Method
Sample This article reports the results of a laboratory study of 20 work teams. The team members were students in an undergraduate management class at a large univer- sity in the Southwestern United States. The individuals were on average 24.9 years old, and half of them were women. Teams ranged from three to five members with an average size of four. All teams had gender and ethnical diversity represented within their team. The instructor did not choose the team members; instead, teams were allowed to form on a voluntary basis. Throughout 16 weeks, the teams competed against one another in various activities, including the cre- ation, design, and construction of products and ser- vices. The competitions included activities designed by the instructor, which included creating a clothing article; building a novel, model piece of furniture; and designing and building a bridge. The activities also included competitions chosen by the teams, which included writing a children’s story, developing a slo- gan for their university, and creating a music video. All teams took these activities very seriously as they represented a significant proportion of their final course grade. The only role of the instructor during these competitions was to facilitate timing, bring in the necessary materials for each team, and provide a general idea of what the tasks were. The teams were self-managed in that the instructor did not assign roles,provide goals,or provide suggestions about how the team should manage itself, communicate, or inter- act. Each team had complete autonomy in establishing how and to what extent it would meet its goals.
Data Sources Surveys. The team members filled out surveys measuring collective efficacy, relational conflict, and transactive memory system. Participants responded to theitems using a 7-point Likert scale,with 1 =strongly disagree and 7 = strongly agree.
Collective efficacy. Collective efficacy was mea- sured using the competency items of Spreitzer’s (1995) measure of psychological empowerment. Spreitzer generated these items based on Gist’s (1987) definition of efficacy. The three items were adapted to measure team efficacy (competency) rather than at the individual level.
Relational conflict. Relational conflict was mea- sured by an adapted version of a three-item scale ini- tially developed by Jehn (1999) and revalidated by Pearson, Ensley, and Amason (2002). The items were aggregated and averaged to measure relational conflict.
Transactive memory system. Transactive memory was measured using three items adopted from Faraj and Sproull (1998) and used by Yoo and Kanawattanachai (2001). The scale captures the extent to which team members perceive that they know who possesses what knowledge in the team. The team members’responses were averaged to attain an overall team score for transactive memory system. Please see Appendix A for a list of the items and their respective Cronbach’s alphas. Interrater agree- ment was calculated for each variable for each team to ensure the appropriateness of aggregating individ- ual responses to the team level of analysis using the James, Demaree, and Wolf (1984) procedure. All interrater measures for all teams and constructs were above .75,which indicates aggregation is appropriate.
Role charts. Each team reported on who fulfilled various roles using a sociogram nominating process. Each team member reported on his or her role on the team and also the roles of teammates. Reports of leadership behavior were evaluated using content analysis. A team was considered to have shared lead- ership if at least 50% of the team members identified multiple individuals as their leaders. Teams in which only one leader was identified are categorized in the nonshared leadership group.
Journal entries. Team processes were also measured by examining a journal that each team member kept. That is, the journal entries were used as another way to capture the team members’ sense of team process and as a check on the emergence of a single leader or shared leadership. The team members were free to describe their team’s functioning any way they wished, and again,content analysis was used to document the emer- gence of either a single leader or shared leadership within each team. Journal entries were not shared with teammates to encourage forthrightness and honesty in the team’s assessment:Only the instructor saw the jour- nal entries. Sample comments from the journals are presented in Appendix B. Overall, the leadership pat- terns (either single leader or shared leadership) were both clearly and consistently reported in the journals.
Control Variables Control variables were used in this study to account for possible variations in regard to team size and whether the individuals had been on teams together before. Team size may impact team processes because those with more members may be better able to share the workload, or conversely, smaller teams might be easier to manage. Team size was calculated as the total number of group members. Whether the individuals had been on teams together before might impact the teams’ processes because some aspects of motiva- tional, cognitive, and social development may be pre- sent within those members because they have already worked together. The participants were asked to answer yes or no to “Have you ever worked with any of your teammates before this class?” Prior team experience was determined by calculating the percent- age of team members who had worked with other members prior to this particular class.
Data Analysis Analysis of variance was used to test collective efficacy, relational conflict, and transactive memory system for differences between teams with shared leadership and teams with a single (i.e., nonshared) leader. First, the teams were assigned to one of two categories: shared leadership or nonshared leader- ship. Of the teams, 11 identified only one leader and thus were assigned to the nonshared leadership cate- gory; 9 of the teams were assigned to the shared lead- ership category because at least two leaders were identified by more than 50% of their team members.
Results Table 1 presents the descriptive and correlation information for all variables. Table 2 presents the