Dear George,
Your volume comes very close to the subject I studied very recently. This study will be part of my PhD thesis.
Here is a short abstract of what we did:
Employee role stress has been investigated extensively. However, much less is known about role stress at the team level. Many teams, project teams in particular, are confronted with ambiguous or conflicting goals, and/or an overload in quantitative or qualitative task requirements. Whether experienced at the individual or team level, role stress may seriously hamper the performance of project teams, partly because it may reduce the amount of effort invested in team learning. We tested a multi-level mediation model describing the relationships among role stress, team learning behaviors, and performance using a sample of 38 Dutch project teams (N = 283). Our findings indicate that team role stress, in particular quantitative overload, impedes team performance by inhibiting team learning behaviors. Individual performance appears to be hindered by team role stress as well. These findings imply that team leaders should explicitly take time to encourage team learning. By doing so, they not only support their team's performance, but also reduce feelings of individual role stress, supporting individual performance.
At the moment we are studying (with a qualitative approach) project teams under stress, how their leaders can promote team learning by interventions. What interventions of the team leader influence the engagement of team members in team learning behaviors and do contextual factors are of influence.
If you are interested, we would be very eager to fill in chapter.
Hope to hear from you,
Kind regards,
Chantal Savelsbergh
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C. M. J. H. (Chantal) Savelsbergh MsC
Faculteit Managementwetenschappen, sectie SHRM
Postbus 2960, <st1:metricconverter productid="6401 DL" w:st="on">6401 DL</st1:metricconverter> Heerlen
Valkenburgerweg 177, Heerlen
[T] 045-5762826
[M] 06-46236060
[E] Chantal.Savelsbergh@ou.nl
Colleagues,
The next volume of LMX Leadership: The Series will be devoted to Team Leadership Under Stress. Mike Rumsey is writing a chapter and I'd like other colleagues with an interest to write chapters. If you are interested, please send me a short proposal for a chapter. The deadline for the draft is October 31, 2010 and the length is whatever it takes to cover the subject.
I'd like to separate the peace time bureaucrats from those teams who willingly go in harm's way. Much of the time this means damage control at best, but sometimes it involves saving the day.
Thanks.
George
/jag