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DOES TEAM SIZE MATTER?
THE MODERATING EFFECTS OF TEAM SIZE IN
BOUNDARY SPANNING TEAMS
Master Thesis
University of Groningen Faculty of Economics and Business
Human Resources Management & Organisational Behaviour Department
June 11, 2017
ANTIA PILIDE Student number: S3174859
2 ABSTRACT
The need for boundary spanning teams is increasing. However, they can only be effective un-der certain conditions. This study investigates how the structural element of team size within boundary spanning teams, directly affects information sharing and consequently the team’s performance. More precisely the study examines the relationship between team boundary spanning and performance, intra-information sharing is a mediating variable, since it is facili-tated by boundary spanning activities. Team size represents the moderating variable which affects intra-information sharing in boundary spanning teams. Hypotheses are tested within a sample of 40 multinational boundary spanning teams. This study provides insights on the lev-el of importance of team size to boundary spanning activities. For managers, knowing the ef-fects of team size and intra-information sharing is important in order to effectively handle team boundary spanning activities. Lastly, the study provides a foundation for firms to better understand, maintain and design their teams, for greater outcomes.
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1. INTRODUCTION
Organisational teams cannot operate in isolation. In order to deal with the constantly changing environment and accomplish complex tasks they need to cooperate with other units. To respond to the said conditions, teams must be engaged in boundary spanning activities by establishing linkages and managing interactions with parties outside their boundaries (Ancona, 1990; Marrone, 2010). These boundary spanning activities help organisational teams become more adaptive and address the demands of the changing environment, by providing greater knowledge of the external conditions and expertise, while at the same time aid teams to seek new task-related information and coordinate interdependent work efforts (i.e. delivering interdependent deadlines) (Ancona and Caldwell, 1992). Researchers have established that the benefits of boundary spanning are closely related to team performance and are well linked with the improvements in organisational processes and organisational performance (Ancona and Caldwell, 1992; Marks et al., 2001). At the same time, for interconnected parties or individuals to increase the benefits received from boundary spanning interactions, they need to allow information to be shared and exchanged in order to learn from one another and thus accomplish higher performance demands (Argote et a., 2003).
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sharing between teams, I choose to focus on information sharing within teams as it can directly relate to the team’s outcomes (i.e. team performance), a key component of this study (Ancona, 1990). In fact, the exchange of information within teams provides the opportunity to inform members with unique information acquired and thus increase the quality of collective decisions (Stasser et al., 1989). Furthermore, previous research has identified that effective information sharing within teams can be strongly associated with positive performance outcomes (Edmondson, 1999; Stasser and Titus, 1987). Thus, as intra-information sharing can constitute a reason for meeting team performance objectives, it is placed as a mediated variable between team boundary spanning and team performance, in order to explain why this direct relationship is likely to occur. Nevertheless, intra-information sharing cannot be constantly effective. Until now, there have been several empirical pieces of evidence showing that various elements can cause the disintegration of information sharing within teams. Some of those are the team’s characteristics (Bakker et al., 2006; Swart and Kinnie, 2003), cultural characteristics that exist in a team (Ford and Chan, 2003; (Minbaeva, 2007), individual characteristics (Cabrera et al.,2006) and even the organisation’s structure (Kim and Lee, 2006). For an effective information sharing to occur, all these elements must be well in place (Wang and Noe, 2010). If not, the direct relationship between boundary spanning and team performance, as mediated by information sharing is affected.
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elements of team size and team diversity, as they can constitute meaningful influences on the team’s ability to perform boundary spanning activities effectively.
In order to fill existing gaps, I choose to address the factor of team size, as an element that can affect information sharing and have an impact on boundary spanning activities. Despite that it is suggested in previous research, another reason I give considerable attention to the structural element of team size, is because in prior research it is stated that various types of team structures have a strong effect on boundary spanning activities (Tushman, 1977, Marrone, 2010). Ideally, effective group structures can support teams to focus on sharing information and creating knowledge, important for reaching better-integrated decisions (Stasser et al., 1989), while unsuccessful structures can distract members from sharing their information. Team size, as a structural element can affect the degree to which teams perform boundary spanning activities, since in larger teams the collection of information might be greater than in smaller teams, however the difficulty of sharing these information within the team is increased. To this end, I place team size as a moderating variable to examine whether is important for the effectiveness of boundary spanning teams. On the basis of this theoretical contribution, the research question of this paper is as follow:
How does team size influence information sharing within boundary spanning teams and thus affecting team’s performance?
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interactions with external units, the settings are considered favourable and appropriate in the investigation of boundary spanning activities.
7 FIGURE 1 Conceptual model
2. THEORY AND HYPOTHESIS
The relationship between team boundary spanning and team performance.
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spanning. Within the literature of team boundary spanning, three distinct boundary spanning activities have been proposed (Ancona and Caldwell, 1988). These activities are named; representation (or ambassadorial), coordination and general information search (Ancona and Caldwell, 1988). Representation activities can be defined as those activities that protect the team from outside pressure and persuade others to support the team, by forming opinions (Ancona and Caldwell, 1988). Coordination activities constitute the team’s actions to coordinate work activities with mutually independent units, in order to establish individually and jointly determined project goals (Ancona and Caldwell 1992; Marrone, 2010). Lastly, a core boundary spanning activity, the general information search, also referred as scouting. This boundary spanning process reflects a general scanning of the external parties, in order to gain access to relevant information, knowledge, and expertise. All three activities of boundary spanning are essential, in order to help teams, achieve goals and enhance team performance by shaping opinions, coordinating efforts and seeking new information.
As boundary spanning can be divided in distinctive activities, so can team performance objectives. Boundary spanning teams can provide a variety of outcomes equally important to reach higher team performance. In this paper, I present outcomes that have been established by Ancona (1990). Those include innovation, efficiency and goal attainment. Innovation can be measured to the extent that the teams are able to develop new products and manage to find creative way of working well together (Ancona and Caldwell, 1992). Efficiency of the team, as a performance outcome must be consider in terms of the team’s productivity in the long term, while goal attainment is a performance outcome that measures the degree to which team goals have been accomplished.
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to other workflow structures. Such activities aid the team to strengthen ties with other organisations but also help to fill knowledge gaps (Ancona and Caldwell, 1988). Coordination involves solving issues of interdependent schedules, whereas negotiation represents an exchanged agreement that is reached between two units. Coordination and negotiation with external units will impact internal communication, in order to achieve intergroup dependencies (Ancona, 1990). Such actions will increase the team’s quality planning, by advising the team to revisit mistakes, thus increasing goal attainment (Mohrman et al., 1995). Moreover, the need to coordinate task activities to identify improvements in the organisational process, enhances team and organisational innovation (Mohrman et al., 1995). Secondly, general scouting of information, will allow the team to interact with outside parties and exchange information that will expand the team’s understanding of the general environment and aid the team in effectively achieving its goals, while it can enhance team learning and innovation (Ancona and Caldwell, 1992, Hargadon, 1998). Lastly, taking part in ambassadorial activities, helps teams to effectively and efficiently achieve goals as teams acquire greater support and commitment in decision making by external units (Marrone, 2010), while increasing efficiency and innovation. Therefore, boundary spanning activities, not only expand the team’s knowledge and increase the quality of work preparations, but they also help the team in providing well-thought, accurate and quicker results. Hence, consistent with previous research, I predict:
H1: Team boundary spanning has a positive direct relationship with team performance
The relation between team boundary spanning and team performance as mediated by information sharing.
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activities to obtain sufficient knowledge and expertise to confront the difficulties of the external environment (Denison et al., 1996). However, to increase the benefits from boundary spanning interactions groups need to share information both between and within teams (Wasko and Faraj, 2005; Marrone, 2010), in order to reach a mutual agreement and find creative solutions (Durham et al., 1997), but also to be able to expand the know-how and generate feedback regarding processes, respectively (Hansen, 1999). Therefore, boundary spanning activities, enable information sharing actions both within and between teams.
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H2: Boundary spanning and team performance will be positively mediated by intra-team information sharing.
Team size as a moderating factor of team boundary spanning and information sharing
Great emphasis has been given on the topic of information sharing, where many researchers found that information sharing is not constantly effective. In their studies, they identified several factors that can affect information sharing within teams, those include organisation context (i.e. management support, organisational structure), interpersonal and team characteristics, cultural characteristics, individual characteristics and motivational factors (Wang and Noe, 2010). Therefore, it is important to understand that a direct relation between information sharing and team performance is not guaranteed as there are several elements that can affect the immediate interaction between the two constructs. In this paper, I focus on the element of organisation structure as a factor that can cause the disruption of information sharing within teams and can impact team performance. Previous research on organisational structure argues that forming organisations and teams in such a way that limits the interactions between members (i.e. high organisational hierarchy and seniority) and diminishes the opportunity members have to contribute, does not facilitate information sharing and is detrimental for boundary spanning (Wang and Noe, 2010). On this basis, researchers have focus on the use of open workspaces (Jones, 2005) or even job rotation (Kubo et al., 2001) to accommodate information sharing. In this study, I give considerable attention on the yet unexplored structural factor of team size, as an element that can affect information sharing, to investigate under which conditions concerning size, effective information sharing is likely to take place.
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to influence intra-group processes and boundary spanning activities (Glasdstein, 1984), mainly because it’s a factor that can strongly impact the construct of communication, a pre-requisite for an effective knowledge sharing to occur. Thus, team size has been chosen as an element of moderation between information sharing and team performance in boundary spanning teams, due to its influential abilities. More precisely, a change in size will affect the number of potential linkages or relationships formed between team members (Caplow, 1957), as a result negatively or positively influencing communication within teams. Therefore, the positive relationship between team boundary spanning and team performance will not be consistent since team size can impact the mediated variable of information sharing.
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and interact with other units is limited (Alderfer, 1980). Such strengths and weaknesses of smaller teams, lead us to the conclusion that a low number of team members, can minimize activities of boundary spanning, as the interaction with external units is restricted, but a small size enables a greater intra-communication and effective information sharing to take place. Consequently, a small team size will limit the boundary spanning interactions but increase frequency of communication, resulting into higher levels of information sharing. Thus, the strength of the relation between boundary spanning and intra-team information sharing in smaller teams, increases.
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able to exist. Consequently, according to numerous previous researches, I hypothesise the following:
H3: The positive indirect relationship between team boundary spanning and team perfor-mance mediated by information sharing is stronger when team size is smaller, rather than larger
3. METHOD
Sample and procedure
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responders varied between 17 different nationalities. Responders information is shown in Table 2 below. The average age of the individuals was 40 years (SD=11.17), while 102 (58%) responses were females and 70 males (39.8%). On average 120 responders were working in their current position for more than 2 years (68.2%), while only 10 had been working less than 6 months (5.7%).
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Responders information
Measures
Team boundary spanning: In order to measure the predictor variable of boundary spanning, I used four items (Ancona and Caldwell, 1992). Both team members and team leaders were asked to measure the following items based on five-point scale from ‘not at all’ to ‘a very great extent’. The items were: 1) My team resolves problems with external groups, 2) My team coordinates activities with external groups, 3) My team produces things which the team needs from other groups or individuals in the company, 4) My team negotiates with other for delivery deadlines, 5) My team review ideas and processes with outsiders.
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though results have been gathered through a use of a survey, in order to encourage objective data, I chose to rate team performance only from the team’s leader perspective. Research found that the evaluation of group performance differs depending on whether group members or managers are doing the rating. Therefore, team leaders were asked to rate the performance of their team along five dimensions on a five-point scale from ‘far below average’ to ‘far above average’. The dimensions were: 1) Efficiency, 2) Quality, 3) Overall achievement, 4) Productivity, 5) Adherence to deadlines and 6) Work excellence. Often team performance outcomes are closely related to innovation (Marrone, 2010), thus to obtain an overall picture of teams’ performance I chose to measure team innovation with measures adapted by Anderson and West (1998), rated at a five-point scale from 1(strongly disagree) to 5 (strongly disagree). The items were: 1) Team members often implement new ideas to improve the quality of our products and services, 2) The team gives little consideration to new and alternative methods and procedures for doing their work, 3) Team members often produce new services, methods or procedures and 4) This is an innovative team. As item 2 was reversed, I performed reverse coding to retain reliability.
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items 1 and 5 were reverse, I performed a reverse coding on the specific items to retain the reliability of the scales.
Team size: Team size has been measured objectively, by requesting team leader to state the number of members within the team. The information was obtained by using an open question in the beginning of the survey.
Control variables: An important control variable in this study, is team tenure. In was been proven that tenure diversity can negatively impact intra-team communication (Williams & O'Reilly, 1998). More precisely, the relationship between knowledge sharing and team performance will be affected if tenure diversity is high. Using methods used by De Dreu (2007), I have controlled tenure diversity by asking every team member to state the amount of time he/her have been working in the team. In addition, I considered demographics characteristics of age and gender as control variables, as they are factors that can affect employees’ behaviours and attributes and therefore can shape the believes of individual responses providing me with inconsistent results (Williams & O'Reilly, 1998, Marrone et al., 2007).
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1(strongly disagree) to 5(strongly agree). Items for between team interdependence were: 1) to perform well, we must frequently coordinate efforts with members from other teams, 2) for the team to perform well, members must communicate well with other teams, 3) to achieve high performance it is important that team members work with members of other teams. Items for within-team interdependence were: 1) within my team we must frequently coordinate efforts with fellow team members, 2) jobs performed by team members are related to one another, 3) for the team to perform well members must communicate well with each other, 4) to achieve high performance it is important that team members work with each other.
Data analysis
Results have examined the team boundary spanning as an antecedent of team performance, the relationship has been mediated by information sharing within teams and moderated by team size. Data collected through the questionnaire was analysed using a statistical program named SPSS. Prior any analysis, Cronbach’s alpha of every variable was measured to ensure consistency and reliability of all variables. Even after the reverse coding of item 2 of innovation, Cronbach’s alpha of that variable remained low, thus item 2 was omitted from the study to increase reliability of results. Results of the reliability analysis are presented in Table 3.
Intraclass Correlation (ICC)
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teams, I tested an intraclass correlation coefficient to assess whether we had violations of this independence between and within teams. Accordingly, I calculated whether individuals’ team membership had an effect on boundary spanning activities. Intraclass correlation coefficient can vary between -1 and 1, low values indicate a high degree of independence, therefore p-values of those measurement are likely to by incorrect (ten Cate et al., 2010). However, consistent with previous research, results indicated that individual boundary spanning behaviour was not affected by between and within team membership (e.g. de Vries et al., 2014), as result indicated that variables range between 0,39 and 1. Results are presented in Table 3 below. Furthermore, as results of intraclass correlation were sufficient, I proceed with the aggregation of results. Aggregation data was used in order to change the units of analysis of my data from an individual base to a team level, which helped me collect greater information about the teams.
TABLE 3
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4. RESULTS
After performing a normality analysis, results indicated that data deviated significantly from normal distribution (Sharpio-Wilk test, p<.005), therefore variables were transformed using log transformation, to change the ones that were positively skewed to more symmetrical. The variables transformed were information sharing, boundary spanning, performance, team size, team tenure and team interdependence. Log transformation is a mandatory condition for Pearson’s correlations that requires variables to be approximately normally distributed.
TABLE 4
Descriptive Statistics and Correlation
Variables Mean SD 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 1 Performance 1.36 0.13 2 Boundary Spanning 1.26 0.13 .35* 3 Intra-team Information Sharing 1.28 0.19 .41* .67** 4 Team Size 2.27 0.69 .35* .10 .01 5 Team Interdependence 1.37 0.12 .13 .55** .53** .11 6 Tenure 1.25 0.14 .19 -.09 -.22 .22 -.11 7 Age 40.98 7.88 .31* .07 .023 .26 .02 .41** 8 Gender 1.61 0.32 -.20 -.26 -.19 -.27 -.22 -.09 -.01
Note. N40; *p<.05; **p<.01. (two-tailed significance) Descriptive Statistics
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boundary spanning and the mediator, information sharing (r=.41, p<.05), while the mediator and team performance exhibited a strong positive correlation (r=.67, p<.01). Furthermore, there was a small positive correlation between team size and information sharing (r=.1, p<0.5), but a moderate significance between team size and team performance (r=35, p<0,5).
Of the control variables, team interdependence showed significant relation to some of the main variables. Accordingly, team interdependence was strongly correlated to boundary spanning (r=.55, p<.01) and information sharing (r=.53, p<.01). Moreover, the results indi-cated that tenure had a negative small correlation to information sharing (r=-.22, p<.01), while age showed a moderate positive relation to team performance (r=.31, p< .05). The last control variable gender, was negatively related with all main and control variables, therefore omitted from the hypothesis testing. This is important as it prevents biases in the parameter estimation and can reduce power of the relation (Becker, 2005).
Hypothesis Testing
24 Hypothesis 1
Hypothesis 1, predicted that team boundary spanning leads to team performance. To test the hypothesis a regression analysis was conducted. As expected, consistent with hypothesis 1, the analysis demonstrated that the relationship between team boundary spanning and team performance was positively significant, as presented in Table 5 (B=.39, SE=.18, p<.05). Thus, hypothesis 1 was accepted.
Hypothesis 2
Furthermore, it was hypothesised that intra-team information sharing would positively medi-ated the direct relationship between team boundary spanning and team performance. There-fore, I predicted that teams performing boundary spanning activities would results into higher levels of team performance when intra-team information sharing takes place. Mediation re-gression analysis was used to estimate the relationship. The results of the analysis can be found in Table 5. The results indicated that the indirect effect of boundary spanning on team performance through intra-team information sharing was significant (B=.24, SE=.14). The positive mediation was demonstrated by the absence of zero in confidence interval CI95% [.10,.62]. Additionally, the effect of boundary spanning on team performance with the pres-ence of information sharing was decreased and not significant, therefore information sharing fully mediates the direct effect of boundary spanning on team performance. Thus, hypothesis 2 was supported.
Hypothesis 3
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26 TABLE 5
Regression results for the mediation effect (Hayes model 4)
27 TABLE 6
Regression results moderation mediation (Hayes model 7)
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5. DISCUSSION
This study offers both theoretical and empirical contributions to the extensive literature of team boundary spanning. It provides further insights on prior work of various academics (Argote et al., 2003; Ancona and Caldwell, 1989) on the importance of information sharing processes through which team boundary spanning can result into greater outcomes. Previous studies state that information sharing both within and between groups can aid teams in expanding knowledge that consequently leads to greater performance objectives, while research examines information sharing as a component activity for boundary spanning teams (Ancona and Caldwell, 1992). However, no study to my knowledge, has used information sharing as a mediating process that can act as a crucial conduit for effective performance objectives. The present study and investigation analysis address the issue of information sharing as a mediating role between team boundary spanning and team performance. Furthermore, this study adds team size as a moderating variable between the indirect relationship of team boundary spanning and team performance, as mediated by information sharing, in order to examine under which conditions intra-team information sharing will generate high results.
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Furthermore, I hypothesized that intra-team information sharing would mediate the direct relation of team boundary spanning and team performance. The analysis showed a significant relation, thus the second hypothesis was supported. Hence, I found that intra-team information sharing fully mediates the relationship between team boundary spanning and team performance. The high significance of the relationship was proven as when information sharing was taking place, the magnitude of the interaction between team boundary spanning and team performance was low. Therefore, the results of the analysis indicate that in order for teams to accomplish higher goals and enhance both team and organisational performance, they must engage in a constant exchange of information within the team. As supported by previous research, the interchange of information will create knowledge that may broaden people’s understandings on task activities, leading them to accomplish tasks efficiently and effectively and contribute to team performance (Hansen, 1999). As confirmed by the results, the teams that successfully manage to share their knowledge and reach performance objectives were most likely to diminish gaps, a step representing a team’s cornerstone in achieving higher performance objectives (Stasser and Stewart, 1992). Further, it is more likely that teams, in which members effectively share information, have a more positive environment where teamwork dominates (Beal et a., 2003; Ancona and Caldwell, 1992). A positive working environment always enhances trust, while it boosts individuals in increasing their efforts. Accordingly, an increased level of teamwork leads to more information sharing which leads again to even higher levels of teamwork.
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finding that often team structures have the ability to influence communication within the team, thus affecting intra-team information sharing. Contrary to what was predicted, in the case of team size as a structural element these effects were not found. Accordingly, in this study team size did not cause the disruption of intra-team information sharing, while teams were able to perform effectively boundary spanning activities, as results indicated a slightly marginal negative significance of the moderator. Table 3 showed that at higher levels of team size, there is a stronger relation between team boundary spanning and information sharing and at lower levels of team size the relation becomes weaker. A possible reason for the non-significant effect of team size is that teams have managed to find ways to operate effectively and promote intra-team information sharing, no matter whether team size is high or low.
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Furthermore, a second possible explanation for the contradicting to the hypothesis results, that expect larger team to have effective coordination which generates information sharing, is due to effective division of labour (Davison et al., 2012). A direct interaction of members in larger teams, is detrimental (Marks et al., 2005; Davison et al., 2012). However, samples of larger teams were probably broken down to subunits, where each one was specializing on one topic. This constitutes that assignments were allocated to each team and then were further divided into sub-assignments, distributed into sub-teams. As such, sub-division of labour, limits the need for a direct interaction among all team members, that can appear harmful for the performance of larger teams (Marks et al., 2005; Davison et al., 2012). However, still promotes coordination and communication between sub-team and results into a structured and effective intra-team information sharing.
Therefore, findings contribute to existing literature, as they establish that team size is not a structural element that can cause the disruption of the effectiveness of organisations and teams. However, results suggest that for groups to perform well they need to maintain effective processes, such as information sharing that will provide them with the additional knowledge and guidance that they need. Furthermore, teams are able to succeed, to the extent to which they can provide an effective coordination, through for example, the use of hierarchy or the division of labour, that will lead them to an increase in communication and generate teamwork, an essential element for teams to thrive.
6. LIMITATIONS AND FUTURE DIRECTIONS
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low, therefore there is an increased uncertainty of estimates since they lack precisions. As such, a small sample size can affect the reliability of results that will lead to bias. Another implication of the study is that analysis was not conducted within a single organization, but rather samples were collected from various organisations worldwide. Normally such implications can be seen as a strength, as they may increase the external validity of the result, however it can create problems when intercepting the data in this case. Accordingly, organisations over the world have different ways of working, while they follow different policies that can affect key constructs of the study, as information sharing. For instance, different organisational cultures have the ability to enhance differently information sharing, others through the use of incentives (e.g Hansen, 1999; Nelson et al., 2006), others through the use of management support (Lee et al., 2006, King and Marks, 2008), while other organisations provide no means of encouraging information sharing. Hence, replies were inconsistent since it was not clear which specific factors affected the information sharing of each team, but also their ways of working. Further, the fact that the survey was also translated into German, might have affected responses, as translated statements might not have reflected the exact meaning of the sentence. Future studies could focus on examining the mediating effect of information sharing between team boundary spanning and team performance within a single organisation, in order to control specific processes of the organisation that can influence information sharing.
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obtained from a variety of organisations, the geographical location should have been taken as a control variable, as within different countries people not only behave differently but learn to work differently as well. For example, central European countries follow a more structured way of working that allows information sharing to take place more often, where Mediterranean countries follow a more decentralized way of working. Therefore, future research could examine the moderate-mediation relation by included also control variables, educational diversity, geographical location and self-rated experience.
Further, base on the findings of the research, future studies could include intra-team coordination as a variable, in order to examine whether team size will remain irrelevant for the effectiveness of boundaries teams and the enhancement of information sharing, under different coordination conditions. Lastly, a limitation of this research worth to consider, is that research was conducted using a quantitative method, while a qualitative method might have been more appropriate because it could provide us with an in-depth examination of the organisational context (Wang and Noe, 2010).
7. PRACTICAL IMPLICATIONS
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smaller and larger teams were able to perform effectively intra-team information sharing and thus reaching performance objectives. As stated in the theoretical part of the paper, the greater the size the higher the difficulties, to perform processes and goals. However, the effectiveness of larger teams to share their information derives from a good coordination and communication, that facilitates an intra-information sharing. Thus, it is suggested that teams need to first think of how to prioritize their coordination processes instead of focusing on maintaining a successful team size. This recommendation contradicts prior research which generally states that problems in larger teams outshine the positive contributions and that managers should better form smaller teams. Accordingly, the study counters prior perspectives by suggesting that size should not be an issue when aiming to achieve high-performance objectives, to the extent that teams are well coordinated and members can communicate effectively.
8. CONCLUSION
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41 APPENDIX A
Team Performance – (Mortensen and Hinds ,2001 &Ancona and Caldwell, 1992)
Statements are rated on a five-point scale from ‘far below average’ to ‘far above average’.
1) Efficiency 2) Quality 3) Overall achievement 4) Productivity 5) Adherence to deadlines 6) Work excellence
Team Innovation- (Anderson and West ,1998)
Statements are rated on a five-point scale from ‘strongly disagree’ to ‘strongly disagree’.
1)Team members often implement new ideas to improve the quality of our products and services
2) The team gives little consideration to new and alternative methods and procedures for doing their work
42 4) This is an innovative team
Team Boundary spanning – (Ancona and Caldwell, 1992)
Statements are rated on five-point scale from ‘not at all’ to ‘a very great extent’.
1)My team resolves problems with external groups
2) My team coordinates activities with external groups
3) My team produces things which the team needs from other groups or individuals in the company
4) My team negotiates with other for delivery deadlines
5) My team review ideas and processes with outsiders
Intra-information sharing- (De Dreu, 2007)
Statements are rated on five-point scale from ‘rarely’ to ‘very often’.
1) Communicating is a problem in my team
2) Members of my team inform each other about work-related issues
3) The quality of information exchange in our team is good
4) I get new facts, insights, and ideas from my colleagues
43 6) We do not repeat ourselves during team meetings
Team interdependence – (Bishop and Dow Scott, 2000)
Statements are rated on five-point scale from ‘strongly disagree’ to ‘strongly agree’. Between team interdependence
1) To perform well, we must frequently coordinate efforts with members from other teams 2) For the team to perform well, members must communicate well with other teams 3) To achieve high performance, it is important that team members work with members of other teams
Within-team interdependence
1) Within my team, we must frequently coordinate efforts with fellow team members 2) Jobs performed by team members are related to one another
3) For the team to perform well members must communicate well with each other
