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Finanzcontrolling
(2007)
Dass Teamarbeit für das Hervorbringen von Innovationen wichtig ist, konnte bereits hinreichend empirisch bestätigt werden. Dabei hat sich für den Erfolg von Innovationsprojekten (z.B. in der Produktentwicklung) vor allem die Qualität der Zusammenarbeit im Team als entscheidend herausgestellt. Welche Kompetenzen Teams dafür benötigen und wie diese Kompetenzen z.B. durch Training und Teamentwicklung gefordert werden können verbleibt jedoch noch weitestgehend offen.
Diesen beiden Fragen widmet sich diese Arbeit, indem sie zunächst auf dem Stand der bisherigen Team- und Innovationsforschung für erfolgreiche Innovationsprojekte relevante Teamkompetenzen definiert und mögliche Personalinterventionen ableitet. Dazu konnten 11 relevante Teamkompetenzen identifiziert und den 4 Kompetenzbereichen der fachlichen, methodischen, sozialen und selbststeuernden Teamkompetenz zugeordnet werden. In Anlehnung an das Modell der Verhaltensdeterminanten und an gruppenpsychologischen Erkenntnissen sowie auf der Basis einer Expertenbefragung konnten dazu verschiedene Maßnahmen in den Bereichen Mitarbeitertraining, Teamtraining und Teamentwicklung identifiziert werden.
Die theoretisch fundierten Erkenntnisse werden schließlich im Modell der Teaminnovationskompetenz, kurz TIK-Modell, zusammengefasst, das im Wesentlichen einem in der Teamforschung üblichen Input-Prozess-Output-Modell entspricht. In diesem Modell werden Zusammenhange
der verschiedenen Trainings- und Teamentwicklungsinterventionen mit den einzelnen Teamkompetenzen einerseits sowie zwischen den Teamkompetenzen und dem Erfolg von Innovationsprojekten andererseits postuliert.
Zur empirischen Überprüfung des TIK-Modells wurde im Jahr 2007 die Studie ‚Training for Innovation’ durchgeführt, an der sich 34 in Deutschland ansässige Unternehmen beteiligten. Befragt wurden dabei mittels einer Online-Befragung Manager, Projektleiter und Teammitglieder zu ihrer Zusammenarbeit, Teilnahme an spezifischen Trainings- und Teamentwicklungsmaßnahmen sowie zu projektspezifischen Rahmenbedingungen und dem Erfolg abgeschlossener
Innovationsprojekte.
Die Angaben konnten dabei auf Projektebene verdichtet werden, wobei 95 vollständige Teams bzw. Innovationsprojekte letztendlich ausgewertet werden konnten.
Die postulierten Zusammenhänge wurden auf der so gewonnenen Datenbasis mit Hilfe der multiplen Regressionsanalyse überprüft, wobei einige neue Erkenntnisse gewonnen werden konnten. Zunächst weisen nicht alle der 11 definierten Teamkompetenzen einen direkten positiven Zusammenhang mit dem Projekterfolg auf. Als bedeutsam zeigen sich vor allem die interne Kooperationskompetenz neben einer Anpassungs- und Improvisationskompetenz im Team, wohingegen fachliche Kompetenzen als Wissens- und Erfahrungsressource keine signifikanten Zusammenhänge zeigen.
Vor allem teambezogene Trainings- und Entwicklungsmaßnahmen wie Teamtraining, Teamcoaching, Teammoderation oder auch Zielvereinbarungen und Feedback stehen in einem positiven Zusammenhang mit einzelnen oder mehreren Teamkompetenzen. Damit kann von möglichen positiven Effekten solcher Interventionen in Bezug auf die innovative Teamarbeit ausgegangen werden.
Individuelle Weiterbildung einzelner Teammitglieder unmittelbar vor oder während der untersuchten Projekte zeigt in dieser Arbeit keine Zusammenhänge mit den Kompetenzen von Innovationsteams.
Hierzu müssen weitere Untersuchungen folgen, die die Trainingsmaßnahmen differenzierter nach ihrem Einsatz, ihrem Inhalt und ihrer Qualität betrachten und dabei auch die Kompetenzen der einzelnen Teammitglieder berücksichtigen, welche nicht Gegenstand dieser Arbeit waren. Eine Ausnahme stellt jedoch die Teilnahme einzelner Teammitglieder an Konferenzen oder ähnlichen Veranstaltungen wie Tagungen und Messen dar. Diese weist einen
signifikant positiven Zusammenhang mit dem Wissen und der externen Kooperation der untersuchten Teams auf.
Die Ergebnisse zum TIK-Modell werden zum Schluss dieser Arbeit noch einmal zusammengefasst dargestellt sowie in ihrer Bedeutung für die Forschung und Unternehmenspraxis diskutiert.
Value based management
(2008)
Distance in work teams has become a cornerstone of today’s business world as well as a fundamental research area. It has also become a prevalent team design factor that enables managers to combine the knowledge and skills of far-flung employees together in one team and, thus, to leverage their performance. However, it is not yet clear whether and how distance affects intra-team dynamics and performance. This dissertation addresses this fundamental research gap and explores the consequences of distance in teams and how virtual teams can overcome the bur-dens of virtual collaboration. More precisely, there are three burning issues addressed with regard to dispersed team dynamics: the perception of distance versus proximity, virtual teamwork processes, and the impact of the team context. In practice, it has been shown that the inadequate management of these issues plays a crucial role when virtual teams fall behind managers’ expectations. However, practitioners to date have only limited knowledge how to handle these factors of virtual team performance effectively, due to the severe research gaps associated with these issues. Accordingly, this study’s approach to explaining virtual team performance is built on these three focused elements of virtual collaboration.
Adopting this research focus, the empirical part of this work is structured into four research papers that empirically investigate whether and how perceived distance, team processes, and the team context may become critical for virtual team performance and the extent to which practitioners can build on these three success factors to optimize distributed work. The empirical analyses to these questions are based on a sample consisting of 161 software development teams with varying degrees of geographic dispersion.
The results presented in this dissertation clearly show that team processes, the perception of distance, and the team context matter for virtual team effectiveness. The research results of this study revealed team processes to be the key drivers of virtual team performance. In fact, virtual teams with high-level collaborative team processes are able to outperform their co-located counterparts, even those with the same quality of team processes. Teams with poor team processes, in contrast, suffer heavily from dispersion and underperform co-located teams with the same (low) levels of these processes. Thus, the effect of dispersion is not necessarily detrimental to team performance but rather depends on the quality of task-related team processes.
The analyses further show that it seems not (only) to be the actual degree of geographic dispersion that affects virtual team dynamics but rather the perceived level of distance between the members of a team. By exploring its antecedents, distance perceptions turned out to be mental states that emanate from complex and more socially-based constructions of the reality and are significantly affected by team members’ national heterogeneity. This finding illustrates the need to include the social aspects of dispersion in future research on dispersed team functioning. For executives, this finding offers new opportunities how to reap the benefits of virtual collaboration without efforts of bringing team members together face-to-face.
A third antecedent of virtual team dynamics turned out to be the organizational context. The organizational context has been shown to affect virtual team performance more indirectly by changing the conditions in which team members collaborate. In this dissertation, two paths have been identified of how the organizational context impacts virtual team functioning. First, organ-izational context variables such as the degree of formalization facilitate the perception of proximity even for team members being geographically strongly dispersed. Second, the organizational context can facilitate virtual team performance by creating an environment for superior dispersed collaboration quality. These context-related findings show that the larger organizational environment can help distributed teams to cope with the liabilities of distance more effectively. In particular, there are distinct and manageable attributes of the organizational context that can be addressed to help team members developing perceptions of interpersonal closeness as well as to perform high-level dispersed teamwork.
The results of this dissertation offer both considerable contributions to the extant literature on virtual team dynamics and guidance for the formulation of best-practices in virtual team management. In the end, all presented theoretical models and corresponding research results help to learn more about virtual teams – especially about their dynamics and the antecedents of their performance.
Supply chain fit
(2009)
Innovations have become essential drivers of success for companies in most industries. However, innovative efforts often fail due to a lack of internal support. Past research has shown that internal resistance arises when employees perceive innovations as threatening the core of the organization, its identity. How employees can be led to identify with much innovations has remained largely unsolved. Drawing on organizational psychology, this study proposes a new conceptual framework which includes an in-depth understanding of employee identification with innovations, its identity-related antecedents and its consequences. The framework is tested by means of large-scale empirical studies among more than 150 members of a leading healthcare organization. Results indicate that the proposed framework has high explanatory power for employee identification with innovations, employee behaviours and the innovations’ success in the market. Based on these results, an innovation-identity toolkit is derived which enables executives to systematically pursue identification management and integrate it into their innovation management practice. Accordingly, the present book is relevant for both academics and managers in the fields of organizational behaviour and innovation management.
Bank earnings management
(2010)
Dispersed innovation teams rely upon team members who share leadership responsibilities to attain high levels of team performance. Although this concept of team shared leadership is receiving increasing attention, this dissertation shows that especially research on team-level antecedents of shared leadership has major deficits regarding a basic framework for analyzing antecedents, depth of theory, context-specific arguments, and empirical validation. This dissertation tries to fill these research gaps, thus shedding light on the question: How can we foster the important process of shared leadership in dispersed innovation teams?
This dissertation introduces a theoretical framework into shared leadership literature to structure the antecedents of shared leadership according to their mode of functioning. As such, this dissertation argues for the first time that to establish high levels of team shared leadership the basic dimensions of motivation, opportunity, and ability for shared leadership should be addressed (motivation-opportunity-ability framework or MOA framework). Based on this notion team-level antecedents providing motivation, opportunity, and ability for shared leadership are operationalized and hypothesized as antecedents of shared leadership in dispersed innovation teams using acknowledged theories. Moreover, all discussed hypotheses are verified in a sample of 96 dispersed real work teams with innovative software tasks. Thereby, empirical results are drawn from 96 team leader responses (used to assess team-level antecedents of team shared leadership) and 337 team member responses (used to assess team shared leadership).
Motivation for Team Shared Leadership. Based on the perspective of shared leadership as a risk-taking behavior for team members in dispersed innovation teams, trustworthiness is argued as a facilitator of the willingness, thus motivation to engage in risky shared leadership actions with others. This argumentation based on trust theory was supported by empirical results showing that team member trustworthiness in terms of benevolence and integrity was positively related to team shared leadership. Surprisingly, the proposed positive relationship between ability-based trustworthiness and shared leadership could not be confirmed, thus ability-based trustworthiness could not be validated as a facilitator of shared leadership in dispersed innovation teams.
Opportunity for Team Shared Leadership. Opportunity for team shared leadership is addressed by discussing team reflexivity as an antecedent of shared leadership in dispersed
innovation teams. Team reflexivity is argued as opportunity providing antecedent of shared leadership as it gives team members a clear information basis in the complex and constantly changing environment of dispersed innovation teams, thus making leadership needs identifiable. In support of this argumentation based on goal setting theory and shared mental model theory team reflexivity was positively related to team shared leadership. Thereby, the relationship between team reflexivity and shared leadership could be shown as even stronger under conditions of high team role breadth self-efficacy and high team empowerment.
Ability for Team Shared Leadership. Ability for shared leadership is addressed in terms of social and project management skills. These two skills are argued as basic and
complementary skills needed for shared leadership in dispersed innovation teams based on socio-technical systems theory. Underscoring the importance of interpersonal competence
the empirical analysis showed that social skills were strongly positively related to team shared leadership. Contrary to the hypothesis of this study project management skills were not related to team shared leadership.
Structural Team Properties and Team Shared Leadership. Moreover, several structural team properties are discussed as team-level antecedents of shared leadership, namely female ratio, mean age, age diversity, and national diversity. Thereby, structural team properties are argued as potentially affecting team shared leadership through several
MOA dimensions. In the empirical analyses female ratio was positively related to shared leadership in dispersed innovation teams, while mean age was negatively related. Age
diversity showed no significant relationship and national diversity was marginally positively related to shared leadership in dispersed innovation teams. Based on these findings, important implications for practice, related to the three stages of a project team (establishment, forming, and performing stage), are provided. As such, team leaders of dispersed innovation teams is given a check-list of how to foster shared leadership in dispersed innovation teams based on the results of this dissertation. Future research is especially suggested regarding the “non-findings” of this dissertation, interaction effects, additional team-level antecedents, the vertical team leader’s role within shared leadership evolvement, antecedents of shared leadership in other contexts, and other levels of antecedents (e.g., organizational-level antecedents).
Die vorliegende Arbeit beschäftigt sich damit, wie die Wissensnutzung in verteilten Teams gefördert werden kann. Wissen ist heutzutage eine der wichtigsten Ressourcen, über die Unternehmen verfügen und die ihnen entscheidende Wettbewerbsvorteile liefern kann. Viele Unternehmen sind heute multinationale Organisationen mit Standorten auf verschiedenen Kontinenten. Um das Wissen der Mitarbeiter1dieser verschiedenen Standorte zu nutzen, arbeiten Teams standortübergreifend in sogenannten virtuellen oder verteilten Teams zusammen.
Aufgrund der Verteiltheit der Teams ergeben sich Herausforderungen für die Zusammenarbeit der Mitglieder. Klassische Führungsansätze erweisen sich aufgrund der räumlichen und zeitlichen Distanz als wenig geeignet in einem solchen Kontext. Das Konzept der geteilten Führung, also die Übernahme von Führungsverantwortung durch die Teammitglieder selbst, hilft, das in einem Team vorhandene Wissen effektiv zum Einsatz zu bringen.
Verteilte Teams greifen zur Kommunikation auf verschiedene Medien zurück, die einen unterschiedlichen Grad an Reichhaltigkeit bereitstellen. Dabei besteht einerseits ein Zusammenhang zwischen der Wahl der Kommunikationsmedien und dem Grad an geteilter Führung in einem Team, andererseits kann die Verwendung reichhaltiger Kommunikationsmedien die Wissensnutzung in einem Team fördern. Die Wahl der Kommunikationsmedien kann durch das Definieren von Kommunikationsnormen beeinflusst werden. Auch auf die Effektivität der Wissensnutzung hat das Aufstellen von Regeln zur Kommunikation und Information innerhalb eines Teams positive Auswirkungen.
Häufig spielen kulturelle Unterschiede bei der Betrachtung von verteilten Teams eine Rolle, da die Teams aufgrund der standortübergreifenden Zusammenarbeit auch Länder- und Kulturgrenzen überschreiten. Dabei spielen die kulturellen Orientierungen der Teammitglieder eine Rolle, die kulturelle Heterogenität und die kulturellen Unterschiede zwischen den Mitgliedern. Alle Faktoren können einen Einfluss auf das Auftreten von geteilter Führung in einem verteilten Team haben.
Für die Studie, die dieser Arbeit zugrunde liegt, wurden die Mitglieder und Leiter von 96 Innovationsteams aus 36 Unternehmen – vornehmlich aus der Softwarebranche – befragt. Insgesamt beantworteten 426 Teammitglieder und –leiter die Fragebögen zu den Themen Führung und Zusammenarbeit in ihren Teams.
Diese Arbeit zeigt, welche Einflüsse die unterschiedlichen Konzeptualisierungen von Kultur sowie verschiedene kulturelle Orientierungen auf das Auftreten von geteilter Führung in einem Team haben. Darüber hinaus wird der Zusammenhang zwischen der Reichhaltigkeit der Kommunikation in einem Team und dem Prozess der geteilten Führung, der Definition von Kommunikationsnormen und der Nutzung des vorhandenen Wissens untersucht. Die Wichtigkeit von geteilter Führung und Kommunikationsnormen für einen funktionierenden Informationsaustausch und die Entwicklung von Metawissen wird durch die Ergebnisse dieser Arbeit unterstrichen.
Open-ended property funds
(2011)
This dissertation examines the role tangible resources play in innovation projects. Specifically, it is distinguished between two mindsets when it comes to tangible resource constraints in innovation projects. One mindset regarding the relationship between tangible resources and innovation project performance can be described best as “resource driven”, meaning that innovation project performance is strongly linked to the presence of adequate tangible resource input. Counter-intuitively, a vast number of case examples suggest the exact opposite, though. The underlying “less is more” mindset suggests that innovation project performance could also be achieved because (not despite) of constrained tangible resources. Those views reflect the two extremes of the continuous variable “tangible resource orientation” which expresses the perceived dependency on tangible resources in order to achieve a high level of performance in innovation projects.
Since conceptual and empirical evidence on the antecedents and consequences of varying degrees of tangible resource adequacy in extant literature is inconclusive, this dissertation aims at disentangling the ambiguous tangible resources-innovation project performance relationship. The arguments I put forward in this dissertation are based on conceptual evidence as a result of synthesizing literature from neighboring research fields like cognitive psychology, entrepreneurship, and corporate strategy pointing to mechanisms which cause material resource constraints to facilitate creative and innovative performance in innovation projects. These literature streams are then brought together within the framework of the resource based view (RBV) of the firm. The empirical analyses to test the hypothesized relationships are based on a sample consisting of 121 innovation project teams from the electronics industry.
The results presented in this dissertation show that the ambiguity of the relationship between tangible resources and innovation project performance observed in the literature may be a result of moderating variables that determine the direction and strength of tangible resources’ influence on innovation project performance. Specifically, the analyses reveal an interaction effect in that perceptions of material resource adequacy indeed may entail diverging effects on innovation project outcomes in family and non-family businesses, depending on differences in these firms’ organizational culture regarding the orientation toward material resources. In particular, innovation projects in non-family firms do Extended summary III significantly better when being provided with more adequate material resources, while in family firms innovation projects do not show significant differences in conditions of more or less adequate tangible resources and are shown to perform better (relative to those in nonfamily firms) under conditions of perceived material resource inadequacy.
Moreover the results of this dissertation point to the influence of socio-cognitive factors on a team’s evaluation of material resource adequacy. These socio-cognitive influences are further shown to root both on innovation project team attributes and capabilities, as well as on characteristics of organizational culture. Specifically, regarding team-level factors, it is found that innovation project team members’ perception of material resource adequacy is influenced by a team’s action repertoire, the belief of a team being able to accomplish a task, and the team task’s work volume. Regarding organizational-level factors, this research reveals that innovation project teams in family firms perceived their material resource provisions generally as being more adequate. Further, this relationship is shown to be mediated by an organization’s cultural characteristic of material resource orientation, representing an important link that transmits family influence to innovation project teams’ perceptions of material resource adequacy.
Finally, the results reveal that depending on which outcome dimension is operationalized as the main project focus, i.e., whether the quality or innovativeness of the developed products is used as outcome measure, converse results may emerge. Specifically, it is found that perceptions of material resource adequacy have a positive effect on new product quality and a negative effect on new product novelty. In a similar vein, relative team size is shown to be negatively related with new product novelty while showing a positive relationship with new product quality. Additionally, relative team size is also found to have a positive relationship with project efficiency.
From these findings, key implications for the management of innovation projects are derived in order to ensure the effectiveness of companies’ investments in R&D, showing that adequate tangible resources per se do not have a direct effect (neither positive nor negative) on innovation project performance. Rather, the role of tangible resources in innovation projects is contingent upon how adequate tangible resources are perceived to be, on certain contingency variables, and on the outcome dimension focused on. Thus, sometimes less may indeed turn out to be more and this thesis points to ways how to tap this potential.
Past research has identified that innovation portfolio management is about efficiently managing the right innovation portfolio projects. However, the relevant literature has fairly unobserved decision processes which help to maximize the value of the entire innovation portfolio. This work analyzed decision procedures within the context of innovation portfolio management; especially, the project go/stop-decision processes. Founded on a theoretical basis two decision making experiments were developed and a distinct set of hypotheses by two large-scale experimental studies were tested.
The present work is aimed at making a valuable contribution to conceptual research about decision making in the context of innovation portfolio management, and the experimental based research field. The results of these studies help to get a detailed understanding of the decision making processes and may lead to a better understanding of project management within an innovation portfolio by firms and by decision makers in general.
Élite role and context
(2011)
A bibliometric analysis of research published in the major accounting journals from 1990-2007
(2011)
Supply chain risk management
(2012)
Upper echelons theory
(2012)
CO2 hedging for airlines
(2012)
Die Erwartungen in eine gelungene Kooperation von Logistik und Vertrieb sind hoch. Besonders die Umsetzung von modernen Supply Chain Management Konzepten treibt diese Erwartungen. Ein erhöhter Kooperationsbedarf ergibt sich hier nicht nur aus der Anforderung, reibungslose Abläufe zwischen den Bereichen sicherzustellen. Eine gelungene Kooperation von Logistik und Vertrieb birgt vielmehr das Potenzial, eine hohe Leistung im Kundenservice vermarkten zu können und diese letztlich als Wettbewerbsvorteil auszubauen. In der Praxis gestaltet sich die Umsetzung von Kooperation jedoch häufi g als schwierig. Somit stellt sich die Frage, welche Faktoren die Kooperation an der
Schnittstelle beider Bereiche in positiver und negativer Weise beeinflussen.
Auf Basis einer empirischen Studie mit Antworten von 347 Managern aus Logistik und Vertrieb verschiedener Branchen untersucht die vorliegende Arbeit Einfl ussfaktoren der Kooperation. Dazu werden kooperationsfördernde Mechanismen auf ihre Wirksamkeit hin überprüft. Außerdem werden grundlegende Orientierungen und Kompetenzen von Logistik und Vertrieb an der Schnittstelle beider Abteilungen in ihren Wirkungen betrachtet. Diese sogenannten Thought Worlds sind die Konsequenz einer notwendigen Spezialisierung der Bereiche und prägen deren Arbeitsweisen und Prioritäten. Sie erweisen sich jedoch in der Zusammenarbeit vielfach als beeinträchtigend. Darüber hinaus werden Ansatzpunkte aufgezeigt, um die Kooperation und den gemeinsamen Erfolg von Logistik und Vertrieb zu erhöhen.
Hedging retail promotions
(2012)
Past research has identified innovation portfolio management as a key success factor for a firm’s new product development process. However, the relevant literature falls short in considering the strategic scope of innovation portfolio decision-making. To take a first step in this direction, Marcel Coulon defines the construct of ‘portfolio orientation’ as a strategic orientation. He develops a conceptual framework to identify performance effects of portfolio-oriented decision-making for new product development programs. Based on data of more than 200 German companies, he presents three papers. First, he addresses contingencies for portfolio orientation effectiveness to help understand interactions of formal innovation management with new product development issues inside and outside firm boundaries. Second, he identifies best performing portfolio types for specific levels of portfolio management formalization. Third, a variety of antecedents and their impact on a firm’s portfolio orientation are presented. Accordingly, the book is equally relevant for practitioners and academics in the fields of research and development management and innovation management, as well as strategic marketing management.
Managerial Intentionality
(2013)
The present dissertation applies findings from the field of cognitive psychology to the business context. Specifically, it examines the influence of different types of similarity on decisions in the areas of innovation and strategy. Similarity and related concepts, such as strategic fit, play an important role in these fields, such as when generating or assessing the value of ideas. However, recent findings in cognitive psychology, indicating that a purely taxonomic, traditional model of similarity does not capture the entire picture of similarity, have widely been ignored in the business context.
Two entities are taxonomically similar if they belong to the same category based on features they share (e.g., dog and cat). In contrast, entities are thematically similar if they co-occur or interact in the same scenario or event (e.g., dog and bone). Thematic thinking builds on the latter type of similarity. The present dissertation focuses on the role thematic similarity plays in managerial decision making and takes the first steps toward establishing thematic thinking as a business-relevant concept, using a multi-study approach. After explaining the conceptual basis of thematic thinking, hypotheses are derived and tested, using four different samples of field data and applying different methods of data collection. The main body of the dissertation comprises four empirical studies.
The first study that is presented examines individual antecedents and outcomes of thematic thinking based on a sample using survey data from 199 individuals. Positive affect and experience are shown to be positively related to thematic thinking. A negative relationship is postulated for thematic thinking and formal education; the relationship found is indeed negative, yet not significant. The empirical findings related to the outcomes of thematic thinking turn out to be the opposite of the postulated relationships: creativity is found to be significantly negatively related to thematic thinking, while adaptation is significantly positively related to it.
The second empirical study investigates the relationship between thematic thinking and individual performance within the research and development (R&D) context. The findings are based on a sample of 172 R&D professionals. As hypothesized, a significant positive relationship between thematic thinking and innovativeness as well as job performance are hown. The relationship between thematic thinking and job performance is mediated by innovativeness. Furthermore, post-hoc analyses reveal that the relationship between thematic thinking and job performance is moderated by political skill.