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Task context changes: teams’ maladaptive responses to unanticipated change
Author(s) -
Koseoglu Gamze,
Shalley Christina E.,
Herndon Benjamin
Publication year - 2017
Publication title -
journal of applied social psychology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.822
H-Index - 111
eISSN - 1559-1816
pISSN - 0021-9029
DOI - 10.1111/jasp.12424
Subject(s) - psychology , task (project management) , perspective (graphical) , workload , context (archaeology) , social psychology , process (computing) , work (physics) , test (biology) , cognitive psychology , applied psychology , computer science , management , mechanical engineering , paleontology , artificial intelligence , engineering , economics , biology , operating system
Understanding how teams are affected by and adapt to unexpected change is critical to maximizing team effectiveness. We explore the perspective that rather than being adaptive, how teams experience relativistic adjustments in pacing can actually undermine team creative processes and performance. We test our hypotheses in two experimental studies. Study 1 considers how teams experience change in the time available to complete the task, while Study 2 employs a change in workload. Results support that the deviating patterns of task pacing exhibited by teams responding to an unexpected exogenous change undermines effective team creative processes, leading to lower levels of creative performance. In addition, their effects differ by when the change occurs in the teams’ work process (i.e., earlier, midpoint, or later).