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TEAM PERFORMANCE STUDY: DETERMINING

THE FACTORS THAT INFLUENCE HIGH
PERFORMANCE IN TEAMS
David S. Hoyte, Castle Harlan Partners
Regina A. Greenwood, Nova Southeastern University
Baiyun Gong, Nova Southeastern University

ABSTRACT

The purpose of this paper is to describe a study, in the initial stages, which will attempt to
determine the factors that differentiate high performance work teams from teams whose
performance is good, but not exceptional. The teams in the study are in the U. S. supplier network
of a large global automotive manufacturer. The researchers will use surveys, interviews, and
observations to test models that, based on the literature, suggest factors that influence team
performance, including innovation as a measure of performance. Multiple perspectives will be
employed, including: the strategic lens (structure/ambidexterity), the temporal lens (entrainment)
and the organization behavior lens (mental models and ambidexterity). In Phase 1, the research
team will visit several supplier plants to determine the factors to be examined. In Phase 2, the
researchers will conduct in-depth studies in some workplaces followed by tests of findings in
different workplace environments. The goal of our study of work teams is not only to advance the
literature of team performance, but also to provide important implications to managers of all team-
based organizations.

INTRODUCTION

The importance of teams in the workplace cannot be overestimated. Teams have become
an important, even essential, workplace structure to get work done; they exist at all levels of
organizations and fulfill a wide range of purposes (Katzenbach & Smith, 2003). Teams have
become an important topic for academic researchers who have produced a large number of studies
concerning the factors that make teams effective and the factors that influence team dynamics
(Harrison, Mohammed, McGrath, Florey, & Vanderstoep, 2003). Despite the widespread use of
teams, the important of teams, and the abundance of research on teams, we could find no empirical
research that determines the factors that differentiate good teams from high performing teams. We
propose to fill that research void.
Our research team, consisting of practitioners and academic researchers, shares an interest
in team performance with a large, global automotive company. (In this work the company will be
referred to as Company A to preserve confidentiality.) Such is the interest of Company A that the
research team has been granted permission to conduct our research in their extensive US supplier
network. The researchers will study teams in various supplier plants to determine causal factors
which distinguish high performance teams from teams that merely perform well. The researchers

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will use surveys, interviews, and observations to test models that, based on the literature, suggest
factors that influence team performance, including innovation as a measure of performance.
Work teams are the basic units of Company As operations. Performance of work teams is
essential to the quality of its products and its global reputation for quality. We chose the work teams
of Company A suppliers as the subjects of our investigation because of their exemplary efficiency
and effectiveness, which contributed to Company As superior performance and development in the
past decades. There are no poorly performing teams, only good to excellent teams. Our study on
these work teams will not only advance the literature of team performance, but also provide
important implications to managers of all team-based organizations.
Ancona, Goodman, Lawrence and Tushman suggest that Focusing multiple lenses on a
given phenomenon highlights different aspects of that phenomenon.each lens suggest a different
set of practices and solutions to managers (2001:645). For our research we will examine the issue
of team performance through multiple lenses: the strategic lens (structure/ambidexterity), the
temporal lens (entrainment) and the organization behavior lens (mental models and ambidexterity).

TEAMS AND AMBIDEXTERITY

When examining organizational performance through a strategic lens, the role of structure
requires particular attention. Alfred Chandler (1962) suggested that successful organizations adapt
their structure to fit their strategic needs. Later, Duncan (1976) suggested that firms meet the
competing demands of aligning with the needs of the business to ensure efficiency and adapting to
the changing needs of the environment in order to take advantage of opportunity, by creating dual
structures within their organization. Such structures focus on either alignment or adaptation; the
presence of both insure overall organizational ambidexterity. More recently, Gibson and Birkinshaw
(2004) refined the concept of ambidexterity, suggesting that two types of ambidexterity can exist:
structural ambidexterity, creating dual structures within an organization to deal with the inherent
conflicts of alignment and adaptation, and contextual ambidexterity, the behavioral capacity to
simultaneously demonstrate alignment and adaptability across an entire business unit (209). Under
such situations, organizations create the capacity in individuals to deal with the conflicting demands
of adaptation and alignment, thus insuring overall organizational ambidexterity.
In observing the number and nature of teams in pilot visits, we were struck by the different
charter given to different teams on the supplier plants. Some teams were production focused; some
were problem solving focused; some were improvement focused. We propose that business units
can achieve ambidexterity through the development of teams dedicated to either adaptation or
alignment, thus creating ambidextrous organizations. These teams act as bridges between structural
ambidexterity and contextual ambidexterity in that firms create the teams to serve different purposes
and, in many situations, individuals can volunteer to participate in them. Thus, individuals are
presented with an organizational structure within which they can serve adaptation needs and the day-
to-day alignment demands. Such action mitigates the tension related to whether ambidexterity exists
as an organizational or individual function (Raisch, Birkinshaw, Probst & Tuchman, 2009)
In summary, we suggest that the following propositions be tested in our study:

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P1: Stable work teams focus on alignment thereby improving organizational

performance.

P2: Ad Hoc and cross functional teams, populated through choice, focus on
adaptation thereby improving organizational performance..

TEAMS AND TIME

In introducing the Academy of Management Review issue devoted to the temporal

perspective, Ancona, Goodman, Lawrence and Tushman refer to time as the new lens (2003, p.
645). In support of their view, they cite only a few articles focused on time, most of which are
recent to that date; the oldest related to organizations/management was in 1985 (Clark). Despite the
lack of long term interest in the temporal dimension displayed by management academic
researchers, practitioners are keenly aware of time: manufacturing shifts, project deadlines, business
cycles, new model cycles, quarterly results and much more significantly affect management practice.
Even the roots of management as a profession and discipline lie in time study through Scientific
Management (Taylor, 1911). Thus we propose to examine the impact of time on team work to
determine if the capacity of some teams to relate better to temporal factors enables them to perform
at higher levels than other teams. In particular, the concept of entrainment appears fundamentally
related to the function of teams.
Entrainment is a concept first developed in physics and later expanded in biology (Perez-
Nordtvedt, Payne, Short, & Kedia, 2008); it refers to the synchronization of the tempo of activities.
In an organization it can be the response of one activity to another, such as, a business cycle, a
demand pattern, work shifts, and many other recurring events. Perez-Nordtvedt, Payne, Short, and
Kedia (2008) define organizational entrainment as the process by which organizations cope with
temporal change by synchronizing (i.e. tempo matching and/or phase aligning) their endogenous
cyclic activities to those of the external environment (p. 788).
Therefore, we propose the following research questions:

Research Question 1: How does entrainment among team members affect team
performance?

Research Question 2: How does entrainment among interconnected teams affect

team performance?

Research Question 3: How does entrainment among teams affect organizational

performance?

TEAMS AND MENTAL MODELS

Shared mental models are defined as The extent to which individual team members mental
models overlap the extent to which team members shared the same understanding of the task and
the team (Blickensderfer, Cannon-Bowers, & Salas, 1997: 252). As they coordinate with each other,

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team members share their understanding of the task, work environment, interactive patterns,
procedure timing, location of expertise, and technology. Although the literature consistently
demonstrates the positive effects of shared mental models on team performance (Espinosa,
Slaughter, Kraut, & Herbsleb, 2007; Mathieu, Heffner, Goodwin, Salas, & Cannon-Bowers, 2000;
Reagans, Argote, & Brooks, 2005), few studies investigate the interrelationship of various types of
shared mental models.
Despite the prediction that various types of shared mental models compliment with one
another, empirical research shows mixed results. Mathieu et al. (2000) studied ad hoc teams and
concluded that shared task mental models and shared team mental models improve team processes
and performance in a complimentary manner. On the other hand, Espinosa et al. (2007) examined
team familiarity and task familiarity and found that the two types of shared team knowledge
substitute, rather than complementary to, one another in their impact on performance.
To explain the inconsistent findings in the relationship between various types of shared
mental models, it is suggest that there is a diminishing return on team innovation and performance
from the increase of shared mental models. This relationship is plausible because (1) in many
situations, solutions can be identified with the combinative use of a few shared mental models so
not all shared knowledge is necessary, and (2) team capacity is limited so that only limited shared
mental models can be simultaneously employed to solve a problem. Further, too many shared mental
models are likely to restrict team flexibility. In fact, similar phenomenon has been demonstrated in
team learning research. Berman, Down, and Hill (2002) show that the NBA team performance was
first increasing and became decreasing as the team level tacit knowledge accumulated.
Suppose that the proposed diminishing return of shared mental models is valid, then why do
many successful organizations continue to nurture multiple mental models? It is proposed that
multiple shared mental models back up each other in a changing environment and sustain team
performance. This is because (1) a changing environment is likely to block the access to certain
shared mental models, and (2) a changing environment imposes stress on teams which reduces the
effectiveness of shared mental models. Ellis (2006) shows that acute stress reduces the viability and
quality of shared mental models, which lead to impeded performance. Task complexity and
individual experience (time on task or number of products produced) will be considered control
variables in the study.
In summary, we suggest that the following propositions be tested in our study:

P3: There is a curvilinear relationship between the strength and number of shared
mental models and team innovation and performance..

P4: The effect of shared mental models on team innovation and performance is
moderated by environmental turbulence.

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METHODOLOGY

Research Design

Our study design consists of two phases: (1) plant visits to several Company A supplier firms
and (2) a survey study based on the questionnaire developed after soliciting expert opinions in the
first phase. In Phase 1, the researchers will conduct exploratory plant visits and interviews to (a)
observe and understand relevant plant operations and processes, (b) collect expert opinions on the
survey instrument, (c) identify any factors that may cause high team performance (control
variables), and (c) secure access to further data collection. These plant visits will require
observations of operation, review of training and orientation programs, interviews with managers
and team members, understanding how team performance is measured, understanding employee
recognition programs, communication, suggestion programs, CI teams, etc.
In Phase 2, the researchers will conduct in-depth studies in some workplaces followed by
tests of findings in different workplace environments. A number of supplier network firms have
already volunteered for the different phases of the project.

Data Analysis

The statistic software application SPSS will be used to analyze the data. First, descriptive
analysis will be performed. Non-respondent bias will be analyzed according to Fowler's (1993) book
on survey research. Appropriate data transformation will be conducted to cope with skewness and
kurtosis of the data distribution. Then factor analysis will be performed to load single item on
corresponding constructs. The data will then be analyzed using multiple regression models. Possible
data problems such as collinearity will be carefully treated. The hypotheses will specify the
relationship between variables so they are testable with multiple regression models. Control
variables will be entered into the baseline model. Then, the hypothesized independent variables will
be entered in the models. Qualitative data collected from the field trips and follow-up investigations
will be coded and analyzed according to Yin (2009), Eisenhardt (1989), and Eisenhardt and
Graebner (2007). Significant results will be described in future publications with discussion on how
the findings support the hypotheses and contribute to the literature as well as the business world.

CONCLUDING REMARKS

The current status of the study considers two parallel tracks. First, developing the literature
review, model crystallization (reduce the list of shared mental models, etc.), and measurement
development.
Second, completing more pilot plant visits to ascertain the validity of our approach and the
availability of information. Our study of work teams will not only advance the literature of team
performance, but also provide important implications to managers of all team-based organizations.

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Reagans, R., Argote, L., & Brooks, D. (2005). Individual experience and experience working together: predicting
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