The Role of Leader Boundary Activities in Enhancing Interdisciplinary Team Effectiveness

Abstract

This study examined how leaders’ internal and external activities mediate the relationship of functional heterogeneity and interteam goal interdependence to team effectiveness (in-role performance and innovation) in interdisciplinary teams. The results of the structural equation model from a sample of 92 interdisciplinary teams indicate that leaders’ internal activities fully mediate the relationship of team functional heterogeneity and interteam goal interdependence to team in-role performance. The leaders’ external activities were found to fully mediate the relationship of interteam goal interdependence to team innovation. We discuss the implications of these findings for both theory and practice.

Team Leader Structuring for Team Effectiveness and Team Learning in Command-and-Control Teams

“…This result confirms the statements of Van Wart and Kapucu (2011), who argued that high-level effective team leaders in the emergency management context use more directive leadership behaviors. With such behaviors, they support the development of a shared understanding of the task and goal (Benoliel & Somech, 2014; Burke et al, 2006; Keller, 2006) and facilitate accurate decision making (Alexander, 2004; DeChurch & Marks, 2006; Ericsson, Charness, Feltovich, & Hoffmann, 2006). …”

Interdisciplinarity and Team Innovation: The Role of Team Experiential and Relational Resources

“…The use of interdisciplinary teams and research on team interdisciplinarity is growing in popularity, although most of this research has been conceptual or has tested hypotheses in the context of interdisciplinary teams rather than exploring the mechanisms of interdisciplinarity that make these teams maximally effective (cf. Benoliel & Somech, 2015; Salazar et al, 2012; Yong et al, 2014). Importantly, team interdisciplinarity is a matter of degree, and conceptualizing it as such can open a new line of inquiry in the study of interdisciplinary teams.…”

“…This study examines the conditions under which interdisciplinarity enhances innovation. Following prior research, this study conceptualizes innovation in interdisciplinary teams as teams’ ability to generate solutions, inventions, or ideas that are not only novel, but also useful (Benoliel & Somech, 2015; West, 2002). In this context, patents provide an objective measure of innovation because of their ability to assess both novelty and usefulness.…”

“…Team innovativeness—the ability to generate novel and useful solutions, inventions, or ideas—is a recombinatorial process (Benoliel & Somech, 2015; van Knippenberg, 2017), so differences in team members’ expertise present an opportunity for novel solutions (Fleming, 2001; West, 2002). If team members share similar expertise, then the knowledge among members is largely redundant and the team may lack the requisite variety needed for effective recombination (Fleming, 2001).…”

Participation in decision-making processes of community development agents: a study from Peru

“…The narrative and arguments developed and gathered in the dialogical focus groups clearly demonstrated that CDAs recognized the factors influencing good governance and participatory management, as put forward by Goldsmith and Clutterbuck (1998): leadership, autonomy and control. However, leadership is still being exercised through a one-way, top-down managerial style, rather than engaging leadership behaviours to support group effectiveness, as well as team leadership activities which potentially shape emergent cognition and behavioural processes that facilitate team effectiveness (Benoliel andSomech 2015, citing Kozlowski et al, 2009). Regarding autonomy, this is perceived as dysfunctional, when it reinforces individualistic behaviours which limit learning and teaching opportunities among group members.…”