| Selection Into Student-Based Teams: What Do Team Members Really Want to Know? |
| | Connerley, Mary L. | Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State U. | maryc@vt.edu | (540)-231-7372 |
| | Mael, Fred A. | American Institutes for Research | fmael@air-dc.org | (703) 274-8275 |
| | Little is known about the formation of teams and how much or what type of information team members desire. Two studies were conducted to examine the type of information that students desire to know about prospective team members. We found that numerous items were of concern to prospective team members including items related to school performance, temperament, interpersonal behavior, and life problems and distractions. Nevertheless, we found that a large proportion of the variance in overall satisfaction with a team member was explained by a small number of items related to communication skills, achievement orientation and dependability. Surprisingly, a number of items that could be considered both task relevant and relatively public knowledge were seen as invasive. Results also showed that students who were free to choose their own team members reported more satisfaction with the focal team member and with the outcome of the group. We discuss possible implications for management education and team composition and performance. |
| | Keywords: Team-member selection; Invasiveness |
| The Impact of Small-Group Discussion on Critical Thinking Skills |
| | Cooke, Donna K. | Florida Atlantic University | Cooke@fau.edu | 954-762-5226 |
| | Tyler, Catherine L. | Florida Atlantic University | kltyler@yahoo.com | (941) 437-5856 |
| | Tests of critical thinking skills are used in industry as one of the selection criteria. If those skills are important to employers, they ought to be targeted for improvement in college courses. Whether the skills are improved, and the extent to which they are is the focus of this study. At issue then is the effect of teaching methodology on the critical thinking skills of undergraduate students in an introductory management course. An experiment involving a treatment group and a control group, with pre- and post-testing was conducted at a U.S. state university. Teaching style was manipulated with the treatment group having small-group discussions which the control group did not. The results show that the treatment groups' critical thinking improved 6% (p<.05) while there was no change for the control group. The ending critical thinking scores of students in the treatment group were reflected in the overall numerical course grade, and the grades on the multiple choice, short answer, and total grade on the final examination with correlations all at the p<.05 level. For the control group the ending critical thinking score correlate at the p<.05 level with the multiple choice portion of the final examination. |
| | Keywords: critical thinking; small groups; learning |
| The Collective Efficacy of Business Students: The Role of Individual Factors & Group Processes |
| | Sue-Chan, Christina | U. of Western Australia | csuechan@ecel.uwa.edu.au | (618) 9380 2781 |
| | Sargent, Leisa D. | Queensland U. of Technology | l.sargent@qut.edu.au | 61-7-3864-5319 |
| | Business school curricula are increasingly incorporating teamwork in order to prepare students for the work environments they are likely to encounter when they graduate. This field study examined the correlates of collective efficacy, a critical antecedent of team performance. It was hypothesized that factors individual to the students constituting the team (task specific and academic self-efficacy, self-esteem) as well as group processes (cohesion, task interdependence) would be related to the team members' collective efficacy beliefs.
The hypotheses were tested using a sample of 169 undergraduate business students at a Canadian university. Data were collected from the students prior to and after completion of a semester long organizational analyses project.
Correlation analyses indicated that the individual efficacy factors and group processes were significantly related to business students' collective efficacy both prior to and after completing the project. Regression analyses revealed group processes contributed significant incremental variance to the explanation of collective efficacy only prior to performance. Thus, both individual member and group process factors need to be considered when teams are formed to complete course work in business schools. |
| | Keywords: collective efficacy; self-efficacy; group processes |
| Outdoor Training: Teamwork Attitudinal Impact in Asia |
| | Ng, H. Alvin | Wellington Polytechnic | alvin.ng@wnp.ac.nz | (64) 4 801-2794 |
| | Priest, Simon | EXperientia International Consultants | experien@tscnet.com | (253)-884-6448 |
| | Positive changes were seen in two teamwork attitudes (Task-Participation and Social-Support) of a group of Asian participants after a 2-day outdoor training program--commonly referred to as Adventure Learning or AL (Ibbetson & Newell, 1996). The changes were generally positive across gender, racial groups, age categories, educational levels and organizational tenure categories. Positive changes in Task-Participation attitudes (willingness to involve others in decision-making and sharing of work) were especially evident. Participants also became more supportive of others’ needs after the program. However, older (50 and above) and younger (below 20) participants exhibited somewhat lower Social-Support attitudes in the posttest results. Overall, these findings reflect the power of outdoor experiential training in improving teamwork attitudes. These emergent findings are important when we consider the traditional high power-distance norms of Asian societies (Hofstede & Bond, 1988) where hierarchical structures tend to drive workplace processes. The ability of AL to produce these attitudinal changes across a range of demographic characteristics shows the potential of AL in Asia. |
| | Keywords: Experiential; Team; Asia |