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This paper investigates team psychological safety (N=34 teams) in a synchronous online engineering design class spanning 4 weeks. While work in this field has suggested that psychological safety in virtual teams can facilitate knowledge-sharing, trust among teams, and overall performance, there have been limited investigations of the longitudinal trajectory of psychological safety, when the construct stabilizes in a virtual environment, and what factors impact the building of psychological safety in virtual teams. The results of this study identified that the construct of psychological safety took more time to become a reliable construct in virtual design teams, but once it stabilized, it did not change. Additionally, qualitative findings point to issues with communication and conflict across various stages of the design process in the development of psychological safety. Finally, we identify potential interventions to enhance team mental model development in the early phases of virtual teaming to support team psychological safety.
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Forming Entrepreneurial Teams: Mixing Business and Friendship to Create Transactive Memory Systems for Enhanced Success
Successfully navigating through critical uncertainties during the incipient stages requires new ventures to develop learning systems, and building the right team may be key in this process. Drawing on prior work indicating that entrepreneurial teams form using either an interpersonal-attraction strategy (relationships with similar others in a close network) or a resource-seeking strategy (instrumental focus on complementary skills), we theorize that a dual formation strategy, although challenging to execute, is critical for early performance. Using dual formation strategies from the onset fosters the development of stronger transactive memory systems, because close relationships facilitate smooth coordination among founders specializing in complementary tasks. Transactive memory systems thus mediate the relationship between formation strategies and early entrepreneurial success. Findings from two field observational studies and a field intervention study support our theory: teams formed based on a dual strategy raised greater seed funding on Kickstarter – a leading crowdfunding platform (Study 1), were more successful in a prestigious entrepreneurial competition (Study 2), and gained more profits from selling their initial products (Study 3). Our research advances knowledge on entrepreneurial team formation and offers practical recommendations to facilitate this process at such nascent, but critical stages.
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- Award ID(s):
- 1759196
- PAR ID:
- 10272194
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- Academy of Management Journal
- ISSN:
- 0001-4273
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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- Free Publicly Accessible Full Text
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Accepted Manuscript1.0
- Journal Article:
- https://doi.org/10.5465/amj.2020.0393
