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Team structures---roles, norms, and interaction patterns---define how teams work. HCI researchers have theorized ideal team structures and built systems nudging teams towards them, such as those increasing turn-taking, deliberation, and knowledge distribution. However, organizational behavior research argues against the existence of universally ideal structures. Teams are diverse and excel under different structures: while one team might flourish under hierarchical leadership and a critical culture, another will flounder. In this paper, we present DreamTeam: a system that explores a large space of possible team structures to identify effective structures for each team based on observable feedback. To avoid overwhelming teams with too many changes, DreamTeam introduces multi-armed bandits with temporal constraints: an algorithm that manages the timing of exploration--exploitation trade-offs across multiple bandits simultaneously. A field experiment demonstrated that DreamTeam teams outperformed self-managing teams by 38%, manager-led teams by 46%, and teams with unconstrained bandits by 41%. This research advances computation as a powerful partner in establishing effective teamwork.
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Flat teams drive scientific innovation
With teams growing in all areas of scientific and scholarly research, we explore the relationship between team structure and the character of knowledge they produce. Drawing on 89,575 self-reports of team member research activity underlying scientific publications, we show how individual activities cohere into broad roles of 1) leadership through the direction and presentation of research and 2) support through data collection, analysis, and discussion. The hidden hierarchy of a scientific team is characterized by its lead (or L) ratio of members playing leadership roles to total team size. The L ratio is validated through correlation with imputed contributions to the specific paper and to science as a whole, which we use to effectively extrapolate the L ratio for 16,397,750 papers where roles are not explicit. We find that, relative to flat, egalitarian teams, tall, hierarchical teams produce less novelty and more often develop existing ideas, increase productivity for those on top and decrease it for those beneath, and increase short-term citations but decrease long-term influence. These effects hold within person—the same person on the same-sized team produces science much more likely to disruptively innovate if they work on a flat, high-L-ratio team. These results suggest the critical role flat teams play for sustainable scientific advance and the training and advancement of scientists.
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- Award ID(s):
- 1800956
- PAR ID:
- 10381172
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
- Volume:
- 119
- Issue:
- 23
- ISSN:
- 0027-8424
- 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/10.1073/pnas.2200927119
