Coordinating across boundaries: The importance of members' personalities

Coordinating across boundaries

The importance of members' personalities

Acknowledgements

Multi-team effort:

Department of HRM & OB, University of Groningen

Thomas A. de Vries, Frank Walter & Gerben S. van der Vegt

Department of Social Psychology, University of Tilburg

Inge Visser, Christel Rutte

Faculty Military Sciences, Netherlands Defense Academy

Ad L. W. Vogelaar

TNO Behavioural and Societal Sciences

Rick van der Kleij & Peter J. M. D. Essens

Dr. Rick van der Kleij


Our research: Purpose

Help the Netherlands Armed Forces to manage boundaries and to

bridge breakdowns in organization networks (e.g., staffs) that hinder

performance

Literature research, interviews with key personnel, observations

during field exercises, and lab experiments



Boundary spanners

Boundary theory: Crucial role of individuals in establishing and

maintaining interorganizational relationships: boundary spanners* Boundary spanning: Social behaviors to manage interactions across

boundaries and bridge breakdowns

Several studies demonstrated the importance of individual

communication roles within organizations

Highly influential in shaping and facilitating network form

Help overcome information asymmetries and breakdowns in networks

* networker, broker, collaborator, cupid, civic entrepreneur, boundroid, sparkplug,

collabronaut, informational intermediaries, and catalysts



Barriers to integration

Functional or divisional boundaries;

Physical distance (even floors in a building);

Hierarchical levels; and

Project or key account team lines.



Integration mechanisms

Organization design and personnel movement

Organization structure, team composition, roles, responsibilities

Training

Interface ‘management’ groups and integration teams

Work procedures and processes

Interface contracts

Rewarding systems and work rotation

Participant and manager mediation (e.g., liaison)

Improved information and communication technologies

Browning, T. R. (1998). Integrative Mechanisms for Multiteam Integration: Findings from Five Case Studies. System Engineering, 1, 95-112.



The liaison as integration mechanism

Boundary spanners are of crucial importance to effective integration in

networked operations

To achieve the best utilization of resources or employment of services

of one organization by another

Usually part of the organization embeds a LNO in another part of the

organization to provide face-to-face coordination (emigrant)

LNO’s main task is to make sure that the interaction between parts of

the organization are optimal

Monitoring, coordinating, communicating, advising, assisting and reporting



Current study: personality of liaisons

A liaison is a sociable or people-person: externally oriented?

Extraversion personality trait

i.e., being sociable, talkative, assertive, and active

We suggest that boundary spanners’ similarity in extraversion

communicates a compatible approach to coordination, which elicits

boundary spanning and, in turn, enhances perceived boundary

spanning effectiveness.

Similarity-attraction paradigm (Byrne, 1997)

Person feels attracted to other persons with whom he or she perceives to

share similar characteristics or attitude



Why extraversion?

Unlike other personality traits (e.g., agreeableness, neuroticism,

openness to experience, and conscientiousness), B’s extraversion is

relatively easy to identify and may therefore assist A’s assessment of

B’s similarity

Not only may B’s extraversion be readily assessable, it can also

provide A with rich information about B’s attitudes towards tasks in

work-related contexts.

Extraversion is related to attitude towards problem solving, decision-making

and task execution.

Similarity in extraversion can reveal A’s compatibility and coherence of

interaction styles with those of unfamiliar members.



Current study: hypotheses

H1: Extraverts-extraverts and introverts-introverts dyads engage in

more interaction, develop more effective initial interaction patterns,

and perceived more natural, smooth, and relaxed interaction, as

compared to mixed dyads of introverts-extraverts

H2: A’s boundary spanning behavior relates to B’s evaluation of A’s

effectiveness as a boundary spanner.

A’s boundary-spanning behavior may indicate his or her commitment to B’s

team and thereby show B that maintaining the relationship with A is

worthwhile, equitable, productive and satisfying effort.



Research model



Method

76 participants in 19 multiteam systems

Distributed two 2-member component teams:

1 boundary spanner and 1 non-boundary spanning team member

Study focuses on the 38 persons in boundary spanning positions.

Boundary spanners (A and B) acted as representatives of their teams

and could contact each other through email

Non-boundary spanners could only send emails within their

component team.



Task

Develop a plan on the basis of complex, regularly updating, and

ambiguous information to evacuate a group of people from a hostile

area

Within each component team, each member is assigned to a specific

role that requires unique expertise and has unique responsibilities.

These roles correspond to important functional domains in the

military: Intelligence and logistics

Driven by a real-time scenario, messages are sent to team members,

and information is selectively made available on multiple websites

during the time span of the task



Multiteam Research Environment: PLATT*

PLATT: Flexible software platform for experimental team research

Two components:

Modular software architecture (JADE agent platform)

Research-specific scenarios

Software architecture is research question independent and

guarantees large degree of flexibility

Scenario development is driven by research question and based on

research model

* Kamphuis, W., Essens, P. J. M. D., Houttuin, K., & Gaillard, A. W. K. (2010). PLATT: A flexible platform for experimental research on team performance in complex environments. Behavior Research Methods, 42 (3), 739-753.







Measures

A and B’s extraversion.

10-item bipolar extraversion self-report measure taken from Goldberg's

(1992) International Personality Item Pool.

A’s boundary spanning behavior towards B.

The number of emails participants in boundary-spanning positions (A) sent

to their boundary-spanning partner (B).

Emails that A sent to B, forwarded to B, and replied to B.

B’s perception of A’s boundary spanning effectiveness.

Subset of Richter, Scully, and West's (2005) Intergroup Effectiveness Scale

to measure A’s responsiveness (2-items), viability (2 items), and resource

exchange (2-items) towards B



Means, Standard Deviations, and Correlations



Note: N = 38 individuals nested in 19 boundary spanning relations.† p < .10; * p < .05; ** p < .01

r

Variables M SD 1 2 3 4 5

1. Age 24.89 4.48

2. Gender .48 .50 -.08

3. Extraversion A 4.95 .85 .11 -.27†

4. Extraversion B 4.95 .85 -.14 -.03 -.15

5. Boundary Spanning Behavior A 6.95 .55 -.15 .04 .04 .06

6. Boundary Spanning Effectiveness 3.06 .54 .02 -.23† -.04 .05 .361*

Boundary Spanning Behavior



Model 1 Model 2 Model 3

Variables entered B Std.

Err.

B Std.

Err.

B Std.

Err.

Age -.42 .45 -.41 .46 -.74 .48

Gender -.64 .55 -.63 .58 -.74 .41

Extraversion A .07 .59 .15 .50

Extraversion B .16 .56 .15 .48

Extraversion A * Extraversion B 2.51*** .68

Δχ2 (df) 2.20 (2) .09 (2) 11.54*** (1)




Boundary Spanning Effectiveness



Model 1 Model 2

Variables entered B Std. Err. B Std. Err.

Age .01 .08 .05 .08

Gender -.03 .10 .05 .09

Boundary Spanning Behavior .23* .09

Δχ2 (df) .16 (2) 5.81 * (1)


Conclusions

H1: Results indicate that extraversion similarity between a boundary

spanner and his or her partner is associated with increased levels of

boundary spanning behavior directed towards that partner.

H2: Boundary spanning behavior is associated with the partner’s

perceptions of the responsiveness, viability, and information exchange

of the respective boundary spanner



Study limitations

Students, not military personnel

Although we build on the similarity-attraction paradigm as implicit

mechanism that explains our results, we did not directly measure this

mechanism.

Relatively small sample

Statistical power to low to dismiss tests that were not statistically significant.

Lab study no field research

Replication studies in organizational settings are needed before generalization

is warranted.



Theoretical & practical implications

Study contributes to boundary theory by exploring the dyadic-level

foundations of boundary-spanners’ perceptions of effectiveness.

Team design: how to staff multiteam systems

Selection & training of personnel: focus on similarity?



Thanks for your attention

Questions?

More information:

Dr. Rick van der Kleij,

Research Scientist Behavioural and Societal Sciences at TNO

Electronic mail: [email protected]



Coordinating across boundaries: The importance of members' personalities

Education

boundary spanning

kleij coordinating

societal sciences rick

perceived boundary

boundary spanners similarity

bs extraversion

kleij peter

organization networks