scholarly journals In Search of Identity Leadership: An ethnographic study of emergent influence in an interorganizational R&D team

2017 ◽  
Vol 39 (10) ◽  
pp. 1425-1447 ◽  
Author(s):  
Pernille Smith ◽  
S. Alexander Haslam ◽  
Jørn F. Nielsen

Recent trends in the leadership literature have advanced a relational and processual perspective that sheds light on the way leadership emerges and evolves in dynamic and flexible organizations. However, very few empirical studies have explored these processes over an extended period. To address this lacuna, we report findings from a three-year ethnographic study that explored the emergence and development of leadership in a self-managed interorganizational R&D team. Findings show that in the context of various events that impacted on the team, leadership emerged through interactions, processes and practices that were perceived by team members to develop and advance shared goals and shared identity. Leadership responses to uncertainty surrounding the project were generally legitimated by team members’ background and expertise in relation to this shared identity, while a lack of perceived legitimacy also compromised leadership. These observations are consistent with arguments that leadership revolves around the creation and enactment of shared social identity. However, they also suggest that the form and nature of leadership is hard to predict because it is heavily structured by specific identity-relevant practices and perceptions that arise in the context of unforeseeable events.

2021 ◽  
Vol 12 ◽  
Author(s):  
Liang Hou ◽  
Lynda Jiwen Song ◽  
Guoyang Zheng ◽  
Bei Lyu

Recent trends in the leadership literature have promoted a social identity approach of leadership that views leadership as the process of representing, advancing, creating, and embedding a sense of shared identity within a group. However, a few empirical studies explore how and when global identity leadership affects team performance at the workplace. To address this lacuna, we used multi-source and two-wave data among 81 teams to explore the role of group-based pride and leader political skill in the association between identity leadership and team performance. The results suggest that identity leadership positively predicts team performance through a mediating role of group-based pride. Furthermore, leader political skill moderates the indirect effect of group-based pride such that the effect is stronger when leader political skill is high rather than low. Finally, several theoretical and practical implications of this study are discussed, and future research directions are also suggested.


Author(s):  
Sanna Vehviläinen ◽  
Anne-Mari Souto

AbstractThe aim of this article is to show how interaction research can contribute to the understanding and praxis of socially just guidance. The article is theoretical, but it makes use of our previous empirical studies. We combine the ethnographic study of school and racism, and interactional research on guidance. We define guidance for social justice, explaining how this translates to the level of interactional practices. We show two empirical examples of interactional phenomena hindering socially just praxis. We lastly discuss our practical conclusions on how to help school career counsellors change their interactional practices.


Author(s):  
Taylor Incze ◽  
Sonia Pinkney ◽  
Mark Fan ◽  
Patricia Trbovich

Teamwork is an essential aspect to maintaining high-quality healthcare. This is especially true during times of uncertainty, when collaborative problem solving is necessary for clinical teams to adapt and deliver safe and effective care. We conducted a prospective observational study using audio/visual analysis captured by OR Black Box. Human factors experts transcribed and coded the videos using an evidence-based teamwork framework, specific to healthcare. We identified teamwork competencies that were either present or absent during moments of uncertainty in the operating room. Four main team roles (nurses, anesthesiologists, surgeons and trainees) were studied. We identified 3539 instances of teamwork, during 180 hours of surgical observation, and categorized them into 7 competencies. Team leadership was expressed significantly more often by surgeons compared to other team members whereas backup behaviour was expressed significantly more by nurses. Understanding how each team role uniquely contributes to teamwork can help develop specific and actionable teamwork interventions, which could ultimately lead to increased safety in the OR.


Author(s):  
P. M. Wognum

Design processes in current industrial contexts require integration between different disciplines and functions, not only within an organisation but also across organisational and even national borders. Many barriers to integration can be observed, however, in multi-disciplinary and multifunctional design projects. One of these barriers is the lack of organisational, management, and social knowledge and skills, on the level of team members as well as on the level of project management. To achieve a sufficient level of integration technical knowledge and skills are necessary but not sufficient. Organisational, management, and social skills are necessary too. In our research on organisation and management of business processes we have found that this last category of knowledge needs improvement for the largest part of design team members and managers. As designers are professionals who have been employed because of their knowledge and skills, gained through prior academic or professional education, the question can be asked to what extent organisational, management, and social knowledge is included in this education. One way to answer this question is by studying the knowledge and skills deemed important for performing design tasks. An important source of this knowledge can be found in journal articles in the area of engineering design. The authors of these articles are in most cases also the ones transferring this knowledge to future designers. In this paper, a study of 94 recently published journals articles is described, which reveals, that organisational, management, and social skills are not yet a major focus of attention. In particular the number of empirical studies on the organisational, social, and managerial behaviour of designers in practical contexts is scarce in the engineering research community. These results will be confronted with results from management and social sciences research. We argue that the gap between these two fields of research needs to be bridged to better prepare designers for their task in current industrial contexts.


2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (2) ◽  
pp. 18
Author(s):  
Hanan Subhi Al-Shamaly

The concept of caring is vague and complex, especially in critical environments such as the intensive care unit (ICU), where technological dehumanisation is a challenge for nurses. ICU nursing care includes not only patients but also extends to patients’ families, nurses, other health team members and the unit’s environment. Caring in critical care settings is affected by enabling and impeding factors. To explore these enablers and challenges factors, a focused ethnographic study was conducted in an Australian ICU. The data was collected from 35 registered nurses through various resources: participants' observations, documents reviews, interviews, and additional participants’ notes. Data were analysed inductively and thematically. The study outlines comprehensively and widely a wide range of enablers and challenges affecting caring in the ICU - which originate from different sources such as patients, families, nurses, and the ICU environment. This paper is the second in a two-part series which explores the ICU nurses’ experiences and perspectives of the enablers and challenges of caring in the ICU. Part 1 was concerned with the enablers and challenges to caring that are related to ICU patients, families, and environment. While Part 2 introduces readers to the enablers and challenges factors that are concerned with the nurses in ICU. These factors include nurses’ educational backgrounds and professional experience, employment working factors, leadership styles, relationships, and personal factors. Nurses and other stakeholders such as clinicians, educators, researchers, managers, and policymakers need to recognize these factors and their implications for providing quality care, in order to enhance and maintain the optimal level of caring in the ICU.


2020 ◽  
Vol 68 (3-4) ◽  
pp. 169-189
Author(s):  
Theresa Fritz ◽  
Wolfgang Burr

Zusammenfassung Empirische Untersuchungen zur Gründungslandschaft der deutschen Energiewirtschaft sind in der wissenschaftlichen Literatur bisher unterrepräsentiert. Im Zuge einer explorativen Darstellung von deutschen Energie-Startups wird zu Beginn ein Überblick über die Gründungsbereiche, die Gründungsteams sowie die finanzielle Lage von 126 deutschen Energie-Startups gegeben. Mithilfe einer Regressionsanalyse werden im nächsten Schritt die Einflüsse von Humankapital und technologischen Ressourcen auf die Akquise von Finanzierungsmitteln überprüft. Im Rahmen der Auswertung kann ein signifikanter Zusammenhang zwischen der Anzahl der Gründer, den individuellen Fähigkeiten der Teammitglieder sowie der Anzahl der Patente und Gebrauchsmuster auf die Akquise von Finanzierungsmitteln nachgewiesen werden. Dies legt den Schluss nahe, dass die Kombination der beiden Ressourcen Humankapital und technologisches Kapital den Aufbau von Kompetenz bei der Finanzierungsmittelakquise auf organisationaler Ebene begünstigen und zum Wachstum des Startups beitragen können. Abstract Empirical studies on the start-up landscape of the German energy industry have so far been underrepresented in the scientific literature. In the course of an exploratory presentation of German energy start-ups, an overview of the start-up areas, the founding teams and the financial situation of 126 German energy start-ups is given at the beginning. In the next step, a regression analysis is used to examine the influence of human capital and technological resources on the acquisition of funding. As part of the evaluation, a significant relationship between the number of founders, the individual skills of the team members and the number of patents and utility models on the acquisition of funding can be demonstrated. This suggests that the combination of the two resources human capital and technological capital can facilitate the development of skills in the acquisition of funding at the organizational level and contribute to the growth of the start-up.


Author(s):  
Violina Ratcheva

The uniqueness of multidisciplinary teamwork is in its potential to integrate different bodies of knowledge into a new synergy. However, previous empirical studies have shown that member heterogeneity and geographic separation hinder effective sharing and use of team knowledge. The chapter explores how such teams interact to overcome the barriers and take advantage of their “built in” knowledge diversity. The findings indicate that often teams lack common background knowledge at the beginning of the projects, and in order to resolve differences members rely on their external intellectual and social communities. The reported research establishes a positive correlation between team members’ participation in multiple professional and social networks and teams’ abilities to successfully build on their knowledge diversity. The findings also suggest a need to reconceptualize the boundaries of multidisciplinary teams and to consider the processes of sharing diverse knowledge in a wider social context.


Author(s):  
Vinita Seshadri ◽  
Elangovan N.

The chapter highlights the social distance, i.e. lack of emotional connection, formed among individuals working remotely in a geographically distributed team. The virtuality and cultural diversity of such teams creates limited opportunities for dispersed members to build social ties with remote team members leading to formation of ‘us' versus ‘them' attitudes which corrode team effectiveness. Based on a survey of 482 Indian IT professionals working in distributed teams, we find that social distance negatively impacts team effectiveness. Further, the results of the study show that practices such as task interdependence, inclusive communication, contextual information and shared identity can moderate the negative relationship between social distance and team effectiveness at varying levels of perceived status equality among individuals working in geographically distributed teams. The chapter provides recommendations for the effective management of geographically distributed teams whereby managers act as a bridge between the team members to overcome social distance.


2021 ◽  
pp. 197-220
Author(s):  
Nils Holtug

Chapter 7, on nationalism, addresses the so-called ‘national identity argument’, according to which a shared national identity fosters social cohesion and is required for, or at least facilitates, egalitarian redistribution. First, it is argued that the prospect for nation-building policies, built on the idea of a shared national culture, is severely restricted by the liberal egalitarian requirements of justice defended in Chapter 4. Then the causal mechanism through which a national culture is supposed to promote trust and solidarity is scrutinized, and it is argued that it is not really supported by, for example, social identity theory and evidence from social psychology. Finally, empirical studies of the effect of national identity on trust and solidarity are considered, and it is argued that these do not support the national identity argument either.


Author(s):  
Kristi M. Lewis Tyran ◽  
Craig K. Tyran

As globalization and the prevalence of electronic communication technology has become more widespread, organizations are adapting and changing at a rapid pace. Many organizations are using “virtual teams” of people working across space and time as an organizational structure to enhance organizational flexibility and creativity in this changing environment (Duarte & Snyder, 1999; Townsend, DeMarie, & Hendrickson, 1998). As virtual teams become a more popular organizational tool, many researchers have begun to explore ways in which the performance of such teams may be enhanced (Cohen & Gibson, 2003). One aspect of teamwork that has traditionally had an important impact on team performance is team leadership. Leaders often facilitate effective task performance within a team. By assigning tasks to individuals with the skills, knowledge and abilities to perform best, as well as structuring the team to best accomplish its tasks, a leader can greatly increase the effectiveness and efficiency of a team (Hooijberg, Hunt, & Dodge, 1997; McGrath, 1984; O’Connell, Doverspike, & Cober, 2002). In addition to task-focused behaviors, leaders also motivate, coach and mentor team members toward higher levels of performance (Bass, 1985; Conger & Kanungo, 1998).


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