Collaboration, either formal or discretionary (informally approaching others for guidance, information or assistance), is considered a virtue in today’s workplace. The advantages of collaboration are many, ranging from creativity and knowledge sharing, to teamwork, employee engagement and improved long-term results. However, an in-depth study of the interaction of physicians and health care personnel in one […]
Read More… from The Overlooked Productivity Costs of Collaboration
As team members work on various (team) tasks and project, conflicts can arise over issues such as, for example, how the work should be done, or the best way to achieve results. While solutions can emerge from productive give-and-take, task-related conflicts tend to slide into personal relationship conflicts. This occurs for several reasons. Often, work criticisms […]
Read More… from How to Avoid Task Conflicts Damaging Team Relationships
Every organization has finite resources, starting with compensation, budgets and expense accounts, as well as high quality assignments, accounts or customers and even office space. The people who control the allocation of these resources have a great deal of power — and research shows that they use this power to make decisions that are in […]
Read More… from Candid Feedback Keeps Power-holders Accountable
Many project managers are now working with contract or distant employees who have some autonomy in how they plan out the assignment. These projects required highly skilled workers but often are not exciting enough to be intrinsically motivating. Examples include information technology or business process outsourcing projects. New research explores the implications of this type […]
Read More… from How to Use Compensation and Team Composition to Manage Procrastination
Conventional wisdom has it that diversity helps creativity, in that people in homogenous groups are similar to one another with similar ideas and therefore less divergent thinking occurs. Also most research into group creativity assumes that creativity is unleashed by removing conventional constraints. This research, from Professor Jennifer Chatman of the UC Berkeley Haas School […]
Read More… from How Political Correctness Increases Creativity in Mixed-Sex Teams
There is no doubt that social media has improved both internal and external corporate communication, especially for multinational companies. Social media has, for example, enabled corporations to increase opportunities for two-way communication with their customers at a low cost. However, customers using social media communicate in their own language, which means that a social media […]
Read More… from The Language Challenge for Social Media in Multinationals
Why don’t many employees say something when they see something wrong in the workplace, or when they are unfairly attacked by their boss? Why do they sit silent in meetings even though they may have a relevant suggestion or comment to add to the discussion? These are examples of defensive employee silence, when employees stay […]
Read More… from Overcoming Our Evolutionary Fears to Speak Up to Authority
Why do employees choose to stay silent instead of reporting a problem, expressing their differing opinion or offering suggestions? Past research has examined this issue from a variety of perspectives, including the role of fear in keeping employees silent. Elizabeth Morrison of NYU’s Stern School of Business, joined by her colleagues Kelly See of NYU […]
Read More… from Encouraging Employees Who Stay Silent to Give Feedback
Workplace conflicts are, unfortunately, a common and difficult problem for managers. The traditional approach to resolving conflict is to examine the content of the conflict: what are you fighting about, and how can we reach some kind of agreement or resolution about this topic? Past research has focused on helping managers effectively manoeuvre this conversation. […]
Read More… from How to Resolve Workplace Conflicts by Addressing Conflict Expression
In most hierarchies, power is malleable, which means that it can change. A leader at the top can lose his or her power, and be replaced by subordinates who have, usually through their superior skills and accomplishments, managed to rise through the hierarchy. One of the characteristics of highly skilled subordinates is their ability to […]
