Paul E. Tesluk - US grants

This project proposes a study of how firms search for and discover opportunities to innovate. More specifically, the researchers seek to understand the role of employee motivation in this process. Building on behavioral research on individual-level innovativeness and search research on organizational-level innovation, they ask how intrinsically-motivated employees search for innovations, and how their process differs from that of extrinsically-motivated employees. The project will also examine whether differences in motivation can explain the occurrence of more radical innovations. Three topics are to be examined:
1. What are the characteristics and phases of the search and discovery process?
2. How and in what ways is motivation linked to the search and discovery process?
3. Can the search and discovery process be outsourced?
Two detailed case studies, a field study and laboratory studies will be utilized to obtain important new multilevel, real-world evidence of the search and discovery process, in contrast to much past individual-level work on innovation which has been based primarily on laboratory studies. These extensions of existing theory will help to establish the role of individual and firm determinants of search and their interdependencies. This is the first study that examines individual search processes related to intrinsic/extrinsic motivation and resultant radicality of innovation. The study will also extend inquiry beyond problem-solving to other significant, but less-researched phases of the innovation search process, and provide evidence for how to select for and motivate people in teams that target different types of innovations.

0452984 Seo Abstract

This project explores the effects of senior and middle managers' leadership on employees' emotional experiences, attitudes, and behavior in work groups during radical organizational change. Drawing on theories of organizational change and leadership in the field of organizational behavior and of emotion in the fields of psychology and neurobiology, we predict how and why middle managers' leadership behaviors (transformational, transactional, and emotional intelligence) will influence their employees' affective experiences during radical organizational change, either by alleviating negative affect (e.g., anxiety) and/or by inducing positive affect (e.g., excitement). Further hypotheses address a resulting chain of relationships from their affective experience to their attitudes toward change (openness to change and commitment to change), to their behavioral support for the change, defined in terms of cooperativeness and innovativeness, ultimately to employee enactment of the change, a performance outcome at the work group level, defined as the extent to which a radical, significant, and sustainable change is established in their daily work processes.

The multi-disciplinary research team combines a strong knowledge of the organizational change, emotion, leadership, and teams literatures with more than two decades of experience in conducting large-scale field studies. This team will empirically test these hypotheses on a number of work groups within a large US government agency undergoing radical organizational transformation. The research methodology will include an experience sampling procedure to assess employee affective experience, employee self-reports of attitudes and behaviors in support for the change, the employee assessment of middle managers' leadership behaviors, and the middle managers' assessment of their senior managers.

The intellectual merit of this research lies in its explication of the rarely studied, but critical role of employees' affective experience and senior and middle managers' leadership in radical organizational change. Findings will also enrich and inform theories of emotion in the field of psychology by examining attitudinal and behavioral consequences of affective experiences in a real- time, high-stress situation.

This research also will have an important and broad impact at the societal level for those who face the enormous challenge of radical organizational change in the private, non-profit, and public sectors. In addition to students' dissertation research, presentations at national conferences, and scholarly publications, results will be disseminated through a three-day research-to-practice conference on the role of middle manager leadership and work group affective experience in successful organizational change.

The connection between shared or distributed leadership and virtual team effectiveness is growing more important as complex world issues increasingly require distributed collaboration. Organizational researchers lack an understanding of the causes and consequences of the distribution of influence across team members in distributed virtual teams. Taking a multidisciplinary approach, this research investigates shared leadership within the sociotechnical paradigm, integrating perspectives from shared leadership, empowerment, group process, and media choice theories. This research examines a set of antecedents and outcomes of shared leadership in virtual tams, combining a pair of controlled lab studies with a field study to look at generalizability of the principles learned from the lab studies. These three studies systematically examine the combined effects of communication medium, initiating mechanisms, group processes and structure on team effectiveness. The first study manipulates introductory meeting communication medium and the use of initiating mechanisms (such as goal clarification) to identify their impact on shared leadership among team members engaged in a sophisticated decision making simulation. This study traces the development of group processes and shared leadership over the course of the simulation and their impact on team knowledge sharing, performance, and viability. A second lab study evaluates the extent to which empowering (versus directive) leadership by an appointed leader enables shared leadership among virtual team members, particularly within the context of initiating mechanisms. A third field study assesses the influence of distributed expertise and extent of geographical dispersion on shared leadership patterns to evaluate the impact of shared leadership on team effectiveness among intact organizational virtual teams.

These findings will contribute to knowledge concerning how virtual team leadership, processes and structure interact with computer and communication support technology to affect team performance. Organizations are increasingly relying upon virtual teams and the results of this research will have a broad impact on the scientists, engineers, managers, members of the workforce, and students engaged in these activities. This project will provide evidence-based guidelines for organizing, managing, and working in virtual teams. It will enhance practitioners' understanding of the form(s) of leadership best suited for particular types of virtual teams and the corresponding processes and structures required for effective performance. Research results will be integrated into undergraduate and graduate curriculum and made available through alumni workshops. In addition, the project will contribute directly to the education of three graduate students and two undergraduate students by providing a high quality research experience. The results of this research can inform the policy makers and technical developers who shape collaborative infrastructure, incentives, and processes enabling more effective virtual teams and enhancing innovation and competitiveness.