Communicators are more likely to be valued team members

The process by which individuals become members of communication networks and the impact of selection procedures on group performance were investigated by researchers. Individuals who engaged in more communication during training had a greater chance of being selected as central members of the network, according to the study. Moreover, teams whose central member was assigned at random outperformed and frequently outperformed those whose central member was selected.

Frontiers in Psychology has published the study, which was conducted by a team of researchers from Carnegie Mellon University, the Frankfurt School of Finance and Management, the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth, and Clark University.

"The people in network positions and the processes by which they arrive at those positions play a significant role in determining team performance," says Linda Argote, Professor of Organizational Behavior and Theory at Carnegie Mellon's Tepper School of Business, who coauthored the study. "For centralized network positions which require occupants to transfer information to other members of the network, it is critical to have good communication skills."

Communication networks function as conduits for the exchange of knowledge, with central nodes frequently tasked with the collection and dissemination of said data. The research team utilized literature on communication networks and the Carnegie research perspective, which investigates how organizations enhance their efficiency via knowledge exchange, learning, and the development of routines and structures.

The authors compared the performance of groups in which members were able to select the occupants of network positions the way they occupied those positions and groups in which members did not have the ability to do so in order to determine whether group members who select the occupants of network positions select themselves or others who best meet the position's skill requirements. A lab study was undertaken, in which approximately 125 university students participated. There were two experimental conditions: members were provided with a choice of who would occupy the central position in one condition, while in the other condition, they were not granted their choice.

The performance of groups was enhanced by enabling teams to optimize position assignments in accordance with individuals' skills and expertise (e.g., delegation, organization) by permitting group members to select who occupied which network positions. The central network position was occupied more frequently by members of the team who appeared to have task-specific expertise and who engaged in frequent communication. Teams which were granted the option to select the central member outperformed those that were denied this privilege or those in which members were assigned to the position at random.

The authors acknowledge that their investigation was limited to the effects of choice in relation to network positions within a single network structure. They did not examine whether groups exhibited distinct performance patterns when given the ability to select their own network structures.

"The Carnegie perspective speaks to formal and informal communication structures in organizations but not about the processes through which workers come to occupy network positions," explains Jerry Guo, Assistant Professor of Strategy at the Frankfurt School of Finance and Management, who led the study. "We extended this perspective by showing that the process through which individuals come to occupy network positions affects the performance of networks. We make a valuable contribution to the comprehension of how performance is influenced not only by the structure but also by the development of a network.

The National Science Foundation, the Frankfurt School of Finance and Management, and the Center for Organizational Learning, Innovation, and Knowledge at the Tepper School of Business at Carnegie Mellon provided financial support for the research.

Journal Reference: Jerry Guo, Linda Argote, Jonathan Kush, Jisoo Park. Communication networks and team performance: selecting members to network positions. Frontiers in Psychology, 2023; 14 DOI: 10.3389/fpsyg.2023.1141571