Abstract
This chapter extends the previous research published in 2016 which looked into the embedding contexts of networks of small firms, in the EU principally, and how collaboration between small to medium enterprises (SMEs) was supported inside national and regional clustering structures and incubators initiated in collaboration with university researchers and governments agencies. The current chapter drills down further to explore the processes at the level of individual firms to see how group and individual conflict and collaboration was generated or sustained within teams in three different case organizations. In other words, the chapter looks at micro level details of conflict and collaboration as well as the observed socioemotional dynamics. The three organizations were involved with executive education programs and the authors were able to access reflective diaries for 2004 to 2012 enabling the authors to triangulate notes taken with interview data and observations used for this chapter.
TopIntroduction
Today competition is global and “world class”, mobile and digital technology increasingly the norm in most business transactions with teams, suppliers and customers. The global business environment is recognizably Volatile Uncertain Complex and Ambiguous (VUCA) across all continents (Lawrence, 2013, Smith & Cockburn, 2016, pp. 1-2). National, regional as well as global business environments are in a continuous state of dynamic complexity and evolutionary flux. The emergent cybereconomy is thriving despite global phishing and hacker attacks on both individuals´ and organizations´ computer systems. In this febrile climate the strategic management of corporate positioning, market share enhancement and product innovation are critical objectives for businesses of all kinds. Equally, identity and brand management in the turbulent business world environment requires greater effort at the customer interface, to build trust, perceived reliability and confidence.
Communication underpins all interpersonal relationships in business whether with peers in teams, marketing to clients, negotiating business deals, or when leaders are motivating teams, resolving conflicts and networking, to name only a few. Many of the embedding contexts in and between organization teams, whether face-to-face (f2f) or virtual, supply chain collaboration and customer care require mutuality and reciprocity to varying degrees.
The above entails an overall commitment framework that also serves to constitute and reproduce the explicit and tacit rules for emotional engagement within the team and between the team and others in its environment. In order to be trusted, you must first give and then communicate trust yourself (Kasper-Fuehrer & Ashkanasy, 2001: 4, Meyerson, Weick & Kramer, 1996). The level of anxiety you have about the fulfilment of the obligations entrusted to you, ceteris paribus, gives the measure of your personal integrity and core identity. The extent to which you as an individual, and as a team, care about the communication of your ‘reputation’ for trustworthiness is, as Hogan argues, an ‘external’ aspect of your personality too (Hogan, 2002:1-2).
The commitment involves an expectation of a personal sense of duty and a concomitant guilt or remorse about failure to meet expectations in the psychological contract terms of reference. The latter terms of reference place a burden of ‘fiduciary trust’ upon members and teams to enact their trusteeship role on behalf of the ‘client’, i.e. the employing company. Thus, a) within the commitment framework, trust and anxiety interact as an emotional regime: a part of the context within which the team is embedded. That is b), a combined construct of internal and external aspects of personality is reflected in the intersection of teams´ enactment of trustworthiness and anxiety levels, which we take as a measure of the location of teams within the matrix of emotional regimes as seen in table 4. The particular ‘touch’, c) of that team personality is reflected in the expression of specific team conversations and stories within the emotional regimes in which they are embedded.
In a period where rapid organizational co-evolution is also occurring and ´fake news’ abounds, there is immense potential for anomie in all areas of human interaction in business whether face-to-face, distributed, networked or virtual enterprises. The sustainable management of staff teams for service delivery and successful project completion includes accessing tacit intellectual and emotional capital of teams as well as recognizing these elements when interacting with suppliers and clients. Such dynamic informational and knowledge development, complexity and fluidity affects all types of organizations. Beyond the technology systems, much of the potential for conflict or for collaboration occurs in how staff are developed and managed as well as how clients interact with the businesses.
Key Terms in this Chapter
Dialog: A collaborative discussion where parties seek a consensus.
VUCA: Volatile uncertain complex ambiguous refers to highly turbulent and dynamically complex contexts within teams, organizations and between them and their environment.
Action Learning: A form of learning by using “learning sets” composed of problem-holders who assist each other to work on issues faced by each party.
SME: Defined as a small to medium enterprise. Networks or clusters are interconnected, collaborating collectives composed of SMEs, advisors, government or funding body representatives, and relevant others such as researchers.
Sensemaking: Concerns ways that team participants understand and “make sense” of their circumstances and options.
Dialectics: Conflicts between proponents of opposing views which may eventuate in a communication breakdown or in a new synthesis and understanding between parties.
Emotional Regime: Emerge from complex, interweave of trust, anxiety, culture, and behaviors embodied in the team´s achievement of its strategic objectives. Further, they are founded upon and foster tacit knowledge and immanent collective team personas that evolve as they try to enact their project tasks and these.
Dialectical-Dialog: Refers to a concept by Kodama whereby networks seek rational balance between challenge and collaboration enabling constructively-critical evaluation of and “sensemaking” about options with the purpose of getting the best way forward that gets buy in from all parties.