How the Entrepreneurial Top Management Team Setup Influences Firm Performance and the Ability to Raise Capital: A Literature Review

This paper reviews research findings on entrepreneurial top management teams within the last 20 years. It concentrates on team-based management factors and their influence on a new venture’s growth and ability to raise capital. This paper integrates recent findings and provides an overview of the current state of research. Moreover, it contributes to the overall topic by proposing five clusters of major team-specific influences, derives determinants of success and failure, and reveals recommendations for further research.

Safety climate and its association with office type and team involvement in primary care

OBJECTIVE To assess differences in safety climate perceptions between occupational groups and types of office organization in primary care. METHODS Primary care physicians and nurses working in outpatient offices were surveyed about safety climate. Explorative factor analysis was performed to determine the factorial structure. Differences in mean climate scores between staff groups and types of office were tested. Logistic regression analysis was conducted to determine predictors for a 'favorable' safety climate. RESULTS 630 individuals returned the survey (response rate, 50%). Differences between occupational groups were observed in the means of the 'team-based error prevention'-scale (physician 4.0 vs. nurse 3.8, P < 0.001). Medical centers scored higher compared with single-handed offices and joint practices on the 'team-based error prevention'-scale (4.3 vs. 3.8 vs. 3.9, P < 0.001) but less favorable on the 'rules and risks'-scale (3.5 vs. 3.9 vs. 3.7, P < 0.001). Characteristics on the individual and office level predicted favorable 'team-based error prevention'-scores. Physicians (OR = 0.4, P = 0.01) and less experienced staff (OR 0.52, P = 0.04) were less likely to provide favorable scores. Individuals working at medical centers were more likely to provide positive scores compared with single-handed offices (OR 3.33, P = 0.001). The largest positive effect was associated with at least monthly team meetings (OR 6.2, P < 0.001) and participation in quality circles (OR 4.49, P < 0.001). CONCLUSIONS Results indicate that frequent quality circle participation and team meetings involving all team members are effective ways to strengthen safety climate in terms of team-based strategies and activities in error prevention.

A Team-Oriented Investigation of ERP Post-Implementation Integration Projects: How Cross-Functional Collaboration Influences ERP Benefits

The benefits companies achieve by implementing an ERP system vary considerably. Many companies need to adapt their ERP integration solution in the post-implementation stage. But after the completion of such a usually very complex integration project, benefits do not emerge by all means. A misfit between the organization and the IS, especially the aspect of cross-functional team collaboration, could explain these divergences. Using an initial theoretical framework, we conducted a single case study to explore the team-oriented perceptions in a post-implementation ERP integration project. To analyze the benefits and the influences in greater depth we disentangled the integration benefits into their particular parts (process, system and information quality). Our findings show that post-implementation ERP integration changes are not always perceived as beneficiary by the involved teams and that cross-functional collaboration has an important influence.

Information Integration Theory and the Construction of Individually Perceived Group Efficacy

According to Bandura (1997) efficacy beliefs are a primary determinant of motivation. Still, very little is known about the processes through which people integrate situational factors to form efficacy beliefs (Myers & Feltz, 2007). The aim of this study was to gain insight into the cognitive construction of subjective group-efficacy beliefs. Only with a sound understanding of those processes is there a sufficient base to derive psychological interventions aimed at group-efficacy beliefs. According to cognitive theories (e.g., Miller, Galanter, & Pribram, 1973) individual group-efficacy beliefs can be seen as the result of a comparison between the demands of a group task and the resources of the performing group. At the center of this comparison are internally represented structures of the group task and plans to perform it. The empirical plausibility of this notion was tested using functional measurement theory (Anderson, 1981). Twenty-three students (M = 23.30 years; SD = 3.39; 35 % females) of the University of Bern repeatedly judged the efficacy of groups in different group tasks. The groups consisted of the subjects and another one to two fictive group members. The latter were manipulated by their value (low, medium, high) in task-relevant abilities. Data obtained from multiple full factorial designs were structured with individuals as second level units and analyzed using mixed linear models. The task-relevant abilities of group members, specified as fixed factors, all had highly significant effects on subjects’ group-efficacy judgments. The effect sizes of the ability factors showed to be dependent on the respective abilities’ importance in a given task. In additive tasks (Steiner, 1972) group resources were integrated in a linear fashion whereas significant interaction between factors was obtained in interdependent tasks. The results also showed that people take into account other group members’ efficacy beliefs when forming their own group-efficacy beliefs. The results support the notion that personal group-efficacy beliefs are obtained by comparing the demands of a task with the performing groups’ resources. Psychological factors such as other team members’ efficacy beliefs are thereby being considered task relevant resources and affect subjective group-efficacy beliefs. This latter finding underlines the adequacy of multidimensional measures. While the validity of collective efficacy measures is usually estimated by how well they predict performances, the results of this study allow for a somewhat internal validity criterion. It is concluded that Information Integration Theory holds potential to further help understand people’s cognitive functioning in sport relevant situations.

Failure cue priming and impaired cognitive performance—analyses of avoidance motivation as a mediator and fear of failure as a moderator.

The present research investigates whether and how learned symbols for failure reduce task performance. We tested the effect of number priming in two countries with different learning histories for numbers. Priming numbers associated with failure (6 in Germany and 1 in Switzerland) were hypothesized to reduce performance. As expected, in Switzerland, priming with the failure number 1 reduced performance (Study 1), whereas in Germany, priming with the failure number 6 impaired performance in analogy tasks (Study 2). Study 2 additionally analyzed the mechanism and showed that the relationship between failure number priming and performance was mediated by evoked avoidance motivation and that dispositional fear of failure moderated this mediation.

Efficient team actions: Outline of a theory of teams in sport

So far, social psychology in sport has preliminary focused on team cohesion, and many studies and meta analyses tried to demonstrate a relation between cohesiveness of a team and it's performance. How a team really co-operates and how the individual actions are integrated towards a team action is a question that has received relatively little attention in research. This may, at least in part, be due to a lack of a theoretical framework for collective actions, a dearth that has only recently begun to challenge sport psychologists. In this presentation a framework for a comprehensive theory of teams in sport is outlined and its potential to integrate the following presentations is put up for discussion. Based on a model developed by von Cranach, Ochsenbein and Valach (1986), teams are information processing organisms, and team actions need to be investigated on two levels: the individual team member and the group as an entity. Elements to be considered are the task, the social structure, the information processing structure and the execution structure. Obviously, different task require different social structures, communication and co-ordination. From a cognitivist point of view, internal representations (or mental models) guide the behaviour mainly in situations requiring quick reactions and adaptations, were deliberate or contingency planning are difficult. In sport teams, the collective representation contains the elements of the team situation, that is team task and team members, and of the team processes, that is communication and co-operation. Different meta-perspectives may be distinguished and bear a potential to explain the actions of efficient teams. Cranach, M. von, Ochsenbein, G., & Valach, L. (1986).The group as a self-active system: Outline of a theory of group action. European Journal of Social Psychology, 16, 193-229.

Emotional contagion in team sports and its impact on individual performance – an experimental study

In sport psychology research about emotional contagion in sport teams has been scarce (Reicherts & Horn, 2008). Emotional contagion is a process leading to a specific emotional state in an individual caused by the perception of another individual’s emotional expression (Hatfield, Cacioppo & Rapson, 1994). Apitzsch (2009) described emotional contagion as one reason for collapsing sport teams. The present study examined the occurrence of emotional contagion in dyads during a basketball task and the impact of a socially induced emotional state on performance. An experiment with between-subjects design was conducted. Participants (N=81, ♀=38, M=21.33 years, SD=1.45) were randomly assigned to one of two experimental conditions, by joining a confederate to compose a same gender, ad hoc team. The team was instructed to perform a basketball task as quickly as possible. The between-factor of the experimental design was the confederate’s emotional expression (positive or negative valence). The within-factor was participants’ emotional state, measured pre- and post-experimentally using PANAS (Krohne, Egloff, Kohlmann & Tausch, 1996). The basketball task was video-taped and the number of frames participants needed to complete the task was used to determine the individual performance. The confederate’s emotional expression was appraised in a significantly different manner across both experimental conditions by participants and video raters (MC). Mixed between-within subjects ANOVAs were conducted to examine the impact of the two conditions on participants’ scores on the PANAS subscales across two time periods (pre- and post-experimental). No significant interaction effects but substantial main effects for time were found on both PANAS subscales. Both groups showed an increase in positive and a reduction in negative PANAS scores across these two time periods. Nevertheless, video raters assessment of the emotional states expressed by participants was significantly different between the positive (M=3.23, SD=0.45) and negative condition (M=2.39, SD=0.53; t=7.64, p<.001, eta squared=.43). An independent-samples t-test indicated no difference in performance between conditions. Furthermore, no significant correlation between the extent of positive or negative emotional contagion and the number of frames was observed. The basketball task lead to an improvement of the emotional state of participants, independently of the condition. Even though participants PANAS scores indicated a tendency to emotional contagion, it was not statistically significant. This could be explained by the low task duration of approximately three minutes. Moreover, the performance of participants was unaffected by the experimental condition or the extent of positive or negative emotional contagion. Apitzsch, E. (2009). A case study of a collapsing handball team. In S. Jern & J. Näslund (Eds.), Dynamics within and outside the lab. Proceedings from The 6th Nordic Conference on Group and Social Psychology, May 2008, Lund, pp. 35-52. Hatfield, E., Cacioppo, J. T. & Rapson, R. L. (1994). Emotional contagion. Cambridge: University Press. Krohne, H. W., Egloff, B., Kohlmann, C.-W. & Tausch, A. (1996). Untersuchungen mit einer deutschen Version der „Positive und Negative Affect Schedule“ (PANAS). Diagnostica, 42 (2), 139-156. Reicherts, M. & Horn, A. B. (2008). Emotionen im Sport. In W. Schlicht & B. Strauss (Eds.), Enzyklopädie der Psychologie. Grundlagen der Sportpsychologie (Bd. 1) (S. 563-633). Göttingen: Hogrefe.

Motivation und Emotion. Allgemeine Psychologie für Bachelor

Ziellos und gefühllos – so wäre unser Leben ohne Motivation und Emotion! Ziele geben unserem Leben Sinn und Struktur, sie treiben uns zu großen Anstrengungen und erstaunlichen Leistungen an. Sie richten unser Verhalten auf die Dinge aus, die uns wichtig sind. – Und was uns wichtig ist, wofür sich die ganze Anstrengung lohnt, das sagen uns unsere Emotionen. Die „Module“ Motivation und Emotion gehören somit zu den spannendsten Fächern der Psychologie und stellen wichtige Grundlageninformationen für die psychologischen Anwendungsfächer zur Verfügung. Dieses Lehrbuch beantwortet die wichtigsten Fragen der Motivations- und Emotionspsychologie kompakt und verständlich.