We Hold Ourselves Accountable: A Relational View of Team Accountability

Accountability is of universal interest to the business ethics community, but the emphasis to date has been primarily at the level of the industry, organization, or key individuals. This paper unites concepts from relational and felt accountability and team dynamics to provide an initial explanatory framework that emphasizes the importance of social interactions to team accountability. We develop a measure of team accountability using participants in the USA and Europe and then use it to study a cohort of 65 teams of Irish business students over three months as they complete a complex simulation. Our hypotheses test the origins of team accountability and its effects on subsequent team performance and attitudinal states. Results indicate that initial team accountability is strongly related to team trust, commitment, efficacy, and identifying with the team emotionally. In established teams, accountability increases effort and willingness to continue to collaborate but did not significantly improve task performance in this investigation.

Determinants of Individual Knowledge Innovation Behavior

With the upsurge of "emotional storm" in the field of organizational behavior, the studies on individual emotions in organizational context are rising. Especially the relationship between emotions and knowledge innovation has attracted much attention by scholars. In particular, individual emotions may exert great effect on knowledge innovation whereas the mechanism is still unclear. Based on the emotional event theory, this paper constructs a model which explores the interaction of positive and negative emotions with individual knowledge innovation. Based on questionnaire data analysis, the results show that knowledge sharing partly mediate the relationship between positive emotion and knowledge innovation as well as the relationship between negative emotion and knowledge innovation; team trust accentuates the relationship between positive emotion and knowledge innovation as well as the relationship between negative emotion and knowledge innovation. The above findings are helpful to clarify the impact mechanism of emotions on knowledge innovation.

Teamwork in surgical specialties: an evaluation

Background/Aims Teamwork is the cornerstone of patient safety, with effective communication being essential for producing fewer complications during a patient's stay in hospital. In 2018, The Royal College of Surgeons of England published ‘The High Performing Surgical Team’, which outlined the components of a high-functioning team broken down into seven attributes: individual, team, trust, conflict resolution, commitment to task, accountability and results. This study evaluated teamwork among surgical specialties in a single centre. Methods Team members completed a survey consisting of seven sections, based on the Royal College of Surgeons of England components of teamworking, scoring statements using a 4-point Likert scale. Respondents included surgical doctors (interns, residents, registrars, fellows and consultants) and nurses (ward and theatre) from 12 surgical teams. Sections with 20% of more negative answers were considered to indicate a significant negative team attribute in that area of teamworking. Results Of the 108 respondents, 73 (67.6%) doctors and 35 (35.4%) nurses noted negative team attributes across all staff grades in at least two of the seven attributes (accountability and results), except registrars, who had one (accountability) of the seven negative attributes. Interns were reported as having negative attributes in four of the attributes (conflict resolution, commitment to task, accountability and results), while residents had negative attributes in three area (commitment to task, accountability and results). Conclusions The more junior the member of the team, the more likely they are to have negative teamworking attributes. Further evaluation would be of use to investigate whether these results are generalisable to other cohorts and to provide opportunities to improve teamwork and, therefore, patient care.

Servant Leadership Stimulates Spiritual Well-Being Through Team Trust in a Female Religious Context

This study investigates how female religious leaders nurture spiritual well-being in religious sisters. Specifically, we examined how servant leadership fosters spiritual well-being [Gifts and Fruits of the Spirit (GFSp)] through, respectively, the mediating role of team trust and reduced occurrence of team conflicts. Quantitative survey data were collected from 453 religious sisters (followers) within a Catholic Women Religious Institute in Nigeria. Using structural equation modeling, results showed that servant leadership is positively related to team trust and negatively related to team conflict. Further findings showed that servant leadership indirectly fosters spiritual well-being: Gifts of the Spirit (GSp), and Fruits of the Spirit (FSp), through the mediating role of team trust, however not through reduced team conflict. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed.