Abstract
The increasing prevalence of team-based organizations places a premium on leadership that will "mind the gap" and enable smooth synchronization of activities across multiple distinct teams. Prior work shows that leaders can be trained to directly facilitate between-team coordination processes. Yet, relatively little is known about the intervening psychological mechanisms that enable between-team coordination. Here, we advance multiteam-interaction mental models-cognitive structures containing knowledge of appropriate between-team activities-as one mechanism that facilitates coordination among multiple teams. We use leader and team cognition data gathered in DeChurch and Marks' (2006) MTS study to test these ideas. Results reveal leaders' multiteam-interaction mental model accuracy "transfers" to teams through strategic communication, and leader strategic communication enables between-team coordination by promoting accuracy in followers' mental models. This study highlights the importance of leadership for developing collective cognition that allows teams to "scale up" from small stand-alone teams to larger and more complex systems.
| Original language | English (US) |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 972-986 |
| Number of pages | 15 |
| Journal | Leadership Quarterly |
| Volume | 25 |
| Issue number | 5 |
| DOIs | |
| State | Published - 2014 |
Funding
This research was funded in part by the Air Force Office for Sponsored Research Contract F49620-98-1-0278. The views expressed in this article are those of the authors and do not reflect the official policy or position of the U.S. Air Force, Department of Defense, or U.S. government. This research was supported in part by the Army Research Institute for the Social and Behavioral Sciences under contract W5J9CQ12C0017. The views, opinions, and/or findings contained in this report are those of the authors, and should not be construed as an official Department of the Army position, policy, or decision, unless so designated by other documents. This material is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation under Grant No. SES-1219469. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation.
Keywords
- Leader strategic communication
- Multiteam systems
- Multiteam-interaction mental models
ASJC Scopus subject areas
- Business and International Management
- Applied Psychology
- Sociology and Political Science
- Organizational Behavior and Human Resource Management