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This paper examines how teams manage temporal ambivalence, or the simultaneous and conflicting perceptions of time as a resource, including how much time has passed and whether there is enough of it left. Team members' time perceptions influence how a team manages time; thus, effective time management requires some collective resolution of temporal ambivalence. To study the effects of temporal ambivalence on time management processes and performance in teams, we conducted a laboratory study in which we manipulated perceptions of time by engineering a wall clock to run at different speeds (normal, fast, or slow) to instantiate different types of temporal ambivalence. Using both quantitative and qualitative analyses, we found that managing temporal ambivalence effectively is essential for teams to appropriately allocate time to different phases of work. Specifically, teams often misallocated their time by either transitioning too late or too early between phases of work, both of which were associated with worse team performance than transitioning closer to the temporal midpoint. Teams with heightened temporal ambivalence were more likely to manage time poorly following one or more of three dysfunctional patterns: bypassing comments, glossing over contradictions, and following passively. By contrast, teams that managed temporal ambivalence effectively did so through time management huddles, in which team members briefly and collectively took time away from the main task to explicitly discuss how to allocate their time. We discuss the implications of these findings for research on team process, ambivalence, and time management in organizations. Funding: This work was supported by Harvard University, INSEAD, and the UCL School of Management. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This research examines the relative power of the attraction-selection framework and the job-modification framework in explaining the relationship between several properties of organizational structure (i.e., size, number of hierarchical levels, formalization, centralization) and employee reactions to the work and the work context. The attraction-selection framework suggests that organizations with certain structural properties attract and/or select employees with particular personal attributes. These attributes, in turn, are associated with employee reactions. The job-modification framework posits that structural properties affect the characteristics of employees' jobs. These job characteristics, in turn, are associated with employee reactions. Data were collected from 2,960 employees working on 428 jobs in 36 organizations. Results show that the job-modification framework better explains the relationship between organizational structure and employee reactions than does the attraction-selection framework. Most effective, however, is a framework that combines the attraction- selection and job-modification frameworks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It is time to move beyond standard conceptual and research paradigms in scientific work on group behavior and performance to better align our models and methods with the phenomena we are studying. Cause-effect models are of limited use in conducting research and generating useable theory about group behavior and performance. This paper proposes and illustrates an alternative conceptual approach that focuses on the conditions within which groups chart their own courses. The paper suggests three implications of a condition-focused approach for those who create, lead, and serve in purposive groups, and closes with a discussion of the conceptual challenges that must be overcome if the potential of a condition-focused approach is to be realized. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This summary commentary explores the likely future directions of research and theory on the design of organizational work. We give special attention to the social aspects of contemporary work, the process by which jobholders craft their own jobs, the changing contexts within which work is performed, and the increasing prominence of work that is performed by teams rather than individuals. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Five questions prompted by the articles in the American Psychologist special issue on leadership (January 2007, Vol. 62, No. 1) suggest some new directions for leadership research: (1) Not do leaders make a difference, but under what conditions does leadership matter? (2) Not what are the traits of leaders, but how do leaders' personal attributes interact with situational properties to shape outcomes? (3) Not do there exist common dimensions on which all leaders can be arrayed, but are good and poor leadership qualitatively different phenomena? (4) Not how do leaders and followers differ, but how can leadership models be reformulated so they treat all system members as both leaders and followers? (5) Not what should be taught in leadership courses, but how can leaders be helped to learn? [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Scholars generally conduct research at a single level of analysis (such as the individual, the group, or the organization level), although they often turn to the next-lower level for explanatory mechanisms. I suggest that robust understanding of social and organizational dynamics requires attention to higher as well as lower levels of analysis. The benefits of research and theory that 'brackets' one's focal phenomenon by attending to constructs at both higher and lower levels of analyses are illustrated with findings from research on aircraft cockpit crews, hospital patient care teams, and professional musical ensembles. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While expectancy theory has been prominent in the psychological literature for some time, there has been relatively little research on the useful of the theory in predicting behavior in non-laboratory (i.e., "real- world") situations. Using measurement techniques adapted from Fishbein's (1963) attitude theory, expectancy theory predictions were made of the work effectiveness of a group of 82 telephone company service representatives. The predictions were found to relate significantly to ratings of job involvement and effort, company performance appraisals, and error and sales data. Implications of the methodology and results of the study for diagnosing and changing the level of effort put forth by individuals in performance situations were suggested. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]