Adversity and Collaboration

Teams that organize to realize certain objective are often faced with unforeseen obstacles, constraints and roadblocks. These obstacles can be viewed as a form of adversity, and may create a watershed moment where a team decides to forge ahead or abandon existing efforts. When teams experience adverse conditions, what makes some teams galvanize together to overcome and persevere and others, to diminish and fall short of its objectives? Said differently, what role can adversity play in promoting or diminishing collaboration?

Latene, Eckman and Joy (1996) found that participants who experienced adverse conditions together (in the form of electric shock) tended to demonstrate greater interpersonal affect one with another than the control group that did not experience the treatments. Elder and Clipp (1988) studied military combat units and found that extreme adversity, losing friends during combat, prolonged personal ties some 40 years later. Casciaro and Lobo (2008) demonstrated a relationship between interpersonal affect and work partner exchange. From these findings, one may conclude that under certain conditions, adversity may lead to greater interpersonal affect and thus greater team member exchange.

In past literature, we have discussed how collective identity can promote collaboration. In fact some researchers (Parsons) have defined collaboration as “identification” and “coordination.” We believe that is the strength of collective identity that creates the conditions by which adversity can have a magnifying effect on collaboration. We assert that adversity will moderate the influence of identity. In others words, depending on the strength of the group identity, adversity will either decrease or increase collaboration.

H:1a
When collective identity is strong, adversity will enhance collaboration.

H:2
When collective identity is weak, adversity will diminish collaboration.


Methods:

Experiment I
In this study, we would evaluate collaboration, as measured by co-authored publications, among cohorts from various PhD programs. More specifically, we would compare paper output from programs with varying degrees of adversity. For example, the Wharton Economics PhD program has a higher than usual wash-out rate where two out of three students are expelled from the program before completion. We would employ a mechanism to measure collective identity among cohorts, moderate for wash out rate and compare co-authored publications among the same cohort.

Experiment II
We would employ the same mechanism to measure collective identity of surgery units within the Health System. Next, we collect patient casualty rates and evaluate this data as a moderating affect to see if collaboration improves over time. If a team has a strong collective identity, and higher than usual casualty rates, because of the predicted effect of adversity on collaboration, we would expect rates to improve. If a surgery unit has a relatively weak collective identity and higher causality rates, we expect casualty rates to remain the same or deteriorate. In this experiment would need to control for groups that do not experience high levels of adversity.

The Effects of Beneficiary Exposure on Interdepartmental Collaboration

Grant, Campbell, Chen, Cottone, Lapedis, and Lee (2007) showed that employees are willing to maintain their motivation when their work is relationally designed to provide opportunities for respectful contact with the beneficiaries of their efforts.

Our hypothesis is: Interdepartmental groups will more effectively collaborate when they are exposed to common beneficiaries.

If confirmed, our hypothesis could be an important development for Grant etal.’s research and contribute to the literature. Many industries in which there is high specialization in departments and for which client contact is not necessarily the norm may see an increase in collaboration. (Some examples include: investment banks; hospitals/healthcare clinics; and hotels/restaurants).

We think this could be especially relevant in the Health System (both the effect of the beneficiary contact and the import of the research) given human lives are the beneficiaries. Grant etal. (2007) showed this through their confirmation of Hypothesis 3: We predicted that task significance moderates the effect of contact with beneficiaries on persistence. When individuals are working on significant, high-impact tasks, they are aware that their efforts have the potential to benefit or harm other people. Accordingly, they are likely to invest additional time and energy in their efforts in order to benefit these people.

Data collection A, Positive/Reflexive (TBD): Ryan mentioned research showed that groups in which all departments were exposed to clients showed more willingness to collaborate interdepartmentally than when all departments had not been exposed to clients. This data will be looked at more carefully.

Data collection B, Reflexive: Andrew’s research with the Batten Institute contains data from at least one of the entrepreneurs studied that he was able to successfully improve interdepartmental performance by sharing feedback from a disappointed customer. The customer had ordered M&M’s with a personal message for a son’s birthday, and the order had arrived a day late. The mother expressed how upset her son was that his birthday was negatively effected by the tardy delivery. The entrepreneur then realized that his company did not merely manufacture personalized M&M’s, but something more important- happiness. He shared the story of this mother and her son with employees, and performance improved. This indicates there is probably value in looking back at the Batten data to see if other analogous stories are already collected. At the very least it indicates the potential to reexamine this entrepreneur’s organization and perhaps to interview other employees to see if they felt that the beneficiary exposure helped collaboration.

Data collection C, Positive: In order to test the hypothesis using positive methods, we ideally would propose recreating the experiment used to test Hypothesis 3 in Grant etal (2007) with a shift in emphasis from individual performance to group performance. Given the complexity of that experiment, however, perhaps we could use the Health System as research subjects and collect enough data to draw conclusions. We propose arranging meetings for representatives from all the relevant departments (to be determined when we have the full scope of the UVAHS organization) with patients. (Through prior healthcare experience, the allocation of patients to non-physician and nurse employees is through alphabetical assignment). It may be unethical to use a control group which is not exposed to patients. Thus, we hope to be able to get a sense of the control through interviews with managers who will be able to evaluate pre and post performance. (Generally healthcare facilities track data closely, and we may already have the control group benchmarks established, again this will be established when we have more of the data for the project).

If proven correct, one way to improve interdepartmental collaboration in the UVA Health System will be to expose representatives from each department to specific medical cases going forward.

How can the study of cognition – specifically integrative complexity – affect our understanding of effective interdepartmental collaboration?

When Individuals need to collaborate across departmental lines to achieve otherwise unattainable goals, the collaborators have the incentive to be receptive to the needs of all involved. That receptivity is higher in those who are integratively complex. Until recently, the literature generally agreed that a person’s ability to make informed decisions based on assimilating a broad range of (or complex) perspectives led to better outcomes than in situations relying on a narrow (or simple) perspective.

Tetlock, Peterson, & Berry (1993) delved into the dichotomous nature of integratively complex & simple dispositions that people have. They linked weaknesses underlying the positive attributes that being complex often conveys.

For example, integratively complex individuals tend to be excessively receptive to competing points of view which often leads to being unable to make decisions. The corollary is that these individuals exhibit disagreeableness. This singular fact has ramifications on the success of collaborations. Disagreeableness can undermine a collaboration’s success.

The question we would like to explore is whether the disagreeableness that lurks behind integratively complex dispositions impedes collaborations’ performance. With Weick’s advice in mind, academic research provides a microcosm to investigate the complexity and disagreeableness in a collaborative setting. The nature of academic research – particularly in social sciences – with its overarching complexity requires that researchers have the ability to assimilate, evaluate, and integrate broad views on many phenomena. Simultaneously, academics have a long history of collaborating when creating new knowledge, which is exemplified by researchers sharing authorship on published papers. Disagreeableness has the propensity to undermine collaboration and the combinatorial power of integratively complex approach to generating new knowledge.

Therefore we posit that:
H1 – Published social scientists demonstrate integratively complex cognitive abilities.
H2 – Social scientists whose disagreeableness overpowers the benefits of collaboration (i.e. authors papers alone) will publish papers cited less frequently than those who can collaborate across disciplinary boundaries.

Methods:
Mining Google scholar and EBSCOhost:
We would select a set of social science journals to form our core data set.

To address H1:
From that set we would look at the reference sections and gauge the level of interdisciplinary works drawn upon to establish the author(s) level of integrative complexity. We could build a index from the number of citations in the paper and their distance from the journal topic. That would establish whether researchers are complex or not.

To address H2:
We would collect the number of authors per paper and interdiscplinary range over a given period in a select set of social science journals. We would then compare the number of authors of each paper to the number of subsequent citations for each paper to gauge its comparative success.

Emotion
This week’s readings elucidate how affect contributes to the organizing process. From Sigal, we learn that individual affect can influence collective affect and promote improved collaboration and perceived task performance. This research was performed at the individual level and measures were taken to ensure that the confederate was not perceived as a leader. Due to power, distance and formal authority, leaders are uniquely positioned to have more influence on a team than any one member.

Hypothesis 1
Leadership affect will moderate interdepartmental collaboration, measured by identification and coordination, more so than a non-leader’s affect.

Worline et al. and Martin introduce the concept of affect as a dominant organizing principle. While affect was integral to both organizations, the degree of authentic affect seemed to differentiate the two. This led us to consider the relationship between affect authenticity and impact on collaboration. If as some studies have show, disingenuous affect can be discerned, it may be less likely to promote collaboration than authentic affect.

Hypothesis 2
Authentic leadership affect will moderate interdepartmental collaboration, measured by identification and coordination, more so than perceived disingenuous leadership affect.

Methods
For the first hypothesis, we would employ a similar methodology as Sigal and utilize actors to measure individual affect. We would modify the study by introducing the leadership variable. In one of the studies, we would designate a formal leader and compare her affect influence to that of the individual confederate’s.
In the second study, we would deploy a survey immediately following a leader’s presentation around a critical change initiative (We would need to select situations that are emotionally charged). After the meeting we would ask questions around two dimensions. (1)How authentic was the leader’s affect and (2) how likely are you to collaborate to achieve the advocated change. We would then measure the correlation.

The Effects of High Cognitive Uncertainty on Effective Collaboration in a Post Merger Setting

In, “A distributed cognition perspective on newcomers' change processes: The management of cognitive uncertainty in two investment banks,” A. Alexandra Michel shows that in an investment banking setting, a bank which amplified cognitive uncertainty created a collective-centric organization. As she writes, “because demands exceeded individuals’ cognitive capacity, bankers used organizational resources to solve problems inductively.” Based on her conclusions, the implicit assumption is that when cognitive uncertainty is intermittent, or absent, organizations will tend to be less group-oriented in their approach to problem solving, more individualistic, and, logically, less effective at collaboration. Groups with high cognitive uncertainty problem solve inductively and will harness resources across the group more effectively.

Another implicit claim is that if cognitive uncertainty is high enough, and participants feel that solving problems is outside the realm of their own skill set, they are less likely to satisfice, and more likely to collaborate to solve problems, and therefore more likely to have better decision outcomes. Similarly, high levels of cognitive uncertainty imply low levels of taxonomic classification and, presumably, diverse member skillsets are more highly leveraged – the point of view of another member is more valued than it would be otherwise.

In other words, groups with low levels of cognitive uncertainty close off potential outcomes. As Frank Knight writes, “Uncertainty must be taken in a sense radically distinct from the familiar notion of Risk, from which it has never been properly separated…It will appear that a measurable uncertainty, or 'risk' proper, as we shall use the term, is so far different from an unmeasurable one that it is not in effect an uncertainty at all." If the future is completely unpredictable, as Knight would argue, cognitive certainty is an artifice that ignorantly presume omniscient knowledge on the part of the manager (or organization). Any attempt to reduce cognitive uncertainty, in Knightean terms, implies the ability to predict the future. The optimal solution may be unintentionally closed off, or muted by the restriction of options.

Our question in this installment of the post merger integration blog is what about the case in which two organizations have merged together? This case adds some complexities that Michel’s does not possess. Knight would argue that it doesn’t matter. Any attempt by a leader to control the group norms would result in the reduction of potential value of the group. In effect, through directing, a manager would reduce organizing, and potentially limit or interfere with sensemaking.

One hypothetical situation is that when two cultures come together, the groups may come into a new situation with bounded senses of cognitive uncertainty to a certain degree. While they may not know what the new group norms are, they know what the norms from their legacy institutions were. Ironically, in this case, high levels of cognitive uncertainty from a legacy organization could become a norm. If I expect high levels of uncertainty in the newly formed organization, I am clinging to a norm, and thereby my cognitive uncertainty which was high in the old organization is lowered in the new one. Another practical complication is that without some cognitive certainties, a group formed by two organizations may never integrate. That is to say, if it isn’t forced on the members, they may not ever feel the need to do it.

This could imply that in a post merger setting some of what researchers argued that organizations should reduce cognitive uncertainty to compensate for bounded rationality (March and Simon, 1958) may apply. In other words, unless I tell the groups they have to integrate they may never do it (at the worst) and potentially will waste time while integrating (at the best). The research we have seen in ingroup/outgroup psychology could support this hypothesis through the fact that a merger creates groups that may have not been present pre merger through the creation of “legacy x” and “legaxy y” identities. For example, when two companies that operated with high degrees of uncertainty pre-merger (and presumably have low levels of “within group similarity of attitudes, understanding, and language” (Weick and Roberts, 1993: 358) the legacy orientation creates group identities that may need to be broken down externally by managers to re-establish high levels of cognitive uncertainty.

We are interested in testing Michel’s thesis in a post merger environment. Our experiment will be to take two highly functioning teams prescreened as operating with high levels of cognitive uncertainty. (In some ways this could be simply a newly formed group). The premise of the experiment would be to have the groups complete a game separately and then split the groups in half and create merged groups of equal representation in terms of numbers and ability from each legacy group to repeat the same game. We would tell one group that they have to collaborate with members from both legacy groups as well as tell them who from the previous round performed best on the task and which team scored higher than the other. We would tell the other merged group nothing and observe both groups as they complete the same game for the second time. (A repeated game would simulate Michel’s pitch process in that it is a highly repeated activity in which performance can be improved upon with collaboration. Disclosing scores would simulate the “star culture” she outlines in the case of Red Bank).

Our hypothesis is that the unprimed (i.e. group with the highest degree of cognitive uncertainty) will perform better on the repeated game than that which was given some reductions in cognitive uncertainty. Our theory is that best practices and individual performances which were present pre-merger will still be present post-merger, but that highlighting them in one group will stifle lessons learned from the previous iteration and the emergence of new talents which were not present in the first iteration. This structure could be repeated with numerous groups to generate statistically relevant data, using scores on the game as a proxy for performance. Or we could approach ethnographically, and observe a smaller number of groups, thereby yielding comparative data to that of Michel’s. Both methods have merit in their ability to test this theory.