Conflict

This chapter tells the story of Sherif’s Robbers Cave experiment, where a group of boys were invited to a false summer camp to experience group dynamics in action. Split into two groups, conflict was purposely created and dispelled across a series of coordinated events, highlighting just how hardwired group designations are in the human psyche. The chapter continues by looking at The Troubles of Northern Ireland through the lens of social identity theory, which explains how social mobility, group categorization, and self-esteem influence the pervasiveness of group conflict. Together, these examples demonstrate that the creation of superordinate goals, blurring of social lines, and reducing the importance of group differentiators can have a marked impact on prejudice and unite people of different backgrounds.

Using live disaster exercises to study large multiteam systems in extreme environments: Methodological and measurement fit

Multiteam systems (MTSs) are comprised of two or more teams working toward shared superordinate goals but with unique subgoals. In large MTSs operating in extreme environments, coordination difficulties have repeatedly been found, which compromise response effectiveness. Research is needed that examines MTSs in situ within extreme environments to develop temporal theories of inter-team processes and understanding of how coordination may be improved within these challenging contexts. Live disaster exercises replicate the complexities of extreme environments, providing a valuable avenue for observing inter-team processes in situ. This article seeks to contribute to MTS research by highlighting (i) a mixed-method framework for collecting data during live disaster exercises that uses both inductive and deductive approaches to promote methodological and measurement fit; (ii) ways in which data can be collected and combined to meet the appropriate standards of their methodological class; and (iii) a case example of a National exercise.

An integration team’s diagnosing of context, spanning boundaries and creating psychological safety within a multiteam system

Purpose The purpose of this study is to explore how integration teams can build trusting relationships in component teams to enhance their leadership capability within multiteam systems to achieve common superordinate goals. The study investigates how an integration team diagnoses contextual dynamics to enhance understanding of goals in component teams and spans boundaries to create trusting relationships. Design/methodology/approach The proposed model was tested by surveying 396 respondents nested within component teams working within five South African manufacturing companies. Structural Equation Modeling was used to analyse the data. Findings The study reveals that by diagnosing the contextual dynamics within a multiteam system and through boundary spanning, an integration team builds trusting relationships, which will, ultimately, enable teams to achieve common superordinate goals. Practical implications This study offers organisations insights into how multiple component teams of different functional disciplines can work effectively towards achieving an overall or common superordinate goal. It offers insights on how to mitigate misalignment challenges by implementing an integration team within the multiteam system context. Originality/value Research participants were employees within a manufacturing context, which sets this study apart from many previous ones conducted in a simulated environment within a military context. The study investigates building trusting relationships among multiple component teams within a multiteam system through the implementation of an integration team, which has not been specifically addressed in previous studies.

Subgoal- and Goal-related Reward Prediction Errors in Medial Prefrontal Cortex

A longstanding view of the organization of human and animal behavior holds that behavior is hierarchically organized—in other words, directed toward achieving superordinate goals through the achievement of subordinate goals or subgoals. However, most research in neuroscience has focused on tasks without hierarchical structure. In past work, we have shown that negative reward prediction error (RPE) signals in medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC) can be linked not only to superordinate goals but also to subgoals. This suggests that mPFC tracks impediments in the progression toward subgoals. Using fMRI of human participants engaged in a hierarchical navigation task, here we found that mPFC also processes positive prediction errors at the level of subgoals, indicating that this brain region is sensitive to advances in subgoal completion. However, when subgoal RPEs were elicited alongside with goal-related RPEs, mPFC responses reflected only the goal-related RPEs. These findings suggest that information from different levels of hierarchy is processed selectively, depending on the task context.

Subgoal- and Goal-Related Prediction Errors in Medial Prefrontal Cortex

A longstanding view of the organization of human and animal behavior holds that behavior is hierarchically organized, meaning that it can be understood as directed towards achieving superordinate goals through subordinate goals, or subgoals. For example, the superordinate goal of making coffee can be broken down as accomplishing a series of subgoals, namely boiling water, grinding coffee, pouring cream, etc.Learning and behavioral adaptation depend on prediction-error signals, which have been observed in ventral striatum (VS) and medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC). In past work, we have shown that prediction error signals (PEs) can be linked not only to superordinate goals, but also to subgoals.Here we present two functional magnetic resonance imagining experiments that replicate and extend these findings. In the first experiment, we replicated the finding that mPFC signals subgoal-related PEs, independently of goal PEs. Together with our past work, this experiment reveals that BOLD responses to PEs in mPFC are unsigned. In the second experiment, we showed that when a task involves both goal and subgoal PEs, mPFC shows only goal-related PEs, suggesting that context or attention can strongly impact hierarchical PE coding. Furthermore, we observed a dissociation between the coding of PEs in mPFC and VS. These experiments suggest that the mPFC selectively attends to information at different levels of hierarchy depending on the task context.

Online Contact and Intergroup Conflict Resolution

People tend to divide the world into categories. One of them is the group of people I belong to (the ingroup) and the group I do not belong to (the outgroup). People have a tendency to stereotype the outgroup and behave toward it with prejudice and discrimination. In many cases these forms of behavior lead to intergroup conflict. One of the major proposals for resolving this situation was suggested by Gordon W. Allport and is called the Contact Hypothesis. According to this model, when a contact between the groups is held under certain conditions—equal status, institutional support, and cooperation between the rival groups toward the achievement of superordinate goals—people are likely to change their negative perception of the outgroup and improve their relationship with its members. Despite the success of the model, it has been shown to suffer from three major obstacles. First, it is logistically complicated to achieve the requisite conditions; secondly, the physical proximity to the rival group’s members is likely to cause high anxiety among participants, which may well prevent any positive change; thirdly, the contact, even if successful, is unlikely to be generalized to the groups as a whole. Online intergroup contact appears to overcome these challenges.

A Social Identity Approach to Leadership Development

Social identity research shows that leadership is a process of group identity development but has not examined how leaders can manage group identities in the workplace. The 5R leadership development program addresses this issue. This takes leaders through a five-stage process of (1) Readying: explaining the importance of social identity processes for leadership; (2) Reflecting: identifying important workplace social identities; (3) Representing: clarifying goals and aspirations associated with different subgroup identities; (4) Realizing: identifying superordinate goals and developing strategies to achieve both them and subgroup goals; and (5) Reporting: assessing progress toward goals. Results of a longitudinal study indicate that 5R is a useful framework for leadership development that translates insights from social identity theorizing into structured intervention.