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1. Understanding Organizational Cultural Influences in Multisector Multi-Team Systems

   Castillo, Florence; Pearson, Yvette; Frizell, Sherri; Skaggs, Sheryl; Bisbey, T (June 2024, ASEE)

   Complex problems require complex teams comprised of individuals with different backgrounds, skills and perspectives to work effectively toward their solution. Increasingly, this is being accomplished through the creation of multi-team systems (MTS) that are developed and implemented in alignment with team science-based strategies. MTS are comprised of individual teams with their own goals that are interconnected and work collaboratively toward a larger, common goal. Attitudinal (cohesion, trust, commitment), behavioral (coordination, communication, shared leadership) and cognitive (situational awareness, shared mental models) competencies support MTS effectiveness. Multisector MTS are even more complex, as team members bring aspects of their organizational culture into the MTS, and if priorities and practices are not well aligned, team function and effectiveness can suffer. Thus, for multisector MTS to work, they must begin with a foundational understanding of the component parts, that is, each organization’s culture and priorities, and how – or if – they align for the success of the collaborative. We created a multisector MTS to develop and implement a project funded by the National Science Foundation’s (NSF’s) Scholarships in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (S-STEM) program. The project’s objectives are to: increase the number of domestic low-income academically talented students with demonstrated financial need obtaining master's degrees in supported disciplines and entering the US STEM workforce; implement and evaluate the impact of our Flexible Internship-Research-Education (FIRE) model, which integrates evidence-based strategies that provide student career and educational development support, on student success; and implement, study and disseminate an MTS model for multi -organizational collaboration toward career and educational development. The partners include four universities – three Carnegie R2 public Historically Black Colleges and Universities and one Carnegie R1 private, highly selective admissions institution – and a major government employer. Six teams comprise our MTS; with the exception of one, each team has representatives from each partner organization. We sought to understand how each organization’s culture influenced – or might potentially influence – team interactions. The guiding research question for this study is: In what ways – positive or negative – do partner organizations’ cultures impact team members’ engagement with the project? We were interested in gauging how organizational culture, operationalized by performance values (rewarding individual performance vs. team performance), communications (transparent vs. need-to-know, clarity, frequency), conflict resolution and collaborative vs. competitive environments, manifested in their engagement with the MTS. We also explored how – or if – their organization’s priorities aligned with the overall project’s aims and what specific areas might be sources of support and/or challenges as the teams progressed. We conducted open-ended structured interviews with eight project team members who each served on at least one of the six teams. We are completing both content and thematic analyses to understand how team members speak about their organizational influences and engagements within and among the teams. We are finding team members are adaptable; regardless of individual or organizational priorities, when challenges arise, they can re-center on the project’s aims and work collaboratively toward student success. We expect results will illuminate factors multisector MTS teams should consider when forming collaborations. 

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2. Constructing a comprehensive and adaptive survey for cultural analysis of engineering departments

   Berger, E.; Briody, E.; DeBoer, J.; Rhoads, J.; Francis, J.; Witek, L.; Rothstein, R.; Lee, Y. (December 2021, Proceedings of REES AAEE 2021)

   ABSTRACT CONTEXT Culture influences the dynamics and outcomes of organizations in profound ways, including individual-level outcomes (like the quality of work products) and collective impacts (such as reputation or influence). As such, understanding organizational culture is a crucial element of understanding performance; from an anthropological perspective, ‘performance’ is not an outcome of culture, it is a part of culture. A key challenge in understanding organizational culture, especially in complex academic organizations, is the lack of a flexible, scalable approach for data collection and analysis. PURPOSE OR GOAL In this study, we report on our development of a survey-based cultural characterization tool that leverages both lightweight data collection from stakeholders in the organization and public information about that organization. We also integrate perspectives from prior literature about faculty, students, and staff in academic departments. Taken together, the resulting survey covers key elements of culture and allows for scalable data collection across settings via customizations and embedded logic in the survey itself. The outcome of this work is a design process for a new and promising tool for scalable cultural characterization, and we have deployed this tool across two institutions. APPROACH OR METHODOLOGY/METHODS We leverage prior research, our own preliminary data collection, and our experience with this approach in a different setting to develop a cultural characterization survey suitable for delivery to multiple engineering department stakeholders (faculty, staff, and students). We start with a modest number of interviews, stratified by these three groups and achieving saturation of responses, to understand their views on their organization, its strengths and weaknesses, and their perceptions of how it ‘works’. We merge this information with public data (for instance, departmental vision or mission statements, which convey a sense of priorities or values) as well as prior literature about higher education culture. We also draw upon our experience in another setting as well as pilot testing data, and the result is a carefully-constructed set of dichotomous items that are offered to department stakeholders in survey form using an electronic survey platform. We also collect background and demographic information in the survey. The resulting data are analyzed using Cultural Consensus Theory (CCT) to extract meaningful information about the departmental culture from the perspectives of the stakeholder groups. ACTUAL OR ANTICIPATED OUTCOMES The resulting survey consists of two parts, each with sub-components. The two top level survey parts contain: (i) items common to all respondents in all settings (i.e. all institutions in this study), and (ii) a set of institution-specific items. Within those sections, the framing of the items is calibrated for the stakeholder groups so that items make sense to them within the context of their experience. The survey has been administered, and the data are being analyzed and interpreted presently. We expect the results to capture the specific elements of local culture within these institutions, as well as differences in perspectives and experience among the three primary stakeholder groups. CONCLUSIONS/RECOMMENDATIONS/SUMMARY This study demonstrates a scalable approach to survey development for the purposes of cultural characterization, and its use across settings and with multiple stakeholder groups. This work enables a very nuanced view of culture within a department, and these results can be used within academic departments to enable discussion about change, priorities, performance, and the work environment. 

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3. Jumpstart Virtuous Cycles Within Social Innovation Communities

   Goldstein, Bruce Evan (March 2021, Social innovations journal)

   Strong leadership is crucial to fostering social innovation, and yet successful social innovation organizations are often those in which leaders do not play a dominant role. This is made possible by leadership practices that activate a community’s self-organizing and self-guiding potential. In this paper I share some of these effective practices, which were identified by highly experienced designers and facilitators of learning networks during a dialogue series on how to maintain lively, generative innovation communities held from 2018 to 2020. I provide advice from the netweavers in their own words, along with my commentary on how to create this potential by initiating and maintaining virtuous cycles of exchange and reciprocity, where group members could “pay it forward” without directly expecting something back every time. Many of these leadership practices are simple actions that are common sense practices in our personal lives but often absent in the workplace, such as creating a welcoming environment, assessing what people wanted to give and receive, being the first to give your members something valuable, calling attention to their successes, and underscoring the value that you provide them every time you interact. One powerful way to foster reciprocity that they emphasized was to organize semi-autonomous small-team activities, or co-work. While co-work can and should accomplish useful outcomes, its greatest value may be in how it maintains necessary coherence and coordination while contributing to building ownership and autonomy that supports an organization’s capacity for self-governance. 

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4. A Tool for Informing Community-Engaged Projects

   https://doi.org/10.18260/1-2--36625  

   Velarde, Camille; Svihla, Vanessa; Gutierrez, Estike (January 2021, Proceedings of the ASEE 128th Annual Conference and Exhibition)

   While research suggests that community-engaged projects can be particularly effective, such work is notoriously time consuming and not scalable. The learning curve for an organization seeking to start such work is steep. Additionally, it is important to evaluate to what extent work typified as community engaged work actually creates a participatory space of communitycentered perspectives regarding roles, interests, worldviews, actions and outcomes. To this end, we developed a formative assessment tool using previously identified domains [1]. This tool, created in partnership between a university and an outreach group affiliated with the Air Force, allows organizations to evaluate existing projects and explore ways to develop on a path towards true community-engagement. The outreach group in this case undertakes significant STEM education within New Mexico, but in the past, a majority of the work has been done “for” or “to” communities, rather than “with” communities. We share development and initial use of the tool. By using the tool, several members made aspects of their work more explicit. Specifically, members shared ways they sought ideas, feedback, and insight from teachers, and how this informed their ongoing work. While the initial use of the tool revealed some uncertainty about community engagement, it opened space to value and expand existing practices aligned to community engagement. With increased use of the tool, members came to see some of their existing practices that were already aligned to community-engagement as more valued, and the individuals who led such work were positioned as contributing expertise, rather than anecdotes. Ongoing use of the tool, paired with leadership support, is driving the organization to change how they view community roles. 

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5. Understanding service navigation pathways and service experiences among homeless populations

   https://doi.org/10.1177/14733250221114477  

   Lee, Eunwoo; Lee, Wonhyung; Duncan, Stephanie (July 2022, Qualitative Social Work)

   Previous homelessness research examined common pathways into homelessness, yet not much is known about how people navigate through services while experiencing homelessness. This study explored the service pathways of homeless individuals in the U.S. context, which show their connection with multiple organizations and their lived experiences of using services over time. We conducted 12 semi-structured in-depth interviews to grasp the history of service pathways, including the number of organizations, time gaps between services, and referral patterns. We also conducted participant observation shadowing with a subset of the study participants to understand how they interact with caseworkers. The length of service pathways varied, from less than five years to more than two decades. On average, participants went through at least three and up to eight organizations. Regarding service experiences, systemic- and individual-level themes were drawn for negative or positive experiences, such as strict organizational policies and the caseworker’s demeaning attitudes (negative), or supportive organizational culture and strong employee competencies (positive). The findings of this study provide deeper insights into homeless populations’ service trajectories and their experiences throughout the service-navigating process. 

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