Journal Articles

Role Variability in Self-Organizing Teams Working in Crisis Management

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Crisis management teams face situations characterized by high risk, time pressure, and
uncertainty and must adapt to a wide range of circumstances. Self-organizing teams have
been proposed as an alternative to more traditional functional teams as they are described as
adaptive and promptly reconfigurable. This study investigated whether self-organizing
teams display more role flexibility than functional teams and the impact on performance and
coordination. Teams were assigned to either a functional or a self-organizing structure and
completed scenarios in a functional simulation. Results revealed that self-organizing teams
performed and coordinated better than functional teams. As expected, self-organizing teams
showed more role variability across and within teams. However, greater variability in role
allocation within teams was associated with poorer performance and coordination. We
conclude that flexibility in roles can be beneficial but that too much variability can be
associated with role ambiguity and negatively affect a team’s ability to achieve its goals.

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Detail Information

Series Title

Small Group Research

Call Number

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Publisher

Thousand Oaks, CA : Sage Publications., 2017

Collation

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Language

English

ISBN/ISSN

10464964

Classification

NONE

Content Type

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Media Type

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Carrier Type

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Edition

Volume 48, Issue 1, February 2017; pp. 62–92

Subject(s)

Teamwork
flexibility
Crisis Management
self-organizing teams
team roles

Specific Detail Info

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Statement of Responsibility

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