Waldman et al. found indications that charismatic leadership has a positive influence on organization performance in times of uncertainty. The process leading to this positive macro effect has remained defiant of fitting into a concise model. Perhaps focusing on charismatic leadership effects at a micro level, specifically on team collaboration performance in a post-merger integration setting, may reveal insights to charismatic leadership’s overall ability to improve organizational performance.
In an effort to posit a model of how charismatic leadership influences on collaborative performance in an uncertain environment, we have drawn on Weick’s research of sensemaking’s role in overcoming ambiguity and generating action. Given that sensemaking activities tend to lead to action and specifically improvement of action over time (Weick et al 2005), and that charismatic leadership is coupled with meaning and sensemaking (Podolny et al 2005), we propose the following hypothesis:
In the uncertain environment of PMI, charismatic leadership will moderate a collaborative group’s sensemaking activities. This moderation of sensemaking will drive improvement in the collaboration’s performance.
Conversely, the investigation of team collaboration during post-merger integration has the possibility of addressing charismatic leadership’s impact. Given that collaborative groups have the ability to make sense of their ambiguous situations. It would be interesting to see if an autonomous collaboration’s sensemaking process actualizes an emergent leader – as opposed to having one mandated from corporate management – and how that emergent leadership further influences future sensemaking.
Proposition: A performance enhancing leader will emerge in a newly formed collaborative team that has not been assigned a designated charismatic leader. .
Research model:
A qualitative study to research charismatic leaders’ effect on sensemaking to improve collaborative performance would fill a gap in the literature.
The ideal set-up to would be to take regular qualitative snapshots of two teams’ narrative starting with announcement of the merger and ending with the dissolution of the teams afterPMI has concluded.
First we must control for company culture because each group variation will have a certain bias in making sense of the post-merger integration outcome. There are several different variations of collaborative groups formed during post-merger integration. For example, Company A takes over Company CE and the merged company, ACE, is formed. Teams may be 1) all A members; 2) all B members; 3) mixed members with A culture dominating; 4) mixed members with CE culture dominating; 5) mixed members with no clear domination.
We could choose two similar teams for example number 3: mixed members with A culture dominating. One team would be subject to charismatic leadership input and the second would have no leadership inputs and be left to develop their own story. We would capture the team members’ narrative at the merger announcement and at one month intervals. We would compare the teams’ sensemaking of the ambiguity and then measure overall performance using metrics similar to the following:
• Delivery performance on the basis of requested vs. actual outputs
• Reduced costs stemming from collaboration outputs
• Collaboration’s perception of its increase in value add during PMI
Tuesday, September 22, 2009
Tuesday, September 15, 2009
Sense Making and Collaboration
Karl Weick’s seminal work on sense making has had significant impact on the field of micro organizational behavior. In his research with Sutcliffe and Obstfeld (2005), he extends this framework to include the macro OB activity of organizing and details the role that sense making plays in the process. In a PMI context, sense making may contribute to the activity of collaboration and the successful integration of an acquired entity.
Weick et al. asserts that “communication is a central component of sense making.” Articulation culminates the antecedent activities of” noticing, bracketing, labeling” with a propensity for action. According to the process laid out by Weick et al., a merged team, left to their own devices, will methodically move through the process of sense making and may eventually collaborate (or not collaborate) to achieve a certain outcome. We posit that the process may be expedited through directive communication. In other words, by facilitating the process of sense making through the communication of a plausible story, team effectiveness, as measured by time to achieve results, will improve.
For this research, we propose using Darden learning teams to test our hypotheses. In the case of directive communication, we would time the outcome of two teams, one where we provide a narrative and the other that allows the team to develop its own.
In the second case, we would study two learning teams, one where we provide an oral narrative that is congruent with the case study that we have provided and the other where we provide an oral narrative that contradicts some aspects of what members of the team have just read. Upon completion of the exercise, we would measure team satisfaction and the levels of resistance. It would also be interesting to measure and compare team performance.
Weick et al. asserts that “communication is a central component of sense making.” Articulation culminates the antecedent activities of” noticing, bracketing, labeling” with a propensity for action. According to the process laid out by Weick et al., a merged team, left to their own devices, will methodically move through the process of sense making and may eventually collaborate (or not collaborate) to achieve a certain outcome. We posit that the process may be expedited through directive communication. In other words, by facilitating the process of sense making through the communication of a plausible story, team effectiveness, as measured by time to achieve results, will improve.
- Hypothesis I: Directive sense making in a PMI context will moderate the timing of the results of a collaborative effort.
- Hypothesis II: Incongruent narratives in a PMI context will reduce collaboration as measured by employee morale and resistance.
For this research, we propose using Darden learning teams to test our hypotheses. In the case of directive communication, we would time the outcome of two teams, one where we provide a narrative and the other that allows the team to develop its own.
In the second case, we would study two learning teams, one where we provide an oral narrative that is congruent with the case study that we have provided and the other where we provide an oral narrative that contradicts some aspects of what members of the team have just read. Upon completion of the exercise, we would measure team satisfaction and the levels of resistance. It would also be interesting to measure and compare team performance.
Tuesday, September 8, 2009
Entry number 2, week 3 – Identity in a Post Merger Environment and its Effects on Collaboration
Our group has elected to carry over an idea from last week and think more about it within the context of identity literature. We remain intrigued with the prospect of harnessing the strong bonds formed in the Darden MBA learning teams to test hypotheses in a post merger context.
One thing that occurred to us this week is that the data source may be leading our research a bit. Some of the research around identity is based on the presupposition that people behave in certain ways to advance their careers. For example, Ibarra suggested that one adjusts one’s identity to take on the characteristics of successful superiors in order to succeed in a new role. Clearly a post merger environment presents fertile ground for inquiry around this topic. However, with a Darden learning team there is no “promotion” dynamic. There is also a defined end point. The learning team’s primary function is output and collaboration for one year.
If we are focused on exploring what we can learn about personality, identity and collaboration in a post merger context leveraging the learning teams, clearly there is a distinction in our inquiry that we need to make at this point. Our research (assuming it is based on Darden learning teams) is somewhat constrained by the subject base. It should yield insights into collaboration in a post merger environment. It potentially will yield new insights into the impacts of collective or group identity on group performance. To the extent that identity exploration is tied to career advancement psychologically, it may not yield new insights into identity experimentation because learning team members are not operating with a longer-term perspective[1]. However, it may show that that any number of factors (image, reputation, stereotypes) in a post merger context influences team identity and thus individual identity.
There are two valuable outcomes from this dynamic. The first is that there is value in the exercise, for us and for others potentially. The artifact of this blog may be valuable to future students as they think through research structure. The second is that constraints provided by restricting our pool of data have forced us to focus our area of inquiry.
Thus, we will attempt to apply some of the implications from this week’s reading on identity to further hone our expected outcomes from a study involving merging Darden learning teams. But we won’t attempt to apply all of them.
In “Who Is This “We”? Levels of Collective Identity and Self Representations”, Brewster and Gardner highlight a distinction between group identities that are “based on common bonds (attachment to other group members) and those based on common identity (collective identities).” (Prentice, Miller, and Lightdale, 1994) We hypothesize that both versions may already be present in our MBA learning teams. Therefore we could screen for preexisting identity constructs. A questionnaire, which probes for the respondent’s view of how the learning team views itself and how he/she views his/herself within the learning team could be effective. This questionnaire could simply read:
- Name and learning team number:
- Do you feel your learning team has a collective identity? (yes or no)
- Would you say that you identify yourself in relation to the other members of your team as A: a functional participant (i.e. the “accounting person,” the “scheduling person,” “the high energy member,” etc.), B: simply a member of learning team X, or C: none of the above
The research suggests that group/self identity framing could be manipulated by priming research subjects with language and experiment setup (Ibarra 1999, Brewer & Gardner 1996, etc). Thus, an alternative would be to prime our respondents by writing three different introductions to the experiment: one in which the individual is highlighted (heavy use of individual words, your objective is x, you need to show that you can y, etc.); one in which the interpersonal is highlighted (i.e. dividing the group into functional roles); and one in which the collective is highlighted (heavy use of team-oriented phrase structure, and emphasis on framing learning team x versus another learning team). Each member of a learning team would be given the same version and instructed to read it together (or alone depending on our intent for priming) before the experiment began.
Our inclination is to employ priming for this study. One reason is that since MBA students are taught to think critically, they may read into the intent of the screening questionnaire. The literature this week argues that people switch between identity framing based on the environment presented, and we may unintentionally tap into this. A second issue with a screening questionnaire is that if participants fill them out alone, they could tend to skew respondents towards framing the exercise within the individual sense of self. If we ask teams to fill them out in a group setting, the opposite would be true. In essence, the context of the questionnaire is a form of priming, and a weaker form than we should be able to design intentionally.
An interesting dynamic the learning teams also provide is that most of them will have well-defined group roles, which will have been formed and tested over an intense period of months. Ideally we can observe the groups and note roles in a pre test and then observe if roles are maintained in a merged environment. Additionally, we may observe changes in personality in a post merger environment. An outgoing participant may become introverted in a new environment. Similarly, a participant who was overshadowed in an old construct may blossom in a new one.
These musings suggest that we may be most effective using an inductive, grounded theory development process (Glasser and Strauss, 1967, Eisenhart, 1989). While we will have ingoing hypotheses that would lend themselves to quantitative testing, the opportunity to have a group of subjects whom we could observe every night over a period of months would indicate that observation would yield some rich data. (We could also introduce a pre and post questionnaire to get a sense of how participants felt things “changed” in the post merger environment).
This study becomes more complicated when we introduce ideas of company name identity (through naming of the merged entity) and collective/self identity. Clearly both will have effects on group interaction in a post merger environment, and both could yield valuable insights for managers. More of this will become clear in later weeks when we explore issues around culture and power & politics.
Our hypotheses (informed by the literature and objective thought) are based on the notion that the name of the merged entity will have direct effects on post merger collaboration in a team setting. Specifically, we believe that the way a learning team is named will have an effect on how the members view themselves in relation to those outside the group. When collective identities are present, in-group, out-group categorizations become the most significant basis for categorizing others (Shih, etal., 1999). This categorization effect will lead to the designation of control of the merged entity, and thereby potentially hinder the performance of some members in the group – specifically those who are identified as “acquired”.[2] We also expect that categorizations by the acquiring group of the acquired as “other” and vice versa will discourage collaboration.
Specifically, we hypothesize that:
- Members from the team that gets to “keep” its name (i.e. the acquirer) will tend to contribute more to meetings and potentially dominate them at the expense of the value of ideas from the acquired. We will test this with collective, relative and individual framing to see if they have an effect.
- Members of the team that takes the combined name will show similar legacy issues as the first scenario. We will also test this with collective, relative and individual framing to see if they have an effect.
- The teams that are renamed with no legacy frame of reference will establish new structures, roles, identities, and will collaborate more effectively.
Assuming it would be difficult to convince CEOs of companies with significant brand equity, it would be very interesting to try multiple scenarios with hypothesis A to test around how managers could potentially use framing or priming techniques to break down collective identities before initiating post-merger integration. If documents and corporate emails, etc. informing employees emphasize the individual self, perhaps collective identities can be suppressed at the company level (at least temporarily until the new groups have formed and new organizing activities have stabilized).
Unfortunately we would not be able to observe these dynamics over a significant period of time. Our conclusions, therefore will have to be either framed around the forming of new groups in a post merger environment, or (ideally) there will be secondary literature which can offer predictive information about what early group dynamics imply for the longer term.
However, if we can allow the groups to remain together for multiple sessions we may be able to make some conclusions about how they would function going forward. (One option could be to allow members to defect after the initial meeting, which could be used to draw inferences about HSM’s and LSM’s depending on who defects). Regardless, a few sessions of observation and one session of post-merger group task should provide some interesting data with which we can inform future inquiry.
Perhaps next week we can look at identity construction research and combine it with next week’s theme (culture) to think about those two and their effects on collaboration in a post merger environment. It was intriguing to imagine how personality differences (specifically high/low EI and HSM/LSM) would impact collaboration in a post merger environment when cultural assimilation is an important/valued skill.
[1] Ibarra’s provisional self process could be present despite the learning team’s short lifespan and lack of promotion drive. The promotion equivalent in learning comes in the form of improved grades/comprehension that could be spurred on by students interacting differently with their peers, e.g. taking lead in conversations, deferring leadership to others. It’s not inconceivable that individual selves may converge towards a team model.
[2] An arbitrary merger between two groups could possibly be too transparent of a construct for these MBAs because they may see through the game. Therefore there should be some form of pre-conceived power assignments ascribed to the ‘acquiring’ team. For example, the team that performed better on an assigned task could be inconspicuously labeled the “acquiring” company. This would add another element of realism to the construct. Alternatively, we could pre assign logical reasons as to “why” a merger was undertaken. I.e. team X acquired team Y specifically for person Z from team Y, or team Y was acquired due to poor management practices and team X intends to apply its market-proven formulae. In many real cases, employees will be acutely aware of these details due to the roles financial journalism plays in communicating merger logic.
Tuesday, September 1, 2009
Personal differences and collaboration in a post-merger integration
Current research on individual differences offers the opportunity to inform how employees may achieve effective collaboration during post merger integration.
Individuals play a significant role in determining whether a merger will be successful. Given that many mergers fail to provide lasting shareholder value (Aley and Siegel 1998), studying individual differences could help elucidate aspects of where mergers go wrong. A great deal of work has been done in the area of effective collaboration. Some scholars have focused on process and structure (Thomas 2005, and Hardy, Lawrance, & Grant 2005) while others have examined individual team composition and disposition.
Researchers have debated the ability to measure disposition and its affect on business dynamics. Kilduff and Day (1994) discuss how high self monitors are capable of acting in a manner that supports their ability to earn more promotions than their low self monitoring counterparts. Gaining understanding of how high self monitors use their skills to communicate as they work their way up the corporate ladder has the possibility of informing how to allocate managerial resources during post-merger integration. Analyzing individual dispositions, team makeup and corresponding levels of collaboration may also shed light on the subject.
Conversely, Davis-Blakee and Pfeffer (1989) argued that dispositional research as it relates to organizations was flawed. If dispositional research is unfruitful in studying collaboration, one might consider the structural and process oriented constructs that elicit the greatest collaboration. Are their structures, incentives, and processes that are more effective than others in achieving high levels of collaboration? This ongoing debate offers a number of ideological fields that remain untrodden.
Collaboration in a newly organized merged organization requires employee and manager flexibility. It would be interesting to see if there is a Stockholm Syndrome effect during a merger. Stockholm Syndrome is when an abducted person identifies with their captor and acquiesces to the captor’s wishes (Bejerot, 1974). Is the employee flexibility one sided? Does the power associated with acquiring company affect employee behavior?
By looking at collaborative patterns in a post-merger integrated company, we could see if being acquired (versus acquiring another company) has a discernable effect on personal preferences on either side of the merger. Such findings would shed light on perceived power’s effect on successful integration as well when mergers can modulate employee personality.
In light of our recent readings and subsequent group discussion, the following are two potential areas for further exploration and development:
Research project A
Hypothesis: High self monitors are able to modify their behavior and communicate with diverse groups which will give themselves an advantage to benefit during the post-merger integration process. Cross company teams with high self monitors will have a higher quality of collaboration than those without high self monitors. (Management teams will collaborate better than technical teams because HSM tend to be in management and LSM tend to be in technical areas.)
We suggest collecting survey data at the initial stages of a merger and six months post integration.
We would engage with both companies’ HR to share a online survey tool with a vertical selection of employees. Each company would have the incentive to participate because of the success/failure data that we would generate.
The initial survey would set a base-line for expectations of the merger. Questions regarding development expectations, past career development within the firm, and motivators would allow us to quantify employee’s propensity for high or low self monitoring.
The post integration questionnaire would assess the employees’ realization of their expectations and ask for any expectation revisions for the short to medium term. We would also ask employees about interaction with new company employees (in relation to own company employees) and rate ease of collaborating and successfully progressing towards assigned goals.
Analyzing and comparing the two sets of data would show how high self motivators facilitate merged teams.
Research project B:
Hypothesis: The acquired company employees will tend to adopt the culture of the acquiring company which will lead to more collaborative success.
Again we’d use the survey technique through the HR of both companies; one right at the beginning and one after six months. The questions would elicit characteristics of the company’s culture, collaborative strategies, and the employees’ expectations of the integration process.
The second questionnaire would ask for a new assessment of the culture and collaborative strategies in the new environment and also ask for employees’ assessment of the current reality in reference to initial expectations.
The two sets of data would show whether the acquired company employee’s had adopted the culture of their captors and if the collaborative strategies had changed.
Individuals play a significant role in determining whether a merger will be successful. Given that many mergers fail to provide lasting shareholder value (Aley and Siegel 1998), studying individual differences could help elucidate aspects of where mergers go wrong. A great deal of work has been done in the area of effective collaboration. Some scholars have focused on process and structure (Thomas 2005, and Hardy, Lawrance, & Grant 2005) while others have examined individual team composition and disposition.
Researchers have debated the ability to measure disposition and its affect on business dynamics. Kilduff and Day (1994) discuss how high self monitors are capable of acting in a manner that supports their ability to earn more promotions than their low self monitoring counterparts. Gaining understanding of how high self monitors use their skills to communicate as they work their way up the corporate ladder has the possibility of informing how to allocate managerial resources during post-merger integration. Analyzing individual dispositions, team makeup and corresponding levels of collaboration may also shed light on the subject.
Conversely, Davis-Blakee and Pfeffer (1989) argued that dispositional research as it relates to organizations was flawed. If dispositional research is unfruitful in studying collaboration, one might consider the structural and process oriented constructs that elicit the greatest collaboration. Are their structures, incentives, and processes that are more effective than others in achieving high levels of collaboration? This ongoing debate offers a number of ideological fields that remain untrodden.
Collaboration in a newly organized merged organization requires employee and manager flexibility. It would be interesting to see if there is a Stockholm Syndrome effect during a merger. Stockholm Syndrome is when an abducted person identifies with their captor and acquiesces to the captor’s wishes (Bejerot, 1974). Is the employee flexibility one sided? Does the power associated with acquiring company affect employee behavior?
By looking at collaborative patterns in a post-merger integrated company, we could see if being acquired (versus acquiring another company) has a discernable effect on personal preferences on either side of the merger. Such findings would shed light on perceived power’s effect on successful integration as well when mergers can modulate employee personality.
In light of our recent readings and subsequent group discussion, the following are two potential areas for further exploration and development:
Research project A
Hypothesis: High self monitors are able to modify their behavior and communicate with diverse groups which will give themselves an advantage to benefit during the post-merger integration process. Cross company teams with high self monitors will have a higher quality of collaboration than those without high self monitors. (Management teams will collaborate better than technical teams because HSM tend to be in management and LSM tend to be in technical areas.)
We suggest collecting survey data at the initial stages of a merger and six months post integration.
We would engage with both companies’ HR to share a online survey tool with a vertical selection of employees. Each company would have the incentive to participate because of the success/failure data that we would generate.
The initial survey would set a base-line for expectations of the merger. Questions regarding development expectations, past career development within the firm, and motivators would allow us to quantify employee’s propensity for high or low self monitoring.
The post integration questionnaire would assess the employees’ realization of their expectations and ask for any expectation revisions for the short to medium term. We would also ask employees about interaction with new company employees (in relation to own company employees) and rate ease of collaborating and successfully progressing towards assigned goals.
Analyzing and comparing the two sets of data would show how high self motivators facilitate merged teams.
Research project B:
Hypothesis: The acquired company employees will tend to adopt the culture of the acquiring company which will lead to more collaborative success.
Again we’d use the survey technique through the HR of both companies; one right at the beginning and one after six months. The questions would elicit characteristics of the company’s culture, collaborative strategies, and the employees’ expectations of the integration process.
The second questionnaire would ask for a new assessment of the culture and collaborative strategies in the new environment and also ask for employees’ assessment of the current reality in reference to initial expectations.
The two sets of data would show whether the acquired company employee’s had adopted the culture of their captors and if the collaborative strategies had changed.
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