DOES ACTION LEAD TO DRAMA?
HOW A TEAM LEADERS’ BREADTH OF FUNCTIONAL EXPERIENCE INFLUENCES THE PERFORMANCE OF INTRAPERSONAL FUNCTIONAL DIVERSITY
Master thesis, MSc, specialization Human Resource Management University of Groningen, Faculty of Economics and Business
January 29, 2017 Leonie Weh Student Number: 3057712 Am Internationalen Seegerichtshof 2 22609 Hamburg, Germany Phone: +4915238757870 Supervisor: Dr. Thomas A. de Vries
2 ABSTRACT
The demand for generalists in the workplace is growing, both on the individual level as well as within teams. Breadth of functional experience is often associated with a greater ability to integrate and generate new ideas, as well as the enhanced capability to coordinate and communicate with fellow team members. However, especially on the team level, multifunctional backgrounds may have negative consequences, such as fragmentation and inadequacy to enhance desired outcomes. This study investigates the interface between the breadth of functional experience of the team leader and functionally diverse teams, and particularly to what extent the leaders’ cognitive skills and external network may bridge potential discrepancies to enhance performance. By retrieving online data of 132 movie production teams, their respective backgrounds and the movies corresponding directors, a quantitative analysis was conducted, yet no supporting evidence for the hypotheses was found.
Keywords: cognitive complexity, breadth of functional experience, intrapersonal functional
3 INTRODUCTION
Complexity in the labour environment is ever increasing. Advances in the technological world, economic uncertainties and increasing global interconnection compel institutions to increase flexibility and innovation. With personnel as a major cost-driver, staffing decisions need to be smart and sustainable. In order to achieve said efficiency, an increasing number of institutions are specifically incorporating programs and policies to boost their employees’ scope of functional knowledge (Korn Ferry Institute, 2012; Mansharamani, 2012), as those skilled and familiar with several functions can adapt to new roles more easily in a dynamic environment. Especially on the team level, multifunctional backgrounds on the top management level have been recognized to provide several advantages for the organization. Previous studies found that, due to their variety of perspectives and skills (Simons, 1999), functionally diverse teams have greater innovative abilities (Bantel & Jackson, 1989). Furthermore, the members’ breadth of
functional experience, the variety of tasks individuals have been exposed to, generally provides
them with a greater network to access information, which has been shown to enhance performance significantly (Bunderson & Sutcliffe, 2002).
Nevertheless, the heterogeneity within the team is also prone to provoke team fragmentation (Milliken & Martins, 1996) and potentially hamper performance, depending on the industry the team operates in (Korn et al. 1992). Additionally, previous studies show that teams with diverse functional backgrounds tend to have lower strategic consensus, different beliefs about effectiveness (Glick et al., 1993, as cited in Bunderson & Sutcliffe, 2002) and increased interpersonal conflicts (Knight et al., 1999), raising the question how these discrepancies may be overcome in order to capitalize on the diversity.
4 leaders’ characteristics may play a vital role in realizing the benefits of the teams’ multifunctional background. Beneficial outcomes of the breadth of a teams’ functional experience have often been attributed to the individuals enhanced cognitive skills, the ability to make sense of other perspectives (Bunderson & Sutcliffe, 2002), as well as the competence to coordinate effectively with other team members (de Vries, 2014). These boundary spanning activities, the individuals effort to organize task-related issues from members of other teams’ (Marrone, 2010) are vital for institutions, as they are consistently associated with enhanced performance on the personal and organisational team level (Ancona, 1992). Based on this line of reasoning, a team leader with greater breadth of functional experience should be able to use the enhanced cognitive complexity to interpret potential divergences from the desired outcome and additionally use his or her boundary spanning abilities to access critical knowledge in order to enhance performance.
5 domains of the examined individuals.
The aforementioned relations of the components are visualised in the following conceptual model:
6 THEORY AND HYPOTHESES
Generally, breadth of functional experience refers to the variety of tasks an individual has been exposed to, whereas depth of functional experience is the individuals’ degree of specialization in a particular domain. Regarding the breadth of an individuals’ experience, past research has shown that there is an initial increase in productivity based on synergistic learning effects (Ichniowski & Shaw, 1999) and motivational factors due to new challenges (Hackman & Oldham, 1976). Nevertheless, with the increase of variety in tasks, the positive effects diminish, due to the difficulty of integrating the sheer mass of information (Hintzmann, 1990). Hence, an individuals’ breadth of experience seems to have an “inverted U-shaped” effect on job performance. However, there are clear benefits of choosing a multifunctional career path, as having a broad scope of perspectives enables generalists to have greater strategic skills and they are more likely to challenge the „status quo” of a companies’ norms (Geletkanycz & Black, 2001).
7 can be broken down into several specific domain subsystems, for example those encompassing social issues (Burleson & Caplan, 1998). A focal person with considerable amounts of interpersonal constructs in this domain is considered to have a high interpersonal cognitive complexity, a recognized antecedent of effective social behaviours, such as persuasion of diverse others.
Different organizational settings tend to vary in their social dimensions; for example some departments have a more task-oriented communication approach, whereas others are more socially oriented (Lawrence & Lorsch, 1967). Therefore, similar to having gained in-depth experience with different social settings, the motion of gaining cognitive complexity may be transferred to functional settings as well. Moreover, a study by de Vries et al. (2014) did indeed support that there is a positive relationship between an individual’s breadth of functional experience and that individual’s interpersonal cognitive complexity.
H1: Breadth of functional experience leads to enhanced interpersonal cognitive skills
In addition to looking at an individual’s functional background, functional diversity on the team level and its’ effect on group outcome has also been the focus of several studies.
According to Van der Vegt and Bunderson (2005), a teams’ expertise diversity is maximized, when the members’ specific functions equally represent the total relevant set of expertise domains and thus is minimized when all members have gained their expertise in the same subdomain. Although research has predominantly focused on potential cognitive advantages that functional diversity may have for a group, some studies also provide insight on the general performance of said heterogeneous teams (Milliken & Martins, 1996). Generally, there seems to be a consensus that functional diversity leads to greater innovation abilities.
8 (1989) found a positive relationship between an increase in the multifunctional background of a top management team (TMT) and the number of administrative innovations. Similarly, Ancona and Caldwell (1992) found a positive indirect effect of functional diversity on innovation and team-rated performance, where the mediation of increased frequency of communication with those outside the team was a decisive factor. Other research suggests that the domain of the current work setting also plays a vital role in determining the effectiveness of functional heterogeneity on performance. A study by Korn, Miliken and Lant (1992) found that an increase in a top management teams’ functional diversity led to higher return on assets (ROA) in the furniture industry, however not in the software industry. The authors argued that the environmental volatility in the software industry might weaken the effectiveness of functional diversity in management. Nevertheless, a meta-analytic study by Certo et al. (2006) found a small, yet significant, positive effect of TMT functional diversity on ROA and sales growth. However, the impact of functional diversity may not just depend on the general distribution of dominant functional domains. Demographic compositions of aforementioned studies and their impact on performance potentially overlook to which degree a given member of the team may be a specialist or a generalist. Intrapersonal functional diversity (IFD) aims to describe that conceptualization, by taking the individual team members’ breadth of functional experience into account. So far, little research has been conducted on that particular composition. However, Bunderson and Sutcliffe (2002) did find a positive relationship between intrapersonal functional diversity and unit performance, which was largely mediated by enhanced information sharing among team members, putting it in alignment with previous findings on multifunctional diversity.
H2: Intrapersonal functional diversity positively influences performance
9 shown to provoke unintended side effects, such as team fragmentation (Milliken & Martins, 1996) or task-related conflict (Pelled et al., 1999). Furthermore, given the diversity in functional backgrounds and differing degrees of specialisation, information asymmetries and diverse beliefs about effectiveness (Glick et al., 1993, as cited in Bunderson & Sutcliffe, 2002) are inevitable. Therefore, it is important to assess to which extent the asymmetric information of team members may potentially be exchanged and integrated by the team leader, in order to fully grasp the potential and capitalize on the functional diversity (Ling & Kellermanns, 2010). This is an essential part of the TMT behavioural integration concept, which aims to interrelate and reinforce key TMT processes: the teams’ collaborative behaviour, quantity and quality of exchanged information, as well as the emphasis of joint decision making (Hambrick, 1994, as cited in Simsek et al., 2005). According to Simsek et al. (2005), the CEO- or team leaders’ role in influencing these processes is paramount. Despite the fact that prior research has predominantly focused on the TMTs demography, without distinguishing between regular team members and the leader (Peterson et al., 2003), there is initial evidence that shows the importance of the team leaders decisive impact on these processes. For example, a study by Kisfalvi and Pitcher (2003) examined the effect of certain personality traits and emotional reactions on the teams’ decision making process and performance. Moreover, Ling et al. (2008) found supporting evidence that transformational leadership behaviours positively influence TMT behavioural integration. However, less attention has been paid to which specific characteristics of the team leader may help realize the benefits of TMT functional diversity.
10 performance and found the relationship between breadth of functional experience and inter-team coordination to be significantly negative. Nevertheless, research has shown that interpersonal cognitive complexity should be enable a focal person to overcome differences in opinion and form complex communication strategies in order to achieve a certain goal (Wilson, 1990). Given the legitimate power of the team leader, successful implementation should be facilitated.
H3: The team leaders social cognitive skills moderate the multifunctional teams’ performance
As mentioned before, Individuals who have experience in a variety of functional settings should be able to apply and relate to distinct behavioural features, due to their enhanced social cognitive skills, and adjust their behaviour in order to bridge communication barriers (Kline, 1991). Overcoming said barriers, generally referred to as boundary spanning, is an important antecedent and driver of performance (Marrone, 2010). Boundary spanning activities include any form of systematic behaviours of coordination, beneficial or not, that establish linkages and interactions to the external environment (Ancona, 1990; Ancona & Caldwell, 1992a; Marrone et al., 2007, as cited in Marrone, 2010). These activities may serve numerous goals, such as generating knowledge or establishing valuable relationships. As on the team level, the increased performance or innovative abilities due to multifunctional backgrounds is often mediated by the enhanced network acquired throughout the focal persons’ career.
11 outside the organization was positively related to said persons’ performance ratings. A focal persons acquired cognitive skills should thus enable the individual to process current states and problems arising from working with a multifunctional team and allow the individual to make use of the broad network in order to access additional knowledge, bridge certain discrepancies and subsequently enhance the outcome.
H4: Boundary Spanning activities moderate the effect of Social cognitive skills on the multifunctional teams effect on performance
METHODOLOGY
Sample The data was retrieved from imdb.com, one of the world’s biggest online movie
databases, with approximately 4 million titles and 7,6 million personalities (imdb.com). The sample consists of 132 movies with release dates spanning from 2013 – 2016, selected from the Top 100 list of the respective years from RottenTomatoes.com. The initial selection of the movies was based on the necessary criteria to assess the social cognitive skills of the corresponding director, which required the movie in question to be relatively recent, as well as a legitimate twitter account of the respective director, who poses as the team leader in this study.
As the program used to calculate the cognitive skills from the twitter profile,
AnalyzeWords.com, does not allow to enter a specific earlier timeframe, it was crucial to use
recent movies, as otherwise it would not be reliable that the current cognitive state of the focal person was in fact shaped by the latest project that the person directed. Approximately 400 individual directors were checked for the validity of their twitter account, amounting to a final count of 132. The team in question consists of the producers that worked on that particular movie, the total number of individuals amounting to 1347.
12
Python programming language. Access to the IMDb database was done using the IMDBPy
module (imdbpy.sourceforge.net), intermediate files were generated and stored in the Python-internal serialization format Pickle, XML and CSV files. The intermediate files were used to generate the relational data model supporting the boundary spanning analysis.
The data retrieval was done in three main steps. First, the TOP-100 lists for the years 2000-2016 were downloaded and the movie title, director names and ratings were extracted. The website OMDB (omdbapi.com) provides programmatic access to a subset of the data available on IMDB. Programmatic access is done through a so-called application programming interface (API). The API provides a search function, which accepts film title, year and director as search fields. The search result contains the IMDB id (in the format tt0123456, visible in the URL of the IMDB web interface when opening a movie page). With the use of IMDBPy library, the movie information was obtained with said ID number and the downloaded content was stored on disk. Subsequently, the list of directors and producers was extracted and the individuals’ filmographies were downloaded. Finally, the data of all individual movies in the filmographies was retrieved in order to get information on, for example, the specific genres. Multiple datasets were tested during the course of the analysis.
MEASURES
Breadth of functional experience Every movie in the database falls under one or several of 24
13 can have multiple genres associated with it, the sum of all elements in a person’s vector can be significantly higher than the number of movies the person worked on.
The second variant of the genre vector was calculated by adding 1/n_genres to the vector for each movie, instead of counting each genre with “1”. n_genres here describes the number of genres associated with a specific movie.
A director with two movies for example, the first one having “Action” and “Comedy” and the second one only “Comedy” as attached genres, would have (1, 1) + (0, 1) = (1, 2) in the first variant and (0.5, 0.5) + (0, 1) = (0.5, 1.5) in the second.
The output dataset also contained the most common genre name of that vector. As multiple genres can occur the same amount of times in a person’s genre vector, the lowest genre name (in lexicographic ordering) was used as a tiebreaker. By using the heterogeneity index (Bunderson, 2003) the breadth of functional experience BFE was calculated:
BFE =1 − ∑𝑘𝑖=1 𝑝𝑖2
k poses as the total number of genres available, 𝑃𝑖 is the individuals number of movies directed in genre i. The individuals’ index number lies between 0 (all movies are of the same genre) and 1 (all genres are covered). An overall low score indicates that the focal person has not gained functional experience in a variety of genres, whereas a high index implies that the director in question has covered a significant number of genres over his or her career.
Social cognitive skills The index was calculated using the Analyze Words program, which is
based on the Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count (LIWC) program by the University of Texas and Auckland Medical School (analyzewords.com). LIWC focuses on the frequency use of so-called junk words (e.g. I, you, they) to provide an insight into peoples’ psychological state.
14 complex emotional and social styles. For this study, the focus is set on the thinking style of the focal person, especially the analytic state. The way people connect words reflects the depth and complexity of their thinking process. Cognitive complexity can be seen as a combination of two components; the extent to which a focal person differentiates between solutions, and the extent to which said person is able to integrate these solutions (Tetlock, 1981). For the assessment of someone’s analytical thinking style, the program highlights phrases and the amount of junk words that indicate a complex thinking style (e.g. If, but), indicating a higher processing capability by the individual (Tausczik and Pennebaker, 2010).
By entering the Twitter handle of a specific individual, the program scans all of this users’ posts for these specific junk words and groups them into different categories (emotional
style, social style and thinking style), each of which possess subcategories, e.g. the analytical style. Comparing the amount of words in each (sub-)category to the total number of words used
gives an indication of the relative analytic skills of the focal person, again ranking from 0 (indication of little cognitive complexity) to 1 (high level of cognitive complexity). For example, Jon Favreau (movie: “the Jungle Book”) scored relatively high with an index of 0,091541136 (79 out of 863 words were categorized as „junk words“), whereas Laurie Anderson („Heart of a Dog“) merely received an index of 0,016346154 (17 words out of 1040). Whilst I am not aware of previous studies using the Analyze Words program, the LIWC approach to conduct Twitter analyses in order to examine given sentiments and cognitive components has been made use of by several different studies (Bhattacharya, 2016; Stieglitz & Dang-Xuan, 2012; Kim & Yoo, 2012).
Boundary spanning The director’s boundary spanning score is the number of total distinct
15 in line with the egocentric network analysis, giving the total immediate connections to other nodes (Cross & Cummings, 2004).
Intrapersonal functional diversity The initial process was identical to that of the director’s
breadth of functional experience. The individual producer’s heterogeneity indices were calculated and elevated to the team level by using the arithmetic mean of all producers who were involved in making the movie, thus creating one index for the entire team. The interpretation of the index is assumed to be interchangeable to that of the individual level. A high score indicates a bigger variety of genres covered by the team members as a whole, whereas a low score implies that there is multifunctional homogeneity within the team. The directors’ scores were exempt from the calculation of this variable, even if said director also took on a producing role in the movie.
Performance The indicator for the overall performance is the movies’ rating. Imdb.com has
approximately 70 million registered users eligible to rate any movie from a scale from 1-10. The final scores are calculated by the website using a weighted vote averaging, in order to prevent ballot stuffing, which may occur if individuals are more interested in changing the rating of a movie rather than expressing their sincere opinion (imdb.com). Hence, the proportional relevance of a vote is taken into account in order to prevent artificial attempts of score inflation or deflation. Although the exact filters are not disclosed, this scheme is applied to all movies in the database, thus legitimizing the measure for all ratings used in this study, which has already served as a source in previous studies on the effectiveness of team activities in the movie industry (Gibson & Dibble, 2013). The ratings used in this study range from 4,9 to 9,4.
Control variables Additionally, the control variables movies directed, number genres directed
16
experience only gives a relative index, these control variables aim to serve as equivalents of
e.g. tenure. Movies directed gives the total number of movies the director has directed throughout the career. Distinct genres directed is the number of individual genres the director has been involved in, whereas number genres directed is the sum of the number of distinct genres over all movies. Given that movies can have several different genres assigned to them, these three numbers may differ substantially. For example, Werner Herzog’s number of movies directed is 68, covering 15 distinct genres, but amounting to a total number of 113 genres directed. Regarding the effect on the social cognitive skills, I assume that a focal person, who has directed, for example, all 10 movies in the same genre, would possess better processing abilities relative to someone who has only directed 1 movie in the same genre, despite both individuals sharing the same heterogeneity index.
RESULTS
Data analysis Given that the data deviated significantly from normal distribution
(Shapiro-Wilk test; p< .005), the variables were transformed using a log transformation.
TABLE 1
Means, standard deviations and correlations
Variables Mean SD 1 2 3 4 5 6 7
1.Boundary spanning 1.65 .54
2. IFD team -.67 .15 .07
3.Cognitive complexity -1.18 .38 .07 .06
4.Movies directed .9 .39 .75** -.02 .06
5.Number genres directed 1.22 .38 .68** .14 .08 .93** 6.Distinct genres directed .81 .25 .54** .25** .11 .74** .89**
7.Performance .69 .69 .37** .12 -.12 .13 .11 .09
8. BFE director -.39 1.82 .21* .13 .07 .29** .41** .436** -.03
17 Hypotheses testing The first hypothesis suggests that the individuals’ breadth of functional
experience leads to higher cognitive complexity. The total number of movies directed, the total number of genres, as well as the number of distinct genres were used as control variables. However, as there was no significant correlation with the dependant variable cognitive complexity, they were exempt from the regression analysis, as suggested by Becker (2005). The results are shown in Table 1. As visible in the table, there is no significant correlation between the directors’ breadth of functional experience and cognitive complexity, which was reconfirmed by running a regression analysis of those two variables (B=.014, SE=.018, p=.448). Thus, no supporting evidence for hypothesis 1 was found.
Hypothesis 2 predicted that intrapersonal functional diversity of the team positively influences performance. In order to test this hypothesis a regression analysis of said variables was run, which did however not confirm the prediction of hypothesis 2 (B = .57, SE = .402, p = .158).
The third hypothesis suggested that the cognitive complexity of the leader would moderate the relationship between the teams’ intrapersonal functional diversity and the outcome performance. Therefore, a PROCESS analysis was conducted. As visible in Table 2 the results revealed no interaction effect of the teams’ breadth of functional experience and the directors’ cognitive complexity on the performance (B=.29, SE= 1.07, p=.7789). Hence, there is no support for hypothesis 3.
18 significant interaction effects between the moderators and the relations of the variables. Thus, hypothesis 4 was not supported.
TABLE 2
Predictors of performance change
B SE T p Constant .61 .37 1.64 .1038 Cognitive complexity -.16 .28 -.58 .5639 IFD team 1.02 1.54 .67 .5069 Interaction .29 1.07 .28 .7789 R2 =.0319, R2Δ=.0006, F= 1.4042, p=.2446 Conditional effect of IV on 95 % DV at different values of the Confidence Interval moderator
LLCI ULCI
- 1SD -.3136 1.4252
mean -.2449 1.5842
+ 1SD -.6994 2.2663
19 TABLE 3
Predictors of performance change
B SE T p
Constant 1.97 1.65 1.19 .2350
Cognitive complexity 1.15 1.36 .85 .3999
IFD team 3.79 6.04 .63 .5321
IFD team x cognitive complexity .62 5.00 -.12 .9018
Boundary spanning -.76 .89 -.85 .3952
IFD team x boundary spanning -1.53 3.15 -.49 .6286
Cognitive complexity x boundary spanning -.72 .74 -.97 .3326
IFD team x cognitive complexity x boundary spanning
.05 2.75 .02 .9863
R2 =.2364, R2Δ=.0000, F= 5.4831, p=.0000
Conditional effect of IV on 95 %
DV at different values of the Confidence Interval moderators
Boundary spanning Cognitive complexity LLCI ULCI
20 DISCUSSION
The purpose of this study was to expand the current findings on the effects of a team leaders’ breadth of functional experience on the teams’ performance. In order to achieve said extension, this research aimed to link previous studies by adding a potentially missing puzzle piece, the cognitive complexity of a focal generalist, to influence behavioural integration of the team members and thus capitalize on the functional diversity. However, none of the hypotheses were supported.
In line with previous research, I expected the breadth of functional experience of the individual to increase with cognitive complexity, an assumption not supported by the outcome of the analysis. A possible reason for the insignificant result could be that, despite working on different genres, the framework and the general industry remains the same, thus diminishing the effect of changing work cultures and corresponding differences in communication patterns (Lawrence & Lorsch, 1967). The underlying assumption, that cognitive complexity is increased due to the exposure to different social domains can therefore not be fully backed by operating within the same industry, rather than different departments, or in this case genres.
21 positive effect of TMT functional diversity. Especially in the global movie industry, uncertainty has risen in the last decade (Christopherson, 2013), giving a possible explanation for the lack of effectiveness. Additionally, diversity of any kind is prone to provoke fragmentation among members, thus reducing team cohesion and communication frequency (Lau & Murnighan, 2005).
The third hypothesis suggested a moderation effect of the directors’ cognitive skills on the multifunctional teams’ performance, yet evidence for said interaction was not found. Given that the first hypothesis was not supported either, the line of reasoning cannot be argued for.
Nevertheless, the inability to coordinate efficiently may not just be caused by the focal generalist. The lack of expertise is susceptible to affect fellow team members’ willingness to coordinate. In addition to the common sources of power and status, perceived expertness remains a dominant contributing factor for intragroup status, if said members share an interest of interdependent task accomplishment (Bunderson & Reagans, 2010; Ridgeway, 1987). In that context, an individuals’ expertise can be regarded as a source of power. Fellow team members or subordinates perceive greater opportunities and influence from involvement with the expert (Littlepage et al., 1995). Van der Vegt et al. (2006) also found a strong negative effect on intragroup learning and group performance. Due to the commitment of team members to assist those with the greatest perceived expertise, there is a paradox of ‘those who need help the most end up getting the least’. This is also in line with a study of Buyl et al. (2011), which found the interaction effect of a generalist leader on the teams’ performance to be negative. It is argued that this is due to the ‘jack of all trades, but master of none’ syndrome, where said individual lacks the capability to thoroughly grasp more specialized knowledge and thus finds it difficult to integrate with other team members.
22 strengthen the aforementioned impact on the multifunctional teams’ performance. Nevertheless, no supporting evidence was found for the three-way interaction. This implicates that the focal generalist does not, or not to a sufficient extent, make use of the external network in order to access additional knowledge for the sake of improving performance. Again, the assertion that the focal person possesses the abilities to identify potential discrepancies based on the cognitive complexity has not been confirmed, thus challenging the general impact and correlation between the decision to perform boundary spanning activities and the ability to identify the necessity to do so. Additionally, the mere capacity to use cognitive complexity does not inevitably lead to a specific social behaviour, i.e. boundary spanning (Burleson & Denton, 1997).
LIMITATIONS AND FUTURE RESEARCH
Several limitations need to be taken into account when assessing the validity of the results of this study. For instance, the measurement of the social cognitive skills has some considerable constraints. Unlike the more commonly used LIWC software, the Analyze Words program solely allows the user to enter a specific Twitter handle, rather than a specific set of words. Therefore, it may include retweets; messages composed by others than the focal person that shared it. Although it can be assumed that the owner of the handle agrees with the statement made, or at least considers it an important message worthy of sharing, in those cases the line of thought and processing cannot be assigned to the focal person.
23 Evidently, this study is very industry specific; as mentioned in the discussion, the effectiveness of breadth of functional experience may vary depending on industry and task characteristics. Furthermore, future research could add more depth to the analysis, as some factors were not taken into account. For example, some directors were represented with more than one movie, yet the nesting effect was not taken into consideration in this particular analysis, meaning that the individual factors could occur with different combinations on the team level. Future studies could therefore focus on examining the effect on performance when given directors work with different teams of varying breadth of functional experience.
With respect to the team level, there were some significant differences in team size, with some movies having over 40 producers and others merely two or three. Depending on the hierarchy within the bigger teams, e.g. executive producers and assistant producers, the direct impact of the director, based on frequency of communication, may vary as well and thus affect the moderation effect. Furthermore, the calculation of the breadth of functional experience for the producers also takes into account the genres of TV-shows that were produced. Future research could also examine the mean ratings of the individual team members and whether their collaboration increases their performance under the guidance of the generalist or specialist director.
CONCLUSION
24 possibilities for future research in the field. Moreover, the fact that this research did not lead to conclusive results also implicates that there is further potential to explore the issues presented in this study. .
REFERENCES
Ancona, D. G., & Caldwell, D. F. (1992). Demography and Design: Predictors of New Product Team Performance. Organization Science, 3(3), 321-341.
Ancona, D., & Caldwell, D. (1992). Bridging the Boundary: External Activity and Performance in Organizational Teams. Administrative Science Quarterly, 37(4), 634-665.
Bantel, K. A., & Jackson, S. E. (1989). Top management and innovations in banking: Does the composition of the top team make a difference? Strategic Management Journal, 10(S1), 107-124.
Bhattacharya, S., Yang, C., Srinivasan, P. and Boynton, B. (2016), Perceptions of
presidential candidates' personalities in twitter. J Assn Inf Sci Tec, 67: 249–267.
Bunderson, J., & Sutcliffe, K. (2002). Comparing Alternative Conceptualizations of Functional Diversity in Management Teams: Process and Performance Effects. The
Academy of Management Journal, 45(5), 875-893.
Bunderson, J. S. 2003. Team member functional back- ground and involvement in management teams: Di- rect effects and the moderating role of power central- ization.
Academy of Management Journal, 46: 458 – 474.
Bunderson, J. S., and R. E. Reagans. “Power, Status, and Learning in Organizations.”
Organization Science 22.5 (2010): 1182–1194.
25 Burleson, B. R., & Caplan, S. E. 1998. Cognitive complex- ity. In J. C. McCroskey, J. A. Daly, M. M. Martin & M. J. Beatty (Eds.), Communication and personality: Trait
perspectives: 233–286. Cresskill, NJ: Hampton Press.
Burleson, B., & Denton, W. (1997). The Relationship between Communication Skill and Marital Satisfaction: Some Moderating Effects. Journal of Marriage and Family, 59(4), 884-902.
Buyl, T., Boone, C., Hendriks, W., & Matthyssens, P. (2011). Top Management Team Functional Diversity and Firm Performance: The Moderating Role of CEO Characteristics. Journal Of Management Studies, 48(1), 151-177.
Christopherson, S. (2013). Hollywood in decline? US film and television producers beyond the era of fiscal crisis. Cambridge Journal Of Regions, Economy And Society, 6(1), 141-157.
Cross, R., & Cummings, J. N. (2004). Tie and network correlates of individual performance in knowledge-intensive work. Academy of management journal, 47(6), 928-937 de Vries T.A., Walter F., Van Der Vegt G.S., & Essens P.J.M.D. (2014). Antecedents of
individuals' interteam coordination: Broad functional experiences as a mixed blessing.
Academy Of Management Journal, 57(5), 1334-1359.
Gibson, C.B., & Dibble, R. (2013). Excess may do harm: Investigating the effect of team external environment on external activities in teams. Organization Science, 24(3), 697-715.
Hackman, J. R., & Oldham, G. R. (1976). Motivation through the design of work: Test of a theory. Organizational behavior and human performance, 16(2), 250-279.
Ichniowski, C., Shaw, K., & Prennushi, G. (1997). The Effects of Human Resource Management Practices on Productivity: A Study of Steel Finishing Lines. The
American Economic Review, 87(3), 291-313.
26 Joshi, A., Pandey, N., & Han, G. (2009). Bracketing team boundary spanning: An examination of task-based, team-level, and contextual antecedents. Journal of
Organizational Behavior, 30(6), 731-759.
Kelly, G. A. 1955. The psychology of personal constructs. New York, NY: W. W. Norton. Kim, J., & Yoo, J. (2012). Role of sentiment in message propagation: Reply versus retweet
behavior in political communication. In Social Informatics (SocialInformatics),
2012 International Conference (pp. 131–136). Washington, DC: IEEE Computer Society.
Kisfalvi, V., & Pitcher, P. (2003). Doing What Feels Right: The Influence of CEO Character and Emotions on Top Management Team Dynamics. Journal Of Management
Inquiry, 12(1), 42-66.
Knight, D., Pearce, C. L., Smith, K. G., Olian, J. D., Sims, H. P., Smith, K. A., & Flood, P. (1999). Top management team diversity, group process, and strategic consensus.
Strategic Management Journal, 20(5), 445-465.
Korn Ferry Institute. Generalist Managers Make a Comeback (2012, November 08) retrieved from http://www.kornferry.com/institute/516-generalist-managers-make-a-comeback Korn, H. J., Milliken, F. J., & Lant, T. K. 1992. Top management team change and
organizational performance: The influence of succession, composition, and context.
Paper presented at the annual meeting of the Academy of Management, Las Vegas, NV
Lau, D. C., & Murnighan, J. K. (2005). Interactions within Groups and Subgroups: The Effects of Demographic Faultlines. The Academy Of Management Journal, 48(4), 645-659.
Lawrence, P. R., & Lorsch, J. W. (1967). Differentiation and integration in complex organizations. Administrative science quarterly, 1-47.
27
Management Studies, 47(2), 322-344.
Ling, Y., Simsek, Z., Lubatkin, M., & Veiga, J. (2008). Transformational Leadership's Role in Promoting Corporate Entrepreneurship: Examining the CEO-TMT Interface. The
Academy of Management Journal, 51(3), 557-576.
Littlepage, G. E., Schmidt, G. W., Whisler, E. W., & Frost, A. G. (1995). An input-process- output analysis of influence and performance in problem-solving groups. Journal Of
Personality And Social Psychology, 69(5), 877-889.
Mansharamani, V. (2012, June 04). All hail the Generalist, managing uncertainty. Harvard
Business Review. Retrieved from https://hbr.org/
Marrone, J. A. (2010). Team boundary spanning: A multilevel review of past research and proposals for the future. Journal of Management, 36(4), 911-940.
Geletkanycz, M. & Black, S. (2001). Bound by the past? Experience-based effects on commitment to the strategic status quo. Journal Of Management, 27(1), 3-21.
Milliken, F., & Martins, L. (1996). Searching for Common Threads: Understanding the Multiple Effects of Diversity in Organizational Groups. The Academy of
Management Review, 21(2), 402-433.
OMDb API. The open movie Database, retrieved on December 16th https://www.omdbapi.com
Pelled, L. H., Eisenhardt, K. M., & Xin, K. R. 1999. Ex- ploring the black box: An analysis of work group diversity, conflict, and performance. Administrative Science Quarterly, 44: 1- 28.
Peterson RS, Smith DB, Martorana PV, & Owens PD. (2003). The impact of chief executive officer personality on top management team dynamics:one mechanism by which leadership affects organizational performance. The Journal Of Applied Psychology, 88(5), 795-808.
28 Ridgeway, C.L. 1987. Nonverbal behavior, dominance, and the basis of status in task groups.
Amer. Sociological Rev. 52: 683‐694.
Simons, T., Pelled, L. H., & Smith, K. A. (1999). Making Use of Difference: Diversity, Debate, and Decision Comprehensiveness in Top Management Teams. The Academy
Of Management Journal, 42(6), 662-673.
Simsek, Z., Veiga, J., Lubatkin, M., & Dino, R. (2005). Modeling the Multilevel Determinants of Top Management Team Behavioral Integration. The Academy of
Management Journal, 48(1), 69-84.
Stieglitz, S., & Dang-Xuan, L. (2012). Political communication and influence through
Microblogging—An empirical analysis of sentiment in Twitter messages and retweet behavior. In HICSS ’12: Proceedings of the 2012 45th Hawaii International
Conference on System Sciences (pp. 3500–3509). Washington, DC: IEEE Computer Society.
Kline, S. (1991). Construct Differentiation and Person-Centred Regulative Messages. Journal
Of Language And Social Psychology, 10(1), 1-27. doi:10.1177/0261927X91101001
Tausczik, Y., & Pennebaker, J. (2010). The Psychological Meaning of Words: LIWC and Computerized Text Analysis Methods. Journal Of Language And Social Psychology, 29(1), 24-54.
Tetlock, P. E. (1981). Pre- to post-election shifts in presidential rhetoric: Impression man- agement or cognitive adjustment. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 41, 207-212.
The Science Behind AnalyzeWords.com, retrieved on January 1st from http://www.analyzewords.com/science.php
Thomas E. Becker. (2005). Potential Problems in the Statistical Control of Variables in Organizational Research: A Qualitative Analysis With Recommendations.
Organizational Research Methods, 8(3), 274-289.
29 Multidisciplinary Teams: The Importance of Collective Team Identification. The
Academy Of Management Journal, 48(3), 532-547.
Van Der Vegt, G. S., Bunderson, J. S., & Oosterhof, A. (2006). Expertness Diversity and Interpersonal Helping in Teams: Why Those Who Need the Most Help End up Getting the Least. The Academy Of Management Journal, 49(5), 877-893.
Walsh, J. (1988). Selectivity and Selective Perception: An Investigation of Managers' Belief Structures and Information Processing. The Academy of Management Journal, 31(4), 873- 896.
Wilson, S. R. (1990). Development and Test of a Cognitive Rules Model of Interaction Goals.
