Dealing with new members: Team members’ reactions to newcomer’s attractiveness and sex.

Abstract

We examine how team members respond to the inclusion of new members' physical attractiveness and sex. Drawing on Social Exchange Theory, we argue and show that incumbent team members engage in three behaviors (mimicry, ingratiation, and challenging) in response to the inclusion of more or less attractive male or female members in their team. Using a multilevel experimental design, we show that existing team members mimic newcomers who are higher on physical attractiveness and that the effect is more pronounced when there is a sex match (i.e., existing males mimic new males more). Furthermore, they ingratiate toward the physically attractive newcomers who are also committed to the task. In addition, we find that existing team members challenge physically attractive females who are committed to the task. Our findings suggest that the basic combinations of primary cues of newcomers' characteristics affect intrateam behaviors and produce different outcomes across sexes for attractiveness. By shifting the attention to the effect that newcomers have on team behaviors, the study provides novel insights for scholars that help move the discussion of team membership changes beyond the traditional accounts of new member socialization and team effectiveness.

The rank dynamics of integrating new members: The process of hierarchical crafting.

“…Research on the dynamics of hierarchy has focused on how rank is acquired (and lost), the mutability of hierarchy due to the widespread desire for rank (e.g, Bendersky & Pai, 2018), as well as how organizational members can increase their relational influence (Bourgoin et al, 2020). Specific to the process of integrating new members, researchers have tended to focus on hierarchy competition dynamics (e.g., Min et al, 2021; Rink & Ellemers, 2015). Our findings build upon these perspectives by showing how organizational members strategically shape hierarchical relations to be flatter in some situations with the goal of promoting the agency of lower ranking members (e.g., during debriefing periods) and advancing communal goals (e.g., socializing), while enforcing rank differences in others (e.g., to promote efficient communication in the operation control center).…”

Informal Hierarchy Strength Changes and Their Effect on Performance

“…Though we found that the amount and distribution of informal hierarchy strength in our student teams to be similar to those in non-student teams, contextual factors that are more prevalent in non-student teams may impact informal hierarchy strength changes. For example, the student sample minimized confounds that may impact informal hierarchy strength such as the presence of a formal team leader (Oedzes et al, 2019) or fluid membership (Bunderson, Van der Vegt, & Sparrowe, 2014; Min et al, 2020). Examining such contextual factors may provide additional insights into informal hierarchy strength changes.…”

Team familiarity—Boon for routines, bane for innovation? A review and future research agenda

“…Researchers could also relate team familiarity to the evolution of teamwork (Yong et al, 2021) and study whether team familiarity moderates uncertainty when team composition changes (Jin et al, 2017), for example when new members join (Min et al, 2021), when robots join the team (Savela et al, 2021) or in fast-paced work contexts, where teams need to unlearn existing knowledge that has become obsolete in order to stay relevant (Kim & Park, 2021). Moreover, uncertainty reduction theory (Berger, 1988) could be utilized to investigate how team familiarity influences uncertainty when new members join a team and when team context changes (e.g.…”