Creative credits:a randomized controlled industrial policy experiment

This report examines the results of a pilot study, which used a method of evaluation called randomised control trials (RCTs) to see if a popular business support scheme called Creative Credits worked effectively. The pilot study, which began in Manchester in 2009, was structured so that vouchers, or 'Creative Credits', would be randomly allocated to small and medium-sized businesses applying to invest in creative projects such as developing websites, video production and creative marketing campaigns, to see if they had a real effect on innovation. The research found that the firms who were awarded Creative Credits enjoyed a short-term boost in their innovation and sales growth in the six months following completion of their creative projects. However, the positive effects were not sustained, and after 12 months there was no longer a statistically significant difference between the groups that received the credits and those that didn’t. The report argues that these results would have remained hidden using the normal evaluation methods used by government, and calls for RCTs to be used more widely when evaluating policies to support business growth.

Positive mood is not always good:the role of team mood and work stressors for creative work performance

Presentation of an abstract

Teams, HRM and innovation:an organisation-level analysis

For organizations to survive and prosper they have to develop new and improved products, services and ways of working. Innovation is vital for organizational survival. Much research and managerial attention is therefore devoted to understanding the factors that predict innovation in organizations. This paper describes a research study of product innovation in manufacturing organizations and explores the extent to which team based working and team working effectiveness in these organizations predict product innovation. It also considers whether combinations of good HRM systems and practices, extensive team based working and effective team working are associated with product innovation.

Knowledge transfer in globally distributed teams:the role of transactive memory

This paper explores the role of transactive memory in enabling knowledge transfer between globally distributed teams. While the information systems literature has recently acknowledged the role transactive memory plays in improving knowledge processes and performance in colocated teams, little is known about its contribution to distributed teams. To contribute to filling this gap, knowledge-transfer challenges and processes between onsite and offshore teams were studied at TATA Consultancy Services. In particular, the paper describes the transfer of knowledge between onsite and offshore teams through encoding, storing and retrieving processes. An in-depth case study of globally distributed software development projects was carried out, and a qualitative, interpretive approach was adopted. The analysis of the case suggests that in order to overcome differences derived from the local contexts of the onsite and offshore teams (e.g. different work routines, methodologies and skills), some specific mechanisms supporting the development of codified and personalized ‘directories’ were introduced. These include the standardization of templates and methodologies across the remote sites as well as frequent teleconferencing sessions and occasional short visits. These mechanisms contributed to the development of the notion of ‘who knows what’ across onsite and offshore teams despite the challenges associated with globally distributed teams, and supported the transfer of knowledge between onsite and offshore teams. The paper concludes by offering theoretical and practical implications.

Are we on the same page? Knowledge boundaries and transactive memory system development in cross-functional teams

One of the key challenges that organizations face when trying to integrate knowledge across different functions is the need to overcome knowledge boundaries between team members. In cross-functional teams, these boundaries, associated with different knowledge backgrounds of people from various disciplines, create communication problems, necessitating team members to engage in complex cognitive processes when integrating knowledge toward a joint outcome. This research investigates the impact of syntactic, semantic, and pragmatic knowledge boundaries on a team’s ability to develop a transactive memory system (TMS)—a collective memory system for knowledge coordination in groups. Results from our survey show that syntactic and pragmatic knowledge boundaries negatively affect TMS development. These findings extend TMS theory beyond the information-processing view, which treats knowledge as an object that can be stored and retrieved, to the interpretive and practice-based views of knowledge, which recognize that knowledge (in particular specialized knowledge) is localized, situated, and embedded in practice.

The effectiveness of teams in organizations:a meta-analysis

The proposed meta-analysis of 61 independent samples aims to identify whether, and if so under what conditions, team working in organizations is related to organizational effectiveness. Team working had a significant though small positive relationship with both performance outcomes and staff attitudes. Our contingency analyses further showed that team working had a stronger relationship with performance outcomes if accompanied by complementary HR measures and in non-health-care settings. Finally, we found that team working is more strongly related to attitudinal outcomes in Sociotechnical Systems and health-care settings. © 2011 Taylor & Francis.

Fostering team creativity:perspective taking as key to unlocking diversity's potential

Despite the clear importance of team creativity for organizations, the conditions that foster it are not very well understood. Even though diversity, especially diversity of perspectives and knowledge, is frequently argued to stimulate higher creativity in teams, empirical findings on this relationship remain inconsistent. We have developed a theoretical model in which the effect of a team's diversity on its creativity is moderated by the degree to which team members engage in perspective taking. We propose that perspective taking helps realize the creative benefits of diversity of perspectives by fostering information elaboration. Results of a laboratory experiment support the hypothesized interaction between diversity and perspective taking on team creativity. Diverse teams performed more creatively than homogeneous teams when they engaged in perspective taking, but not when they were not instructed to take their team members' perspectives. Team information elaboration was found to mediate this moderated effect and was associated with a stronger indirect effect than mere information sharing or task conflict. Our results point to perspective taking as an important mechanism to unlock diversity's potential for team creativity. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)

[Aston business school intercultural training activities include research-informed modules for overseas students to help them adapt to uk study practices and approaches, and innovative sessions with artists and actors in intercultural teams]

Case study in the annex of the symposium report

Who wants to be the leader? The discursive construction of emerging leadership in differently gendered teams

Increasingly, scholars are contesting the value of grand theories of leadership in favour of a social constructionist approach that posits the centrality of language for ‘doing’ leadership. This article investigates the extent to which the linguistic enactment of leadership is often gendered, which may have consequences for the career progression of women business leaders. Drawing on a UK-based study of three teams with different gender compositions (men-only; women-only and mixed gender), I use an Interactional Sociolinguistic framework to compare what leadership ‘looks and sounds like’ during the course of a competitive, leadership task. My findings show that the linguistic construction of leadership varies considerably within each team although not always in conventionally gendered ways. The study potentially provides linguistic insights on the business issue of why so few women progress from middle management to senior leadership roles.

Knowledge transfer in website design:exploring the processes and benefits of design collaboration for non-creative Micros

This thesis explores the interaction between Micros (<10 employees) from non-creative sectors and website designers ("Creatives") that occurred when creating a website of a higher order than a basic template site. The research used Straussian Grounded Theory Method with a longitudinal design, in order to identify what knowledge transferred to the Micros during the collaboration, how it transferred, what factors affected the transfer and outcomes of the transfer including behavioural additionality. To identify whether the research could be extended beyond this, five other design areas were also examined, as well as five Small to Medium Enterprises (SMEs) engaged in website and branding projects. The findings were that, at the start of the design process, many Micros could not articulate their customer knowledge, and had poor marketing and visual language skills, knowledge core to web design, enabling targeted communication to customers through images. Despite these gaps, most Micros still tried to lead the process. To overcome this disjoint, the majority of the designers used a knowledge transfer strategy termed in this thesis as ‘Bi-Modal Knowledge Transfer’, where the Creative was aware of the transfer but the Micro was unaware, both for drawing out customer knowledge from the Micro and for transferring visual language skills to the Micro. Two models were developed to represent this process. Two models were also created to map changes in the knowledge landscapes of customer knowledge and visual language – the Knowledge Placement Model and the Visual Language Scale. The Knowledge Placement model was used to map the placement of customer knowledge within the consciousness, extending the known Automatic-Unconscious -Conscious model, adding two more locations – Peripheral Consciousness and Occasional Consciousness. Peripheral Consciousness is where potential knowledge is held, but not used. Occasional Consciousness is where potential knowledge is held but used only for specific tasks. The Visual Language Scale was created to measure visual language ability from visually responsive, where the participant only responds personally to visual symbols, to visually multi-lingual, where the participant can use visual symbols to communicate with multiple thought-worlds. With successful Bi-Modal Knowledge Transfer, the outcome included not only an effective website but also changes in the knowledge landscape for the Micros and ongoing behavioural changes, especially in marketing. These effects were not seen in the other design projects, and only in two of the SME projects. The key factors for this difference between SMEs and Micros appeared to be an expectation of knowledge by the Creatives and failure by the SMEs to transfer knowledge within the company.

The relationship between student-centred lectures, emotional intelligence, and study teams:a social telemetry study with mobile telephony

A student-centred approach to teaching has been conceptualized as a key driver in higher education to facilitate understanding of concepts and improve attainment. The occurrence of student study team behaviours is diagnostic of this approach to teaching. However, the extent to which team behaviours are performed outside the parameters of formal teacher-learner environments remains under-researched. This is problematic as it is unclear whether study teams are maintained outside the confines of lectures, and the extent to which they impact on individual student grades. A naturalistic observational study was carried out that utilized short message text service communication as a means to record the frequency of team behaviours within informal environments. The findings suggest the frequency of team behaviours: 1) were positively associated with student grades; 2) increased after lectures independently rated as low in employing a student-centred focus; and 3) were facilitated by students' trait emotional intelligence.

Leaders' sensemaking under crises:emerging cognitive consensus over time within management teams

When facing a crisis, leaders' sensemaking can take a considerable amount of time due to the need to develop consensus in how to deal with it so that vision formation and sensegiving can take place. However, research into emerging cognitive consensus when leaders deal with a crisis over time is lacking. This is limiting a detailed understanding of how organizations respond to crises. The findings, based on a longitudinal analysis of cognitive maps within three management teams at a single organization, highlight considerable individual differences in cognitive content when starting to make sense of a crisis. Evidence for an emerging viable prescriptive mental model for the future was found, but not so much in the management as a whole. Instead, the findings highlight increasing cognitive consensus based on similarities in objectives and cause-effect beliefs within well-defined management teams over time.