Team boundary spanning in organizational
uncertain situations
THE MEDIATING ROLE OF EXTERNAL AND INTERNAL COORDINATION ON TEAM PERFORMANCE
Master Thesis, MSc Human Resource Management
University of Groningen, Faculty of Economics and Business
Author:
Johannes Quintes Kees Bruno Beerd Hermsen S2071819
j.q.k.b.b.hermsen@student.rug.nl
Supervisor:
David S. de Geest, MBA, PhD
ABSTRACT
This study examines the mediating effect of boundary spanning and internal coordination on the relationship between organizational uncertainty and team performance while being moderated by team autonomy. Hypothesized is that the relationship on organizational uncertainty and team performance is mediated by external and internal coordination with moderating effects of team autonomy, such that organizational uncertainty has a lower positive effect on external coordination when team autonomy is high and a lower positive effect on internal coordination when autonomy is high. Also hypothesized is that boundary spanning and internal coordination have a positive effect on team performance. The data set is drawn from 107 teams from a well-known employment agency in the Netherlands whom recently has gone through a merger and are tested with OLS, PROCESS macro regressions. The most important findings of this study indicate that internal coordination mediates the relationship between organizational uncertainty and team performance and that team autonomy moderates the negative relationship between organizational uncertainty and boundary spanning. This study adds to the understanding of the current knowledge of how adverse situations influence the decision to engage in boundary spanning and internal coordination. Secondly this study contributes to the understanding of how autonomous teams deal with and react on uncertainty.
INTRODUCTION
Nowadays, organizations are challenged by increasing difficulties in task complexities related to working knowledge, increased global competition, dynamic economic environments and less hierarchical work structures (Tannenbaum et al., 2012; Wageman et al., 2012). In order for organizations to endure these changes they have to make use of interdependent teams (Marrone, 2010). The current literature acknowledges that external relations among teams are of vital importance for effective team performance besides internal team functioning (Ancona & Caldwell, 1992; Marrone et al., 2007; Reagans et al., 2004; Joshi et al., 2009). Much research has indicated that the need for inter-dependent teams has risen because they can easily establish external relations to acquire political and informational sources that can enhance team performance (Teigland & Wasko, 2003; Ancona & Caldwell, 1992). These interdependent teams are responsible for accomplishing complicated cross-functional assignments in order to connect the organization to ensure the creation and transfer of important tacit and explicit knowledge (Joshi et al., 2009). They have to be in immediate contact with important stakeholders from both inside and outside the organization to make sure that they can fulfill their complex demands. The coordination and bridging of these disconnected parties by actively dealing with relationships from outside the team is commonly called boundary spanning or boundary management (Marrone et al., 2007), also referred to as external coordination.
loyalty and sophisticated internal activities but an incapability to connect to the external world (Aldefer, 1976; Hackman, 2011). Based on the resource dependency theory, more recent literature indicates that acquiring and managing several external networks outside the team might be detrimental for internal coordination of a team (Keller, 2001). Teams have just limited resources such as, time, effort, staff and budget to focus on boundary spanning activities and internal coordination (Choi, 2002). Therefore an increase in boundary spanning activities would mean that there are fewer resources available for internal activities, which in turn will cause a reduction of internal coordination activities. Most scholars agree on the fact that teams must use both internal coordination and boundary spanning activities in order to be effective (Reagans et al., 2004; Oh et al., 2004), but in the current literature there is no consensus on how teams should balance their internal coordination activities and boundary spanning activities because of the competitive interaction between the two activities.
The enhanced complexity and uncertainty of the business environment in the last decades has only increased the need for understanding how teams should balance their internal coordination and boundary spanning management (Henttonen et al., 2014). According to the current literature uncertainty increases the need for boundary spanning activities (Joshi et al., 2009). Joshi et al. (2009) argue that when organizational uncertainty increases because of for example an organizational crisis, restructuring or shift in direction, the boundary spanning activities increase as well. These changed circumstances might have reallocated resources, redistributed power or might have changed day-to-day tasks and routines. According to the resource dependence theory it can be argued that this reallocation, redistribution and change encourage teams to develop external relations (boundary spanning) in order to ensure greater autonomy and resource control (Joshi et al., 2009; Papa, 1990). However, as argued before an increase in boundary spanning might cause a decrease in internal coordination and in this way negatively affecting team performance. So, organizations must consider what circumstances affect a team’s decision to focus more upon one coordination activity as opposed to the other, given that team members have limited resources.
mediated by team boundary spanning and internal coordination, influence team performance (Appendix A, Figure 1 for conceptual model).
LITERATURE REVIEW Organizational uncertainty
Uncertainty is generally defined as the inability of predicting something accurately and is caused by a lack of information or equivocal and conflicting information (Miliken, 1987). High levels of uncertainty imply much doubt about causal relations in the environment or future events (Bordia et al., 2004). Uncertainty is a multilevel phenomenon with many different dimensions and one can, therefore, distinguish many forms and levels of uncertainty (Yang et al., 2004). Most literature has found negative relationships between uncertainty and performance on different organizational levels (Eisenhardt et al., 2009; Davis et al., 2009; Downey & Slocum 1982; Cullen et al., 2014). The main focus of these studies has been on environmental uncertainty and firm performance (Maurier & Northcott, 2000; Eisenhardt et al., 2009; Davis et al., 2009). This study investigates organizational uncertainty, which is caused by disruptions in an organization, from a team level’s perspective. Organizational uncertainty can be defined as the employees’ and teams’ uncertainty over organizational existence, form and development (Sturdy et al., 2013). Teams perceptions of organizational uncertainty create a form of task uncertainty for the teams (Huai-Chun et al., 2015). They argue that one important source of task uncertainty comes from the firm’s degree of uncertainty. The higher the firm’s uncertainty the more trouble teams have with forecasting outcomes. In general, the literature has established a direct link between task uncertainty and team performance (Cordery et al., 2010; Georgiev et al., 2008; Kim & Burton, 2014). Task uncertainty is a lack to predict inputs, outputs and processes of the broader system in which a team works (Griffin et al., 2007), it affects the team since they are not able to predict which tasks have to be executed by who, how and when. Overall a negative relation is found between task uncertainty and team performance. This study covers teams’ uncertainties about the existence and future direction of the organization and the consequential teams’ uncertainties about task execution.
Thomas, 2004; Chreim, 2002; Difonzo & Bordia, 1998). One form of organizational change that causes much uncertainty and which has recently received much attention is a merger. The decision to engage in mergers is usually made by organizations in order to achieve objectives such as increasing market share, increasing profitability, cost reduction or increasing accessibility to resources (Van Knippenberg et al., 2002; Maguire & Phillips, 2008). This form of organizational change gives rise to a lot of uncertainty among teams and individuals in organizations (Terry & Jimmieson, 2003; Elstak et al., 2015), having negative implications for commitment and employee turnover (Haleblian et al., 2009). One of the solutions for teams to battle the uncertainty caused by mergers, is building external vertical and horizontal relations with others inside and outside the organizations. This is done to acquire information and resources, which would be unavailable to them without these relations (Gibson & Dibble, 2009; Joshi et al., 2009). Another word for building these external relations is boundary spanning (Marrone, 2010).
Boundary spanning
Team boundary management consists of activities that teams use to establish external relationships with actors that can aid the team in accomplishing team goals and objectives (Marrone, 2010; Joshi et al., 2009). Several activities can be put under the label boundary spanning such as, acquiring and transferring knowledge from external parties, negotiating with superiors about projects and their deadlines, collaborating with suppliers, coordinating tasks and assignments with other teams and representing the team to stakeholders (Ancona et al., 2002). In general two distinct types of boundary spanning can be found that enable teams to perform more effectively. The first type can be labeled as instrumental activities, which are used to enhance task performance, team learning, creativity, coordination and decision making (Cummings, 2004; Bresman, 2010; Perretti & Negro, 2006; Marks et al., 2005). Instrumental activities focus on the acquisition, interpretation and transfer of knowledge from external actors to the team. (Marrone et al., 2007).
The two activities together help a team obtaining political and informational support from external actors. This report uses a global boundary spanning measure, combining both types, in order to encompass most of the boundary spanning concept and in this way capturing the bigger picture. Focusing on one type would just capture the boundary spanning concept partly since the two activities are quite distinct and both react differently on the same influences (Ancona & Caldwell, 1992). Team boundary spanning includes all engagements of individual team members to establish external relations, even when most is done by just one member. The totality of all engagements are representing the team’s shared property (Joshi et al., 2009). External actors consist of actors from outside the team but can be both from inside or outside the organization where the team resides. They can include superiors or other teams from the organization but also actors from outside the organization such as customers or suppliers (Bresman & Zellmer-Bruhn, 2013).
Several previous reports have shown that team boundary spanning is positively related with team performance (Marrone, 2010; Joshi et al., 2009;). However too much team boundary spanning might come at a cost when it drains much of the resources needed for the effective internal coordination of a team (Gibson & Dibble, 2009). Thus, the internal coordination activities have to be taken into account as well.
Internal coordination
Internal coordination is essential because it allows team members to contribute to team performance by combining their expertise and knowledge. It is important that team members understand the expertise within a team and adapt in accordance to it and utilize it to ensure internal learning (Maynard 2012). According to Bresman (2010), increased internal learning such as questioning the status quo, reflecting and experimenting can aid in improving team performance. Strong internal coordination causes high interpersonal interaction between team members, this is beneficial because it leads to the increase of internal trust within the team and promote mutual interdependence (Chung & Jackson, 2013). This in turn can have a positive effect on team performance since team members are more likely to exchange valuable knowledge to each other. It is generally agreed upon that both boundary spanning and internal coordination are of vital importance for team performance (Ancona & Caldwell, 1992; Gibson & Dibble, 2009). How teams balance these two coordination types depends also on how much decision freedom they have, in other words, how much autonomy they have.
Autonomy
The general explanation of autonomy is the degree of being independent and the degree of freedom to make own decisions by yourself instead of by superiors (Stewart, 2006). Autonomy might apply for individuals or teams, but there is a conceptual significant difference between a team full of autonomous team members or an autonomous team (Seibert et al, 2004). This report focuses solely on autonomous teams. Blanchard et al. (1995) identified three elements of team autonomy: Information sharing, autonomy through boundaries and team accountability. According to them teams are autonomous when sensitive information is shared with them, organizational structures encourage autonomous action, when teams are the locus of decision making authority and accountability and perceive it like that.
in making their own decisions, planning activities and adapting to changed conditions (Stewart, 2006). Empowering teams with more information and decision-making authority can achieve higher team autonomy, which in turn increases the self-determination of the team (Spreitzer, 1995). It is also a tool that procures the team with the discretion to communicate with others outside the team in order to gain knowledge (Fuller et al., 2006).
In general the evidence in the current literature points out to a moderating effect of autonomy. Research on task uncertainty, autonomy and team performance discovered that team performance depends on the conditions and requirements of team autonomy in relation to both task and environmental uncertainty (Stewart, 2006, Cordery et al., 2010). Cordery’s et al., (2010) research has found evidence that only under conditions of enhanced team autonomy a positive relationship between task uncertainty and team performance is found. This is explained by the fact that autonomy increases the ability of teams to adapt and adjust to unforeseen changes.
HYPOTHESES DEVELOPMENT
external relations teams can acquire extra information about changed process flows (Wall et al., 2002). By generating these external relations teams gain access to resources and information which could help them to reduce uncertainty. Thus, when teams feel a rise in uncertainty, resulting in resource scarcity or power redistribution they will engage in more boundary spanning to adjust to this uncertainty. Besides that, the addition of several new external actors creates more focus on external activities, because there are more resources to acquire and more actors to focus on (Harvey at al., 2014; Oh et al., 2004). In this way it is argued that an increase of organizational uncertainty will increase the frequency of external coordination.
H1: Uncertainty has a positive relationship with team boundary spanning
Organizational uncertainty does not only have an effect on boundary spanning activities but also on internal coordination activities. Previous evidence on the relationship between uncertainty and internal coordination provides support for a positive relationship between uncertainty and internal coordination. Research of Sung and Choi (2012) found that teams exposed to high uncertainty have higher knowledge utilization and team creativity. Teams exposed to much uncertainty must experiment with different approaches in order to find a successful response to the unpredictable conditions, thus increasing their team creativity. Additionally, in order to come up with creative responses team members have to exploit all knowledge that reside within the team, thus optimizing knowledge utilization and interaction with each other (Sung & Choi, 2012).
development teams has shown that these teams battle uncertainty and complexity by ensuring trust to be as high as possible among team members. The research demonstrated that the teams who increased task coordination, encouraged creativity and formulated expectations were higher on trust and were less bothered by negative shocks of uncertainty (Al-Ani & Redmiles, 2009)
To conclude, as uncertainty arises teams increase their boundary spanning activities to gather resources and information that otherwise would not be available to them. Besides this, teams also increase their internal coordination by increasing interaction with each other to experiment with different approaches to respond to the uncertainty and to utilize all the knowledge within the team to come up with novel solutions. Besides this, members increase their cohesiveness by increasing communication about task coordination and control in order to understand which member executes what non-standardized task. This indicates that an increase in organizational uncertainty will increase the frequency of internal coordination.
within the organization, altogether this amounts to improved organizational effectiveness and learning (Carlisle, 2004). The previous and current literature suggests a positive relation between boundary spanning and team performance.
H3: Team boundary spanning management is positively related to team performance
Internal coordination is very important because it allows team members to contribute their expertise and knowledge to the team that is necessary to perform effectively. The team members’ contributions altogether, which is equal to the amount of information available in the team, is critical to perform effectively (Hoegl & Gemuenden, 2004). In order to solve problems and generate solutions team members have to communicate as much as possible. Previous research has indicated that high interaction results in more creativity and makes it more likely that creative plans or solutions are implemented (Moye and Langfred, 2004). Higher performance can be achieved when the communication of information is increased. Marks et al. (2005) argue that a moderately high degree of internal coordination is necessary to ensure that the transition phase (goal setting) facilitates the action phase (task coordination) of a team, which in turn is positively associated with team performance. Much research suggests that strong internal networks, with internal members tightly connected, improve team performance because they create norms that strongly support collaboration and knowledge Thus, the general view of the current literature indicates a positive relation between internal coordination and team performance. Therefor it is expected that high internal coordination improves team performance overall.
H4: Team internal coordination is positively related to team performance
evident. Considering the fact that direct relationships are proposed between organizational uncertainty and internal coordination (Hypothesis 2), and between internal coordination and team performance (Hypothesis 4), there is a probability that organizational uncertainty is also indirectly related to team performance, through internal coordination.
H5a: Boundary spanning will mediate the relationship between organizational uncertainty and team performance
H5b: Internal coordination will mediate the relationship between organizational uncertainty and team performance
Nowadays, organizations and their teams are operating in an increasingly competitive and dynamic environment (Tannenbaum et al., 2012; Wageman et al., 2012). High autonomous teams have adapted their increased coordination needs accordingly to this fairly uncertain environment (Tjepkema, 2003; Parker et al., 2014). This means that high autonomous teams have already established quite some increased internal coordination and boundary spanning structures. The result is that the shock of having to address more uncertainty from a merger is negligible for high autonomous teams since they already established their resource dependent and operational structures. Arguably, they do not have to increase their coordination efforts much in order to confront this extra organizational uncertainty. This indicates that team autonomy will negatively moderate the relationship between organizational uncertainty and the choice to engage more in boundary spanning and will negatively moderate the relationship between organizational uncertainty and the choice to engage more in internal coordination.
H6a: Autonomy moderates the relationship between uncertainty and boundary spanning such that when autonomy is high, teams will not increase their boundary spanning activities, and when autonomy is low, teams will increase their boundary spanning activities.
H6b: Autonomy moderates the relationship between uncertainty and internal coordination such that when autonomy is high, teams will not increase their internal coordination activities, and when autonomy is low, teams will increase their internal coordination activities.
from uncertainty to performance is established, which is moderated by team autonomy.
H7: The relationship between organizational uncertainty and team performance is mediated by boundary spanning and internal coordination with moderating effects of team autonomy, such that organizational uncertainty has a lower positive effect on boundary management when team autonomy is high and a lower positive effect on internal coordination when autonomy is high.
METHODOLOGY Data collection
193 replied by opening the survey, however 53 percent closed the survey immediately or half way through resulting in a response rate of 47 percent meaning 107 useful surveys. The mean size of the teams was 10.3 members per team (M = 2.56, SD = 0.89). Less than one percent of the teams consisted mainly out of males (more than 60% male) and 79.4 percent of the teams consisted mainly out of females (more than 60% female), 19.6 percent consisted of a mixed team. From the respondents 85 percent worked in a team that was shorter than two years together, 13 percent worked in a team that is together between two and four years and 2 percent worked in a team that was more than four years together.
Measures
All variables (see appendix B) are measured on a 7-point Likert scale (1 strongly agreeing, 4 being neutral and 7 strongly disagreeing). The Cronbach’s alpha (𝛼) of each variable is computed by taking the mean of all the questions of one variable and computing it in the coefficient alpha in order to measure for consistency, which is in line with the five-step framework of Chen et al., (2004).
Organizational uncertainty: Team leaders rated the uncertainty level of the organization by rating three items: Strategic, structural and task uncertainty adapted from Bordia et al., (2004). The survey displayed six statements about organizational uncertainty this year in comparison to last year. This questions were answered by stating how much the contestant agreed with the statements according the Likert scale. Consistency was (𝛼) 0.676, which is below the accepted norm of 0.7 to be acknowledged as a reliable measure (Field, 2013). Question five was deleted from the survey in order to boost consistency of the independent variable (see appendix B). Afterwards Cronbach’s Alpha increased to (𝛼) 0.701, which is widely accepted as being consistent (Field, 2013).
statements about boundary spanning this year in comparison with last year, according the Likert scale. The measure is consistent as it holds an Alpha of (𝛼) 0.797.
Internal coordination: Team managers rated the degree of internal coordination of their team this year in comparison to last year. The team managers were asked to rate seven statements adapted from Marks et al., (2001) according the Likert scale. This questions were answered by stating how much the contestant agreed with the statements. The statements contained subjects on internal cooperation, motivation and control within the team. The measure is consistent as it holds an Alpha of (𝛼) 0.858
Team performance: Team managers rated team performance by rating five items adapted from Gonzalez-Mule et al., (2014). Managers were asked to assess how much they agreed with the five statements about the performance of their team in comparison with the previous year. Subjects on the matter included achieving targets and the overall contribution to the organization. The measure is highly consistent (𝛼) 0.926.
Team autonomy: Team managers were asked to rate the autonomy of their team by rating five statements adapted from Gonzalez-Mule et al., (2014). This questions were answered by stating how much the contestant agreed with the statements according the Likert scale. Subjects on the matter included supervisor’s control and authority to make decisions. The measure is consistent as it holds an Alpha of (𝛼) 0.758
about female leadership indicated that teams with female leaders show stronger internal coordination signs such as participative communication, team cohesion and cooperative learning, indicating that gender matters for internal coordination and team performance. Fourth, task interdependence might important because teams with high task interdependency perform better when they have high degree of internal communication (Barrick et al., 2007), this gives an indication that these two might be correlated. The fifth variable to control for is region. Some regions are highly dynamic and fully populated, the teams that are situated here have to deal with many more actors (such as clients and competitors) than teams that are situated in less populated and static areas, that is why boundary spanning might be higher here than in other regions. The most dynamic areas with regard to employment agencies in The Netherlands (CBS, 2015) are also the areas that provided the most responses (Noord-Holland 25%, Brabant 18% and Zuid-(Noord-Holland 15%). The last control variable is the level of management. The higher the management level the more actors a manager needs to deal with (Williams, 2012), it might be that a manager at a high level has the feeling that it is more often bounding spanning than lower management personnel.
Analytic strategy
appropriately measure the relationship of organizational uncertainty through boundary spanning and internal coordination, with moderating effects of autonomy, on team performance (Preacher et al., 2007).
RESULTS Descriptive results
Appendix B1 provides the descriptive results of the means (M), standard deviations (SD) and correlations of the independent variable (organizational uncertainty), the dependent variable (team performance), the mediating variables (boundary spanning and internal coordination) , the moderating variable (team autonomy) and the control variables (team tenure , gender, task interdependency, management level, region and team size). The first thing to be noticed is that the dependent variable, team performance, is positively correlated with internal coordination (r = .441, p < .01) and autonomy (r = .313, p < .01). The positive correlation between performance and internal coordination is in line with hypothesis 4. Organizational uncertainty is positively related with internal coordination (r = .305, p < .01) and autonomy (r = .336, p < .01). The positive correlation between organizational uncertainty and internal coordination indicates support for hypothesis 2. Surprisingly none of the variables is correlated with boundary spanning.
Hypotheses testing
The direct relation of Organizational Uncertainty
Table 2 (Appendix B) provides the results for the direct relations of organizational uncertainty on boundary spanning and internal coordination (See Figure 2. Appendix A. for full conceptual model). Hypothesis 1 proposes a positive relationship between organizational uncertainty and team boundary spanning. Controlling for tenure, gender, task interdependency, management level, region and size, the regression results in table 2 display some evidence for a negative relationship between organizational uncertainty and boundary spanning (B = -.136, p < .10). No evidence is found that is in support of hypothesis 1, given the fact that the relationship is found to be negative.
coordination (B = .174, p < .05). These results do confirm the positive relationship as proposed in hypothesis 2.
The direct relations of boundary spanning and internal coordination
Table 3 (Appendix B) displays the results of the direct relationships between boundary management and team performance and between internal coordination and team performance. Hypothesis 3 predicts a positive relationship between boundary spanning and team performance. Hypothesis 4 predicts an positive relationship as well but then between internal coordination and team performance. Controlling for tenure, gender, task interdependency, management level, region and size the results in table 3 indicate that no relationship has been found between boundary spanning and team performance (B = .025, p = .789). On the other side, the relationship between internal coordination and team performance is found to be highly significant and positively related (B = .440, p = .000). Thus, no evidence has been found that is 3 is not supported but hypothesis 4 is.
The mediating role of boundary spanning and internal coordination
Table 3 (Appendix B) displays the results of the indirect relationships between organizational uncertainty and team performance through boundary spanning and internal coordination. Hypothesis 5a predicts that boundary spanning mediates the relationship between organizational uncertainty and team performance. The regression results on the relationship between boundary spanning and team performance (Appendix B. Table 2 and 3) are insignificant, which gives a pretty good indication that no mediated relationship, through boundary spanning will be found. The regression results for simple mediation (Appendix B. table 3) confirm this, because the bootstrap confidence intervals overlap zero (boot z = .004, 95%, CI = -.049, .017).An additional Sobel test to test for mediation effects confirmed once again that there was no relation found ( Effect = -.003, p < .829). Thus no evidence is found for hypothesis 5a.
might be found. The regression results for simple mediation (Appendix B. table 3) confirm this mediating relationship as the bootstrap confidence intervals do not contain zero (boot z = .120, 95%, CI = .032, .230), and because the additional Sobel Test has been found statistical significant (Effect = .120, p < .01). The results in Table 5 show that the relationship between organizational uncertainty and team performance is not significant (B = .111, p = .274). The relationship becomes even more insignificant when controlled for internal coordination and boundary spanning (B = -.005, p = .960), this provides evidence for full mediation through internal coordination. Thus, evidence is found that support hypothesis 5b.
Moderating relations of team autonomy
Hypothesis 6b proposes a weakening effect on the positive relationship between organizational uncertainty and internal coordination when team autonomy is high, which means that the more autonomy a team has the more they engage in internal coordination. The results in table 4 show that a direct effect between internal coordination and team autonomy is found (B = .243, p < .05). However the interaction effect between team autonomy and organizational uncertainty is not significant (B = -.014, p = .858) neither is the change in R2 (B = .000, p < ,858), indicating no moderating role for team autonomy here. Thus, hypothesis 6b is not supported.
The mediated moderation model
Table 5 (Appendix B) summarizes the results of the indirect conditional relationships between organizational uncertainty and team performance through boundary spanning and internal coordination and moderated by team autonomy (Hypothesis 7). In congruence with the moderated relationship formed in hypothesis 6b, results demonstrate an indirect relationship between organizational uncertainty and team performance, through boundary spanning at high levels of team autonomy ( Effect = .001, 95% CI = .018, .041). This indicates that teams high on autonomy will not change their boundary spanning activities when organizational uncertainty increases. The results reveal that no indirect relationship is found through boundary spanning at moderate (Effect = -.005, 95% CI = -.066, .018) or low (Effect = -.010, 95% CI = -.096, 234) values of team autonomy. Furthermore, no indirect relations are found through internal coordination at high (Effect = .072, 95% CI = -.017, .031), moderate (Effect = .079, 95% CI = -.018, .021) or low (Effect = .085, 95% CI = -.058, .240) levels of team autonomy. To conclude, some evidence has been found that teams high on autonomy influence team performance by not increasing their boundary spanning activities. Even though this relationship has found to be statistical significant it arguable whether it is practical significant. No evidence has been found on the other conditional indirect relations, thus hypothesis 7, which proposed that organizational uncertainty indirectly influences team performance through boundary spanning and internal coordination and is moderated by team autonomy, is not supported.
DISCUSSION
Theoretical Implications
since team members are better able to interpret the outside information. Organizational culture might play a role in whether teams engage or disengage in boundary spanning activities when uncertainty is present. Future research should explore this possibility. Another possible reason that might explain the decrease in boundary spanning is that team members take on different roles inside a team. Team members can take on the boundary spanning roles of ambassador, task coordinator, scout and guard (Ancona & Caldwell, 1992). These roles can change over time and can be taken by one person as well as shared with another person. It might be the case that in times of heightened uncertainty the team manager takes over most of the external oriented roles, leaving his team members to focus on internal collaboration. As the results show, teams need a significant increase in internal coordination in order to solve non-routine problems. To ensure that the team can focus on internal collaboration the team manager and perhaps one other person can take over the different boundary spanning roles that first were collectively shared. This might explain why the results show that teams exploit their limited resources such as, time, effort, staff and budget on internal coordination instead of on boundary management activities. Future research should explore how the different boundary spanning team roles react and might change owner when organizational uncertainty arises. One other study has conducted a similar research on the relationship between uncertainty, boundary spanning management and internal coordination, but at an organizational level and without moderating effects. The results of that study also imply that internal coordination is positively related to uncertainty, which is in line with this study. They were also not able to find a positive relation between uncertainty and boundary spanning, which is also in accordance with this this study (Sawyerr et al., 2003). The difference between both studies is that this one has discovered a negative relationship between uncertainty and boundary spanning while Sawyeer et al., (2003) could not find a relationship at all. Even though the literature has commonly accepted that organizational uncertainty requires increased boundary spanning (Marrone et al., 2007; Joshi et al., 2009), not all empirical evidence points in the same direction (Sawyerr et al., 2003). Future research should explore what situations and organizations, that are shrouded in a layer of uncertainty, require boundary spanning management.
and team performance. The results elucidate that changes in coordination activities are one mechanism that links organizational uncertainty to team performance. An increase in internal coordination due to an increase in organizational uncertainty can be explained by the fact that teams have to take care of more non-routine problems (Garguilo and Benassi, 2010; Liang et al., 2010; Wysocki, 2010). An increase in internal coordination ensures that al team members contribute as much as possible in order to solve problems and generate solutions (Hoegl & Gemuenden, 2004). Previous research pointed out that high interaction rates improved the creativity of teams and the solution implementation process, it also showed that teams with high interaction levels achieved greater performance overall (Moye and Langfred, 2004; Marks et al., 2005). Thus, the increase in organizational uncertainty tightens the communication density, meaning that team members interact more frequently. This increased interaction is positively related to a team’s internal coordination and information sharing, which in turn has a positive effect on team performance. An interesting feature of this study, even though it does not test for it, is that the results imply a potential inverse reciprocal relationship between boundary spanning and internal coordination. Overall, the current literature agrees that boundary management and internal coordination are interacting with and reacting on each other (Ancona, 1990; Ancona & Caldwell, 1992, Joshi et al., 2009; Marrone et al., 2007). Thus, an increase in boundary spanning would result in a decrease in internal coordination and vice versa. In general the literature predicts a reciprocal relationship in which boundary spanning is increased and internal coordination is decreased when organizational uncertainty arises. Because most scholars argue that during times of heightened organizational uncertainty teams tend to increase their boundary spanning activities it is indirectly implied that internal coordination will fall. However the results of this study find contrasting evidence of what is generally accepted. Even though this study does not revolve around the relationship between boundary spanning and internal coordination, it is an interesting field to explore further research in. Future research should explore how the relationship between the two coordination activities behave in certain conditions such as organizational uncertainty.
unaffected by organizational uncertainty and do not increase nor decrease their boundary spanning activities in its presence. As proposed, high autonomous teams have little difficulties addressing the additional shocks of uncertainty rising from the merger (Cordery, 2010; Tjepkema, 2003; Parker et al., 2014). These teams established already the necessary increased internal coordination and boundary spanning structures since they were already operating in a fairly uncertain, dynamic and competitive environment (Tjepkema, 2003; Parker et al., 2014; Tannenbaum et al., 2012; Wageman et al., 2012). Because high autonomous teams have own authority to decide about their coordination activities they have already adapted their increased coordination needs accordingly to the situation. Interestingly, teams low on autonomy do not show the boundary spanning behavior as proposed. The results illustrate that teams low on autonomy are decreasing their boundary spanning behavior instead of increasing it in times of heightened organizational uncertainty. The reason for this can be retrieved from the discovered negative relationship between organizational uncertainty and boundary spanning. Teams low on autonomy have to decrease their boundary spanning activities because they have, in contrast to autonomous teams, no internal coordination and boundary spanning structures that can anticipate on this extra organizational uncertainty. Thus, the results clarify the moderating relationship of team autonomy, as hypothesized, it has just reversed because the relationship between organizational uncertainty and boundary spanning is negative instead of positive. Remarkably, team autonomy appears to have no moderating role on the positive relationship between organizational uncertainty and internal coordination. One potential reason might be that once organizational uncertainty has increased, it is for every team, regardless of autonomy, equally important and a priority to smoothen out inefficiencies in the internal coordination and collaboration in order to deal with non-standardized problems that occur.
Practical implications
behave and react on the arisen organizational uncertainty caused by mergers. The results in this study imply that teams focus their team resources on internal coordination, thus leaving fewer resources to be used for boundary spanning activities. Thus, during mergers teams are tend to focus mainly inwards instead of outwards. Management might want to provide resources to facilitate this necessary switch. Besides this, team autonomy plays a role in determining the extent that teams decrease their boundary spanning activities. High autonomous teams do not adjust their boundary spanning activities, neither increasing nor decreasing, to organizational uncertainty. When executive management wants certain specific teams to remain their boundary spanning standards during a merger, it would be useful to ensure these teams with extra autonomy before the merger. In this manner, these teams can prepare and establish their boundary spanning and internal coordination structures in a way that are required by the environment.
Limitations and Further research directions
Like all studies, this study contains some limitations. First, the way how surveys are distributed across different regions might biases the results on organizational uncertainty and the coordination activities. In order to ease the process of gathering data and to ensure as little disturbance as possible for the teams, the COO decided to only spread out the surveys in the Western part of the Netherlands at first. Later on, the surveys were distributed throughout the remaining parts of the Netherlands since response rates were disappointing. This has as result that more than 50 percent of the responses come from the three most dynamic regions, while the other nine regions are contributing marginally. The employees from the three dynamic and competitive regions are more used to organizational uncertainty and being in contact with external relations, they might have a different perception on these matters. Future research should take this into account and should try to distribute the surveys evenly across the areas.
Teams here might have a different perception on the concept of boundary spanning than teams from other organizations. Future research should conduct a cross-sectional research by including several organizations from different branches. The fact that only the manager of the team has filled in the survey also has its implications. People have usually difficulties with self-reflection and self-criticism. Being manager of the team might make it difficult to acknowledge that the team is not functioning well. Besides that, one person might have a different opinion than the rest of the team. Future research should include the team as a whole in the survey to ensure that the real voice of the team is heard. Another thing that must be noted is that a sample of 107 is not extremely large. Future research need to compose a larger sample to ensure higher significance.
Third, team performance is measured in a subjective manner. Team performance is measured here by rating statements about team performance. As discussed above, people have difficulties with self-reflection and self-criticism and might unconsciously not be able to respond truthfully to these statements. A better method to examine team performance would be to gather factual data from the finance department. Future research should explore this possibility.
Conclusion
This study has examined how organizational uncertainty influences the decisions of teams to engage in certain coordination activities, which has a continued effect on team performance. This study has found a negative relationship between organizational uncertainty and boundary spanning, which is moderated by autonomy in such a way that when autonomy is low teams decrease their boundary spanning activities, and when team autonomy is high no adjustment in boundary spanning activities are made. Results have also revealed a mediating effect of internal coordination on the relationship between organizational uncertainty and team performance. This study has contributed to the current literature by establishing a contrasting relationship that needs future exploration. Besides the practical and theoretical implications I hope to have encouraged further research to develop more examinations that help to elucidate the relationships between coordination activities, its antecedents and team performance.
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APPENDIX Appendix A: Conceptual model
Figure 1.
Figure 2.
Appendix B
Table 1 : Descriptive Statistics and Variable Correlation
Table 2: Regression Analysis Results (with Organizational Uncertainty)
Variables Boundary Spanning Internal coordination
B S.E. P B S.E. P Organizational Uncertainty -.136 .096 .102 .174 .093 .043 Team Tenure Gender Task interdependency Management level Region Team size -.073 -.312 -.146 .004 -.030 .032 .247 .231 .153 .123 .031 .113 .769 .180 .344 .977 .342 .779 .039 -.261 .242 .265 -.013 -.079 .239 .224 .148 .119 .030 .110 .871 .246 .106 .028 .662 .473 R2 Model 0.061 .166.
Notes: Sample Size: n = 107; The unstandardized regression coefficients are reported
Table 3: Regression Results for Simple mediation (Boundary Spanning and Internal coordination)
Variable Team performance
B S.E. P .274 .362 .762 .973 .100 .034 .826 Organizational Uncertainty .111 .101 Team Tenure Gender Task interdependency Management level Region Team size .099 .032 .004 .171 -.291 .023 .109 .105 .103 .104 .099 .105 Organizational Uncertainty -.005 .098 .959 .353 .374 .504 .445 .037 .576 .789 .000 Team Tenure Gender Task interdependency Management level Region Team size Boundary spanning Internal coordination .093 .087 -.065 .075 -.192 .054 .025 .440 .099 .097 .097 .097 .091 .096 .092 .099
Table 4: Regression Analysis Results (Interaction Effects Team Autonomy)
Variables Boundary Spanning Internal coordination
B S.E. P LLCI ULCI B S.E. P LLCI ULCI
Organizational Uncertainty Team Autonomy Interaction Effect (OU x TAU) -.136 .063 .203 .096 .101 .085 .102 .537 .018 -.353 -.137 .035 .038 .262 .371 .174 .243 -.014 .093 .114 .076 .043 .037 .858 -.025 .015 -.165 .474 .470 .138 R2 Increase Due to interactions R2 chg .053 P .018 R2 chg .0003 P .858
Conditional effects of Organizational Uncertainty on Boundary Spanning and Internal Coordination on a 95% confidence interval -1 SD Team autonomy M Team autonomy +1SD Team autonomy B -.389 -.185 .020 S.E. .146 .112 .135 P .009 .101 .883 LLCI -.679 -.406 -.248 ULCI -.099 .037 .287 B .188 .174 .161 S.E. .132 .101 .122 P .156 .086 .189 LLCI -.073 .025 -.081 ULCI .450 .374 .402 Notes: Sample Size: n = 107. The standardized regression coefficients are reported. Bootstrap
sample size = 5000. LLCI = Lower Limit Confidence Interval; ÚLCI = Upper Limit Confidence Interval
