Top Management Team Intrapersonal Functional Diversity and Adaptive Firm Performance: The Moderating Roles of the CEO–TMT Power Gap and Severity of Threat

While usually argued to be improving firm performance, the effect of top management team (TMT) functional diversity on firm performance is mixed. Bridging the TMT diversity, team adaptation, and threat-rigidity literature, we present a contingency model in which the relationships between intrapersonal functional diversity (at both CEO and TMT levels) and adaptive firm performance depend on the CEO–TMT power gap and severity of threat. To test our hypotheses, 270 firms, which have been severely affected due to the COVID-19 pandemic, were selected from China's A-share listed companies. Multiple regression analyses have shown that a moderation of CEO intrapersonal functional diversity's effect on adaptive firm performance by the CEO–TMT power gap is moderated by the severity of threat. However, no significant main or interaction effect of TMT intrapersonal functional diversity was found. The findings of this study have implications for the recovery or improvement of firm performance in threat situations.

PROSPECTS OF MENTORING AS A FORM OF IMPROVING THE QUALITY OF HUMAN CAPITAL IN THE TIMBER INDUSTRY

The article deals with the problems associated with personnel problems in the timber industry complex. Efficient companies in the timber industry complex consider mentoring as a form of improving the quality of human capital. This tendency is especially evident in those regions where timber companies play a dominant role. The aim of mentoring is to train a specialist who meets the requirements for his/her quality and competence on the part of enterprises, organizations of the region and the Russian Federation. It is impossible to train a modern specialist in isolation from real production conditions – professional practice. That is why the authors defined the mission of mentors in a modern organization, identified the stages of training under the guidance of a mentor in the enterprises of timber industry complex. The authors proposed options for staff development. Learning of the system, directions of mentoring, assistance, assistance in getting the job tempo and rhythm, mastering of job tasks and duties, acquiring of practical knowledge and skills, social-psychological adaptation in a team, adaptation to corporate culture, learning of traditions and rules of conduct in the enterprise – all these are the main aims of mentoring organization as a source of quality human capital improvement in timber industry enterprises. Thus, a mentor not only explains production technology and introduces equipment, but also helps a newcomer to join the team, get acquainted with masters and managers and the company’s culture.

Modeling the Effects of Machine Rigidities on Joint Work Strategies

One of the challenges in designing resilient human-machine systems is that machine capabilities are inherently rigid. A resilient joint cognitive system can anticipate and adapt to changing work demands effectively, but limitations of machines can make this adaptation constrained and less fluid. By identifying and accommodating for these rigidities in the design of human-machine system architectures, developers can build human-machine systems that support multiple contexts. This paper proposes a work-modeling approach for analyzing joint human-machine work strategies, focusing on identifying interdependencies that would support opportunistic adaptation and reduce the risk of machine rigidity leading to brittle failures of a human-machine system. The approach is applied to a case study in space operations to demonstrate how interdependencies can be identified and evaluated. The results of this analysis provide early insight into how team adaptation and machine limitations can be systematically accounted for in system architecture design.

The Effect of a Concept Mapping Intervention on Shared Cognition and Adaptive Team Performance Over Time

Research has demonstrated the value of team adaptation for organizational teams. However, empirical work on interventions that teams can take to increase adaptive team performance is scarce. In response, this study proposes a concept mapping intervention as a way to increase teams’ ability to adapt following a task change. Particularly, this study examines the effect of a concept mapping intervention on team transition adaptation (the drop in performance after a change) and reacquisition adaptation (the slope of performance after the change) via its effect on task mental models and transactive memory systems. We conducted a longitudinal experimental study of 44 three-person teams working on an emergency management simulation. Findings suggest that the concept mapping intervention promotes reacquisition adaptation, task mental models, and transactive memory systems. Results also suggest that task mental models mediate the effect of the concept mapping intervention on reacquisition adaptation. A post hoc analysis suggests that the concept mapping intervention is only effective if it leads to high task mental model accuracy. Our study presents concept mapping as a practical intervention to promote shared cognition and reacquisition adaptation.

The four-phase team adaptation process: a first empirical investigation

Purpose Several theoretical models have been developed to describe the process of successful team adaptation. Testing the models through empirical research is lacking. This study aims to empirically examine the way teams adapt to unexpected or novel circumstances and investigate the four-phase team adaptation process (i.e. situation assessment → plan formulation → plan execution → team learning), as proposed by Rosen et al. (2011). Design/methodology/approach To test the positive relationship between the four team adaptation phases and their suggested sequence, a cross-sectional field study was conducted. Data were collected from 23 teams participating during an 8-week team project. Findings Results from random intercept models confirmed that the team adaptation process consisted of four phases that were positively related to each other. As expected, plan formulation mediated the positive relationship between situation assessment and plan execution. However, team learning was independently related to all three previous phases, and not only to situation assessment as theory suggests. Originality/value To the best of the authors’ knowledge, the present study is one of the first attempts to test the theoretical model of the team adaptation process presented by Rosen et al. (2011). Findings illustrated that the team adaptation process is not a simple four-phase sequence, but it constitutes four dynamic phases that are strongly interrelated to each other.

The Joint Effects of Leadership Style and Magnitude of the Disruption on Team Adaptation: A Longitudinal Experiment

Here, we report a longitudinal experiment testing the combined effects of leadership style and the magnitude of the disruption on team adaptive performance over time. We hypothesized that teams led by a directive leader would outperform teams led by an empowering leader when task conditions do not change (pre-change), while teams with an empowering leader would outperform teams with a directive leader under changing task conditions (post-change), especially when task changes are high in magnitude. To test our hypotheses, we conducted a 2 (leadership: directive/empowering) x 2 (magnitude of the disruption: low/high) experiment with repeated measures of team performance before and after the change occurred. Sixty-seven three-member teams participated in a computer-based firefighting simulation. Evidence from discontinuous growth modeling partially supported our hypotheses by showing that before the task change, directively led teams outperformed teams led by an empowering leader. After the task change, however, directively led teams still outperformed teams with empowering leaders. The magnitude of the disruption had a significant main effect on team adaptive performance but did not significantly moderate the effect of leadership style. Implications for the team adaptation literature and the management of teams under complex, changing conditions are discussed.