of multiple individuals. These dynamic situations often require dynamic team composition. Dynamic team composition is sometimes thought of as synonymous to changes in membership, however, we contend that it also can occur through other means including team member development, the alignment between team member capabilities and the team's tasks, and changes in the accessibility to team member capabilities. Given the lack of overarching theories to organize and provide guidance on research and practice related to dynamic team composition, we take an interdisciplinary approach and leverage the fundamental concepts of potential and kinetic energy as a guiding framework to integrate the disparate literatures on dynamic team composition. We bring dynamic team composition to the forefront and delineate four types of dynamic team composition through staffing, development, situational relevance of member knowledge, skills, and abilities (KSAs) and access to member KSAs through relational resources. Next, we provide tangible recommendations for the design, measurement, and analysis of dynamic team composition. Finally, we provide guidance on developing dynamic research questions and infusing dynamics into existing theories. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).

Informal field-based learning and work design.

U.S. organizations continue to invest most of their learning budgets in formal training and development programs despite estimates that the majority of learning in the workplace happens informally. In this study we focus on informal field-based learning (IFBL), which represents individuals engaging in self-directed, intentional, and field-based development of their knowledge and skills. We build on the informal learning literature to advance a cross-level model of individual and job-level characteristics as influences on IFBL and subsequent changes in job performance. We tested our model using a sample of 378 health care employees who occupied 47 different jobs. The results showed promotion-focused individuals more readily engaged in IFBL, as moderated by job time pressures. Moreover, engaging in IFBL behaviors positively related to performance improvements in jobs that require greater updating and use of relevant information, as well as in jobs with relatively low decision making and problem-solving requirements. Exploratory subdimensional analyses revealed some interesting countervailing relationships between the feedback-seeking and vicarious-learning elements of IFBL. Results are discussed in terms of contingency relationships associated with IFBL behaviors and different job types, as well as theoretical and practical implications. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2019 APA, all rights reserved).

Sprinting to the finish: Toward a theory of Human Capital Resource Complementarity.

In traditional work contexts, factors such as individuals' general competencies are used to predict indices of their performance such as yearly performance appraisals. Whereas traditional approaches to predicting individuals' performance focus on differences between individuals, a considerable proportion of variability in performance is attributable to within-person sources. However, we submit that within-person variability in performance may also be attributable to the fact that people work in different contexts. Moreover, individual performance is often the result of unrecognized team contributions. Accordingly, we advance a Human Capital Resource Complementarity (HCRC) theory to explain the alignment of human capital resources with dynamic situational features, and to illustrate the influence of team collective competencies on the performance of individual members. We then empirically test HCRC theory-derived hypotheses using a sample of 169 cyclists from 22 teams across 18 stages of the centennial Tour de France. Our results suggest that individuals' specific competencies interact with situational characteristics to predict their performance variability over time, beyond that accounted for by their general competencies. Moreover, these effects are accentuated to the extent that teammates' competencies aligned with individual competencies in a given situation. Implications for future theory building, research, and practice are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2018 APA, all rights reserved).

The evolution of work team research since Hawthorne.

Since the Hawthorne studies of the 1920s and 1930s, there has been tremendous progress in the science and the practice of work group effectiveness. We chronicle the evolution of 3 schools of thought concerning work groups that spawned about the time of those studies. We highlight the different emphases of each perspective and how they eventually merged into an integrated view of teamwork. We also illustrate the disciplinary ebbs and flows of work group research over the past quarter century and how many different scholars from diverse institutions are currently contributing to the literature. We highlight the progress that has been made both in terms of scholarly insights and practical advances. We argue that the popular Input-Process-Outcome framework has facilitated progress in the field but has also become a limiting factor. We conclude that future advances will be associated with: (a) the advent of new theories, methodologies, and tools for modeling dynamic team properties; (b) a greater appreciation for, and sophisticated conceptions of, team task environments; and (c) conceptions of teams as entities in multilevel environments. (PsycINFO Database Record

A cross-level investigation of informal field-based learning and performance improvements.

Organizations often operate in complex and dynamic environments which place a premium on employees' ongoing learning and acquisition of new competencies. Additionally, the majority of learning in organizations does not take place in formal training settings, but we know relatively little about how informal field-based learning (IFBL) behaviors relate to changes in job performance. In this study, we first clarified the construct of IFBL as a subset of informal learning. Second, on the basis of this clarified construct definition, we developed a measure of IFBL behaviors and demonstrated its psychometric properties using (a) a sample of subject matter experts who made item content validity judgments and (b) both an Amazon Mechanical Turk sample (N = 400) and a sample of 1,707 healthcare employees. Third, we advanced a grounded theory of IFBL in healthcare, and related it to individuals' regulatory foci and contextual moderators of IFBL behaviors-job performance relationships using a cross-level design and lagged nonmethod bound measures. Specifically, using a sample of 407 healthcare workers from 49 hospital units, our results suggested that promotion-focused individuals, especially in well-staffed units, readily engage in IFBL behaviors. Additionally, we found that the IFBL-changes in job performance relationship was strengthened to the extent that individuals worked in units with relatively nonpunitive climates. Interestingly, staffing levels had a weakening moderating effect on the positive IFBL-performance improvements relationship. Detailed follow-up analyses revealed that the peculiar effect was attributable to differential relationships from IFBL subdimensions. Implications for future theory building, research, and practice are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record