Coordinating interdependent teams' effective performance of joint tasks presents serious challenges to organizations and their middle managers. But an integrative theoretical understanding of how to coordinate such intergroup effectiveness and what role middle managers play is missing. Consolidating three separate literatures, we develop an integrative framework of the role of and interactions between structural, behavioural, and cognitive coordination in intergroup effectiveness. We propose that behavioural coordination through middle manager boundary spanning and cognitive coordination through intergroup strategic consensus (shared understanding of strategy between teams) can substitute for structural coordination (i.e., when teams do not share division membership). Moreover, we hypothesize that behavioural coordination and cognitive coordination strengthen each other in improving intergroup effectiveness. Multisource data on 188 intergroup dyads support our predictions. Our integrative framework elucidates how these coordination mechanisms combine in driving intergroup effectiveness and suggests that middle managers and their boundary spanning have a critical role in modern team-based organizations.

Research on social identification in organizations is diverse and evolving. As focus has shifted to the effects of multiple identities, there is a need to further define relationships between the three primary work identification targets (i.e., team, organization, and profession) and outcomes, specifically as to how each identification target explains variance in outcomes simultaneously. We meta-analytically test the relationship between each identification target and fifteen attitudes, three behaviors, and five general well-being variables at work with 483 studies and 557 independent samples (N = 179,442). We then provide evidence for the relative importance of each identification target through meta-analytic relative weights and regression analysis. Categorizing attitudes according to the same level (team, organization, profession), we found that organizational and team identification were most important in predicting "matching" attitudes, in support of the identity-matching principle. For professional-focused attitudes, behaviors, and general well-being, results were less clear; each identity target explained a range of variance in outcomes. There was a trend of team identification being the most important predictor, particularly for well-being. Through meta-analytic structural equation modeling (MASEM), we tested the self-esteem hypothesis from social identity theory; results show that effects from identification to outcomes transmitted through self-esteem were weaker than direct effects. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).

Drawing from visionary leadership and strategy process research, we theorize and test the mechanism through which middle and lower-level managers' visionary leadership affects their teams' strategic commitment. The management literature extols the virtues of visionary leadership. In contrast to this positive stance, we reveal a dark side to visionary leadership. Our theoretical framework suggests that team manager visionary leadership harms team strategic consensus when the manager is not strategically aligned with the CEO, which in turn diminishes team commitment to the strategy. In contrast, when a team manager is strategically aligned with the CEO, team manager visionary leadership is positively related to team strategic consensus and subsequently to team strategic commitment. Data from 136 teams from two organizations support our moderated mediation model. A supplemental analysis of the content of strategic consensus and additional qualitative interviews with managers and employees in one of these organizations provide additional insights concerning the meaning of the theorized relations in practice.

Implementing strategy demands an organizationwide effort, where teams should not operate in isolation. A challenge many organizations face in implementing their strategy is eradicating silo thinking and creating shared understanding of strategy between interdependent teams—that is, intergroup strategic consensus. However, strategy process research is silent on how such intergroup strategic consensus can emerge. Drawing on social identity theory, we offer a lens to understand what influences the degree of intergroup strategic consensus. We unveil a tension between organizational and group identification such that organizational identification enhances intergroup strategic consensus, whereas group identification reduces it. Moreover, we hypothesize that high group identification crowds out positive effects of organizational identification on intergroup strategic consensus. Data from 451 intergroup relationships between 92 teams within a service organization support these hypotheses. We replicate our results using 191 intergroup relationships between 37 teams from another organization. These results allow us to develop an understanding of intergroup strategic consensus, expand the conversation in strategy process research to between-team interdependencies, and challenge the assumption in management literature and practice that higher identification is always desirable.

Organizations construct multiteam systems to address complex challenges that require the joint efforts of multiple teams. Taking an uncertainty perspective and integrating social identity theory with depletion research, we theoretically and empirically examine the role of social identification in multiteam system performance. In contrast to general assumptions in the literature regarding the need to develop identity at the highest level of a system, we argue that within a multiteam system, identification with that system negatively relates to multiteam system performance, whereas identification with the component team positively relates to multiteam system performance. Our uncertainty perspective suggests that identification with the multiteam system introduces uncertainty regarding the appropriate norms and interdependencies in the system, which leads to more depletion, and consequently lower system performance. Conversely, identification with the component team offers less uncertainty, resulting in less depletion and higher multiteam system performance. Thus, our integrated theoretical framework suggests that depletion mediates the negative effects of multiteam system identification and the positive effects of component team identification on multiteam system performance. Moreover, consistent with our uncertainty perspective, the indirect effect of identification on multiteam system performance via depletion is stronger when task complexity is high and weaker when task complexity is low.

Effective coordination of strategic efforts within and between interdependent organizational groups is critical for organizations. Strategic consensus, the shared understanding of organizational strategy, is crucial to such coordination. Prior research has extensively studied within-group consensus, but has so far neglected strategic consensus between groups. In our study, we address this gap by developing a social identity analysis of strategic intergroup consensus. Social identity theory has established itself as the primary conceptual lens to understand intergroup relations in organizations and we suggest that social identification processes may impair as well as stimulate intergroup consensus. We tested our predictions with a field study of 3828 intergroup dyadic relations, using data collected from multiple respondents in 88 interdependent teams within a large technical service company. Our results indicate that in an intergroup dyad the level of group identification of the group with the strongest group identification is negatively related to strategic intergroup consensus. This group’s high group identification impairs the dyad’s degree of intergroup consensus. In contrast, the higher the minimum level of organizational identification in a dyad, the higher the dyad’s intergroup consensus.

Despite the clear importance of cooperation between groups for organizations, the conditions that foster such intergroup cooperation are not very well understood. Strategic consensus is a prominent concept in management research, driven by the idea that it improves cooperation in organizations. But both strategic consensus between groups and its relationship with intergroup cooperation have received very little attention. Likewise, boundary spanning is intended to establish interactions between groups, but its effect has been studied mostly for assisting the own group in meeting its overall objectives. We apply a multilevel theoretical lens and focus particularly on the cooperation between management teams, because they set an example for intergroup cooperation to other groups in the organization. We argue that both strategic consensus between groups and group’s boundary spanning behavior can improve intergroup cooperation. Additionally we hypothesize that the effect of strategic consensus between groups on intergroup cooperation is moderated by the degree to which groups display boundary spanning behavior. Results of a field study of the 52 interdependent management teams and top management team of a large government task organization support the hypothesized main effects and interaction. Dyads of groups with higher degrees of strategic consensus had better intergroup cooperation when they displayed more boundary spanning behavior. These results demonstrate that agreeing is not enough; to foster intergroup cooperation both boundary spanning and strategic consensus between groups are important.

Research on strategic consensus focuses primarily on the extent of agreement among team members regarding organizational strategy. It does not include elements such as the content of the agreement, between-group consensus, or the significance of differences in consensus (e. g., for evaluating the effectiveness of strategic interventions). We propose a new analytical approach, Strategic Consensus Mapping, that provides a comprehensive analysis of strategic consensus within and between groups and that includes intuitive and easy-to-understand visualizations. This approach offers researchers the necessary tools for integrative theory building in strategic consensus, as well as in the broader managerial and organizational cognition domain. Using a case example, we illustrate the proposed methods for a multidimensional, multilevel, and longitudinal analysis of strategic consensus. Copyright (C) 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Strategic consensus is a prominent concept in management research, driven by the idea that it improves coordination and cooperation in organizations. But despite the obvious interdependence between teams for goal driven activities within the organization, strategic consensus between groups has received very little attention. Integrating management and network theory, this field study proposes a new, intuitive and easy-to-grasp method to study between-group strategic consensus. Using data from 3828 dyads of organizational teams we found that intra-group factors affect the strategic consensus between groups. Dyads of groups with higher within-group consensus had higher between-group consensus, whereas a greater dyadic dissimilarity, in within-group consensus and reflexivity, lowered between-group strategic consensus. Additionally, we demonstrated that strategic congruence between the top management team and the dyad of groups mediates the relationship between within-group strategic consensus and between-group strategic consensus. Contrary to our expectations, dyads of groups with a higher degree of reflexivity did not have higher between-group consensus.