Social Psychology of Organizations

New Patterns of Management.

actions, and interactions of school leadership as they unfold together in the daily life of schools. The research program involves in-depth observations and interviews with formal and informal leaders and classroom teachers as well as a social network analysis in schools in the Chicago metropolitan area. We outline the distributed framework below, beginning with a brief review of the theoretical underpinnings for this work—distributed cognition and activity theory—which we then use to re-approach the subject of leadership practice. Next we develop our distributed theory of leadership around four ideas: leadership tasks and functions, task enactment, social distribution of task enactment, and situational distribution of task enactment. Our central argument is that school leadership is best understood as a distributed practice, stretched over the school’s social and situational contexts.

/pdf/investigating-school-leadership-practice-a-distributed-jzjq3c05gi.pdf

Investigating School Leadership Practice: A Distributed Perspective

Learning style instruments are widely used but not enough is known about their reliability and validity and their impact on pedagogy in post-16 learning. This report documents work from a project commissioned by the Learning and Skills Development Agency (LSDA) to carry out an extensive review of research on post-16 learning styles, to evaluate the main models of learning styles, and to discuss the implications of learning styles for post-16 teaching and learning. The following research questions were addressed: What models of learning styles are influential and potentially influential? What empirical evidence is there to support the claims made for these models? What are the broad implications for pedagogy of these models? What empirical evidence is there that models of learning styles have an impact on students’ learning? The project identified the range of models that are available and influential or potentially influential in research and practice, located these models within identifiable ‘families’ of ideas about learning styles, evaluated the theories, claims and applications of these models, with a particular focus on evaluating the authors’ claims for reliability and validity, evaluated the claims made for the pedagogical implications of the selected models of learning styles, identified what gaps there are in current knowledge and what future research is needed in this area, and made recommendations and drew conclusions about the research field as a whole. In conclusion, the implications for pedagogy are drawn out and recommendations and conclusions are offered for practitioners, policymakers and the research community. The report concludes that it matters fundamentally which model is chosen. A second report (indexed at TD/TNC 79.72) discusses the appeal of learning styles as well as offering an overview of ways in which political and institutional contexts in the learning and skills sector affect the ways that learning styles might be put into practice.

/pdf/learning-styles-and-pedagogy-in-post-16-learning-a-2smhmr7m15.pdf

Learning styles and pedagogy in post-16 learning: a systematic and critical review

The paper describes the impact of critical success factors (CSFs) across the stages of enterprise resource planning (ERP) implementations using the responses from 86 organizations that completed or are in the process of completing an ERP implementation. Our results provide advice to management on how best to utilize their limited resources to choose those CSFs that are most likely to have an impact upon the implementation of the ERP system.

/pdf/the-impact-of-critical-success-factors-across-the-stages-of-x988cwivh8.pdf

The impact of critical success factors across the stages of enterprise resource planning implementations

Organizational Change

Belbin's (1981, 1993) team role theories are evaluated in terms of the claim that high team performance is associated with teams which are balanced in terms of the team roles represented amongst team members. Eleven teams from a mixture of private and public organizations were surveyed to test the proposition that a balanced team will be a high performing team and vice versa. Issues of measurement of team balance and team performance are addressed. The research is believed to be unique in including a number of criteria for team role balance rather than the single, simplistic measure frequently used. An innovative measure of team performance is used. The results of the investigation give some support to the link Belbin makes between team role balance and team performance. These are discussed in the light of the paucity of rigorous research in this area to date.

Team roles and team performance: Is there ‘really’ a link?

This paper brings together research into and using the team role model developed by Belbin (1981, 1993a) in an attempt to provide an exhaustive assessment of construct validity in light of the conflicting evidence so far produced. Role theory is used to contextualize the origins of the model. The psychometric properties of the Team Role Self-Perception Inventory used to assess a person's likely behaviour in a team are examined along with 43 empirical studies that have tested theoretical associations between team roles and other cognitive or behavioural traits. While the evidence is mixed, we conclude that, on balance, the model and its accompanying Inventory have adequate convergent validity. However, strong associations between some team roles are observed, indicating weak discriminant validity among some scales in the Inventory. Through its coverage of important areas of teamworking, the paper contributes to the practitioner and research communities by providing fresh insights into aspects of teamworking and by suggesting new research agendas.

https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/Delivery.cfm/joms_666.pdf?abstractid=955572&mirid=5

Belbin's Team Role Model: Development, Validity and Applications for Team Building*

Teamwork is a key feature of work in organisations and a central question in the extensive literature on teams concerns the ways that team performance can be measured This paper summarises the concept of team performance and, focussing on management teams, reports the results of an extensive study into team members’ constructions of performance Factor analysis of data collected through 60 repertory grid structured interviews with members of management teams suggests seven factors that represent team performance The factors are: team purpose; team organisation; team leadership; team climate; interpersonal relations; team communications; and team composition An eighth factor, team interaction with the wider organisation, is suggested from theoretical considerations and is included in an eight‐factor model of team performance

The dimensions of management team performance: a repertory grid study

The Learning Style Questionnaire (LSQ) developed by Honey and Mumford (1986) is one of several measures of individual learning style. Despite its popularity in the UK there is little published evidence for construct validity. This survey of 329 British managers used cluster and factor analysis to assess the validity of the LSQ. Cluster analysis revealed learning style profiles dominated by Reflector/Theorist traits. The factor structure of the LSQ does not cleanly reflect the four-stage Learning Cycle relied upon for a theoretical foundation. The observed structure is more indicative of a three-stage learning cycle of Action, Reflection and Planning.

Barbara Senior

Papers

Organizational Change

Team roles and team performance: Is there ‘really’ a link?

Belbin's Team Role Model: Development, Validity and Applications for Team Building*

The dimensions of management team performance: a repertory grid study

The Dimensionality of Honey and Mumford’s Learning Styles Questionnaire