Abstract
In the present study of the journal of Gruppe. Interaktion. Organisation, the purpose was to identify the types of events that activate team adaptive behavior during goal achievement and to provide a roadmap for future research into how team adaptation responses may differ depending on the demands faced. Two hundred and eight engineering students involved in an eight-week team project, participated in our study. They reported, at three time points, 271 events that triggered their team to change their way of functioning. We applied qualitative content analysis to identify the underlying categories of the collected triggers and identified three main categories of internal (interpersonal dynamics, task-related activities, reaching a milestone), and three main categories of external team adaption triggers (change in resources, interventions, alterations in framework), with various subcategories. Our findings demonstrated that team adaptation triggers can stem from the team’s environment and from the team itself. Furthermore, our results suggested that positively connoted events (e.g. achievement of subgoals) as well as negatively connoted events (e.g. loss of a member) are perceived as relevant team adaptation triggers. Our study opens a new avenue for team adaptation theory and research by providing the first categorization scheme of team adaptation triggers. Future studies can from now provide insight into the relationship between trigger features and team adaptation processes, exploring team adaptation success in various contexts.
Zusammenfassung
In der vorliegenden Studie der Zeitschrift Gruppe. Interaktion. Organisation war das Ziel die Art von Ereignissen zu identifizieren, die als Auslöser von Veränderungen in Teams erkannt werden. Zweihundert und acht Maschinenbau Studenten, die an einem achtwöchigen Projekt involviert waren, nahmen an der Studie teil. Mit Hilfe einer qualitativen Studie wurde anhand der induktiven Inhaltsanalyse nach Mayring (2010) ein Kategoriensystem für Auslöser von Teamadaption entwickelt. Insgesamt wurden 271 Ereignisse kategorisiert. Es wurden drei interne, von selbst erzeugte Auslöser (Interpersonelle Dynamik, Arbeitsaufträge und Erreichen von Meilenstein), und drei externe, von außen verursachte Auslöser (Änderung von Ressourcen, Interventionen und Veränderung von Rahmenbedingungen) mit weiteren Unterkategorien identifiziert. Die Ergebnisse zeigen, dass Auslöser von Team Adaption sowohl von dem Team selber als auch von der Umwelt ausgelöst werden. Außerdem bestätigen die Ergebnisse, dass sowohl positive (z. B. Erreichen eines Unterziels) als auch negative Ereignisse (z. B. Verlassen von Teammitgliedern), Auslöser von Teamadaption sind. Die vorliegende Studie leistet einen Beitrag zur Teamadaptation-Forschung, indem sie das erste Kategoriensystem von Auslösern von Veränderungen, die eine Anpassung von Teamprozessen erfordern, aufstellt.
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Notes
The analysis was conducted with SPSS (IBM SPSS Statistics Version 23).
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This research was supported by a research grant from the German Research Foundation (SFB 768).
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Georganta, E., Wölfl, T.F. & Brodbeck, F.C. Team adaptation triggers: A categorization scheme. Gr Interakt Org 50, 229–238 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11612-019-00454-4
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11612-019-00454-4