Logo image
Back
Information elaboration and team performance: Examining the psychological origins and environmental contingencies
Journal article   Peer reviewed

Information elaboration and team performance: Examining the psychological origins and environmental contingencies

Christian J. Resick, Toshio Murase, Kenneth R. Randall and Leslie A. DeChurch
Organizational behavior and human decision processes, v 124(2), pp 165-176
Jul 2014
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.obhdp.2014.03.005

Abstract

Collective leadership Environmental turbulence Information elaboration Information exchange Mental models Team composition Teams
•We examine boundaries on information elaboration in functionally diverse teams.•We examine ability and social motivation origins of information elaboration.•Elaboration processes aided team success in turbulent but not stable environments.•Shared strategy mental models mediated ability composition to elaboration processes.•Collective leadership mediated self-reliance beliefs composition to elaboration. Information elaboration enables functionally diverse teams to transform their breadth of knowledge resources into actionable solutions to complex problems. The current study advances information elaboration theory and research in two ways. First, we identify how team ability and social motivation composition characteristics provide the psychological origins of complex information processing efforts. Second, we identify environmental turbulence as an important boundary condition, clarifying when information elaboration benefits team performance and when it does not. These ideas were tested in a sample of 4-person self-managed teams (N=68) which were functionally diverse and performed a cooperative strategic decision-making task. Results indicate that cognitive ability equips teams with the “can do” ability for complex elaboration efforts through emergent team mental models, whereas low preferences for self-reliance provide the “will do” motivation for in-depth information exchange through collective leadership. In turn, teams benefited from information elaboration in turbulent but not stable environments.

Metrics

6 Record Views
63 citations in Web of Science
69 citations in Scopus

Details

InCites Highlights

Data related to this publication, from InCites Benchmarking & Analytics tool:

Collaboration types
Domestic collaboration
Web of Science research areas
Management
Psychology, Applied
Psychology, Social
Logo image