Nonverbal behavior is a hot topic in the popular management press. However, management scholars have lagged behind in understanding this important form of communication. Although some theories discuss limited aspects of nonverbal behavior, there has yet to be a comprehensive review of nonverbal behavior geared toward organizational scholars. Furthermore, the extant literature is scattered across several areas of inquiry, making the field appear disjointed and challenging to access. The purpose of this paper is to review the literature on nonverbal behavior with an eye towards applying it to organizational phenomena. We begin by defining nonverbal behavior and its components. We review and discuss several areas in the organizational sciences that are ripe for further explorations of nonverbal behavior. Throughout the paper, we offer ideas for future research as well as information on methods to study nonverbal behavior in lab and field contexts. We hope our review will encourage organizational scholars to develop a deeper understanding of how nonverbal behavior influences the social world of organizations.

Teamwork during integrated design projects is complex. We address this by investigating how trust, collaboration, and conflict evolve over time to affect performance. Our results stem from data gathered using validated self-report questionnaires with 38 participants in 5 multidisciplinary teams at three points in time during a 6-week integrated design competition. Results show that without collaboration, trust and conflict have no bearing on performance. In addition to an unambiguous practical outcome—fostering collaboration helps build trust and manage conflict—our study points to theoretical developments: as trust- and conflict-performance relations grow over time, so does collaboration's mediating effect.

The management of project teams is evolving from managing technical processes to focusing on psychosocial determinants of performance. This trend puts a strain on project management theory and practice. Past meta-analyses on the cohesion—performance relationship show a positive correlation. However, they integrate effect sizes across different types of teams and settings. To clarify this issue for project teams, this meta-analysis differentiates 33 cohesion—performance correlations depending on whether teams are project, production, or service teams in organizational or academic settings. Results show that types of teams and settings are moderators. Project teams in organizational and academic settings show large effect sizes and differ from other teams. Theoretical considerations point to five interrelated modifiers: task uncertainty, task versus outcome performance, student samples' mental representation of the project outcome, and group heterogeneity.

In recent years, resilience has emerged as a prominent topic in global health systems discourse as a result of the increasing variety and volume of sources of instability inflicting strain on systems. In line with this study's intent to bring together existing literature on health system resilience as a means to understand the process through which systems achieve resilience, a review of academic literature related to health system resilience was conducted. Emerging from this review is an operational model of resilience that builds on existing health systems frameworks. The model highlights health system resilience as a process through which leaders in all sectors need to be mobilized in order to harness instability as an opportunity for health system strengthening rather than a threat to the system's sustainability and integrity.

BackgroundHealthcare professionals perform knowledge-intensive work in very specialized disciplines. Across the professional divide, collaboration becomes increasingly difficult. For effective teamwork and collaboration to occur, it is considered necessary for individuals to believe in their ability to draw on their expertise and provide what others need to perform their job well. To date, however, no instruments exist to measure such a construct.MethodsA two-study design is used to test the psychometric properties, factor structure and incremental validity of a five-item questionnaire measuring informational role self-efficacy.ResultsBased on parallel analysis and exploratory factor analysis, Study 1 shows a robust and reliable one-dimensional construct. Study 2 cross-validates this factor structure using confirmatory factor analysis. Study 2 also shows that informational role self-efficacy predicts proactive teamwork behaviors over and above goal similarity, interdependence, coordination and intra-team trust.ConclusionsThe instrument can be used in research to assess an individual’s capability beliefs in communicating his/her informational characteristics that are pertinent to the task performance of others. The construct is also shown to have value in team-building exercises.Electronic supplementary materialThe online version of this article (doi:10.1186/s12913-016-1382-x) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.

Communication is a key factor in team performance, successful project completion, and effective project management. Collective asynchronous electronic messages on task and coordination sent among members of 34 teams were analyzed using time-series analysis. Results suggest that compared to low-performing teams, high-performing teams exchanged more messages, modified their exchanges around milestones, and were more prone to self-organize prior to project completion. Also, high-performing teams started to coordinate themselves later but maintained higher levels of coordination afterward. Project managers could benefit from monitoring the amount and the way their team members discuss task and coordination in order to ensure high team and project performance.

No abstract

The objectives of this study are to test the effects that the quality of leader–member exchange (LMX) and work group integration (WGI) may have on psychological health, as well as their interaction effect. Psychological health is defined both in terms of subjective well‐being and psychological distress. Data were gathered from a sample of 249 employees working in a prison setting. Results indicated that LMX and WGI are positively related to subjective well‐being and are negatively related to psychological distress. In addition, LMX and WGI exert a synergistic interaction effect on both dimensions of psychological health. Overall, the results show that the quality of the social environment may greatly enhance psychological health in a high‐risk workplace.