Team Dynamics Research

All right, let’s back up a bit. By now, you’re probably curious as to what exactly I researched, why I researched it, and what I found.

      Well, it all started in my early days as a freshman. In addition to participating now in the Monroe Scholars program, I also participated in the Sharpe Scholars program. While in the Sharpe program, I took a class on the Achievement Gap; that is, the educational and post-educational achievement gap persisting throughout America’s varying demographics. As an aside, I found that this subject is conversationally taboo in France.

     After taking that class, I job shadowed at the corporate office of an American fortune 500 company. There, I talked with the director of diversity. He talked about the importance of having a diverse work force and overcoming workplace discrimination.

    I took a minute to connect my experiences with the Achievement Gap class alongside the director’s stated mission. What could be used to overcome the hurdle of discrimination? After doing some research, I found the answer right at William and Mary.

    Professor Wilson, my project advisor at William and Mary, is one of the country’s leading experts on Virtual teams, which are teams that meet through electronic mediums, like a chat room. What if virtual teams could be used to overcome workplace prejudice? And by extrapolation, if virtual teams could, would there be an increased performance level for those virtual teams?

      After hours of conducting experiments and some fancy mathematical thinking, we had our answer. Yes, virtual team members were in fact less prejudiced toward each other as opposed to face to face (non electronic facilitated) teams.  But then we found something striking.

     The performance was actually better in the face to face teams, despite their heightened levels of prejudice. This was the paradox expressed in my first blog. We are still contemplating the reasons for this apparent discrepancy of logic.

     So those are the basics about the experimental results. Now I’m going to peruse research journals, as well as other experimental and theoretical materials to see if I can come up with an even better explanation. And what if I come up with a potential explanation?

     That’s what experiments are for!

~Paul Lendway

           I left my hotel room with only a few Euros and an over-simplified map of Paris.  Only an hour of time remained until I was to meet with one of the professors with which I was researching. I couldn’t be late.           Professor Metiu, whose resume includes a Ph. D from Wharton as well as a teaching stint at INSEAD, and I were eager to discuss the findings of my research. But first, I had to navigate the streets of Paris to find our Café. Of course, being of Napoleonic size didn’t help my struggle. Eventually, I navigated past the corn rows of buildings to arrive at our meeting place.

       Last time I talked about the pivotal meeting with the French Professor. How about the prior execution of the experimental trials?

      Well, their completion was just as precarious as my journey to visit the Professor. Without getting bogged [or should I say “blogged”] down on detail, each group had a set quota of people with specific characteristics. Matching the quota coupled with the exact traits was very time consuming. The reward, of course, was mirror-like consistency from group to group. 

      As if matching the schedules of 32 William and Mary students was not challenging enough, running a trial successfully proved to be quite a challenge. One time, my internet connection failed me (half of the trials were conducted in a chat room), so I had to sprint around the dormitory throughout the trial, hoping that I might run into a spot with a decent wireless internet connection. Let’s just say I got to fully understand what it means to “run a trial.”

     Even as an undergraduate, I was able to use the business school’s sample pool for my experimental trials. Professor Wilson, who consulted my research at William and Mary, even landed me a spot in the main conference center of the business school. The business school was so generous that I was even given a classroom every afternoon in the first summer session in case I needed it for work space.

      As the summer has continued, I’ve noticed my professor’s office has gotten more and more bare. It’s not because she’s packing up and leaving for Hawaii. Conversely, she’s moving into the avant-garde Miller School of Business.

      I’ll be starting classes there in the fall. Personally, I can’t wait to explore Miller’s vast list of amenities. While not all of them have been confirmed, there will definitely be team-meeting rooms. These rooms are designed for fast-paced team cooperation. There will also be a team lab with one way mirrors and recording equipment. Indubitably, the Miller school will be perfect for a team dynamics researcher!

~Paul Lendway