Discussion: View Thread

Interesting question. I have some thoughts, but they are not based on any literature that i am aware of).

First I agree that average tenure might not be the right operationalization.

For example, I think that team tenure can be in some cases greater than the maximum of the individual members' tenure. for example, if a certain team exists for a long time, and a member is replaced once in a while in a way which does not change the teams' routines, culture, the nature of tasks etc... in such cases, even if, eventually, the "oldest" member is replaced, the team itself does not get "younger" as a result.

So I would argue that team tenure is the time that passed since the last major change in team membership and/or way of work. the definition of "Major change" maybe idiosyncratic: some teams would not be considerably affected by a turnover of 1 person per year, while some teams would.

in your example, changing all team members but one is an abrupt change, and hence the team tenure would be a week. your solution seem to approximate this approach if abrupt changes are relatively frequent, in which case it is reasonable to assume that some team members have been in the team prior to that change event, and hence their individual tenure should be disregarded. However, your proposed measure don't deal well with contexts in which abrupt changes for the team are rare.

this is my 2 cents. and again - not based on any literature, so take it with a grain of salt.

hope it helps,

amit
________________________________
From: Organizational Behavior Division Listserv [OB@AOMLISTS.pace.edu] On Behalf Of Maria J. Mendez [mariajmendez@GMAIL.COM]
Sent: 29 July 2008 23:28
To: OB@AOMLISTS.pace.edu
Subject: team tenure measure

Hello - I am looking for a measure of team tenure for a dissertation on team leadership.

Prior research uses the average tenure of individual team members. However, the average will not be representative of the team's tenure in certain cases (for instance when one member has been part of the team for 20 years and all others started last week).

1) I would strongly appreciate your impressions regarding the validity of an alternative measure I am considering: calculating the average of individual members' tenures BUT only of the most recent half of the members in the team. This measure would reduce the problem mentioned in the example above, and would take into account the importance of the effects of newcomers on the roles, norms, and culture of a team.

2) I would also appreciate if you could direct me to publications where alternative measures to the average could have been used, such as the median (I couldn't find any).

Thank you for your help!

Maria


Maria J. Mendez
Doctoral Candidate in Management
New Mexico State University
mmaria@nmsu.edu<mailto:mmaria@nmsu.edu>

Maria:

What is your dependent variable and primary research question? Also,
what theory do you plan to use to support your research question?
Tenure might be argued to be good (e.g. upper echelons theory, whereby
turnover and team diversity are valuable tools for breaking
organizational inertia) or bad (e.g., resource-based view, whereby
tenure may be a valuable tool for developing and sustaining
capabilities). Both team tenure and team turnover might be measures to
capture different aspects of these questions.

Jeffrey


Gal, Amit wrote:
> Interesting question. I have some thoughts, but they are not based on any literature that i am aware of).
>
> First I agree that average tenure might not be the right operationalization.
>
> For example, I think that team tenure can be in some cases greater than the maximum of the individual members' tenure. for example, if a certain team exists for a long time, and a member is replaced once in a while in a way which does not change the teams' routines, culture, the nature of tasks etc... in such cases, even if, eventually, the "oldest" member is replaced, the team itself does not get "younger" as a result.
>
> So I would argue that team tenure is the time that passed since the last major change in team membership and/or way of work. the definition of "Major change" maybe idiosyncratic: some teams would not be considerably affected by a turnover of 1 person per year, while some teams would.
>
> in your example, changing all team members but one is an abrupt change, and hence the team tenure would be a week. your solution seem to approximate this approach if abrupt changes are relatively frequent, in which case it is reasonable to assume that some team members have been in the team prior to that change event, and hence their individual tenure should be disregarded. However, your proposed measure don't deal well with contexts in which abrupt changes for the team are rare.
>
> this is my 2 cents. and again - not based on any literature, so take it with a grain of salt.
>
> hope it helps,
>
> amit
> ________________________________
> From: Organizational Behavior Division Listserv [OB@AOMLISTS.pace.edu] On Behalf Of Maria J. Mendez [mariajmendez@GMAIL.COM]
> Sent: 29 July 2008 23:28
> To: OB@AOMLISTS.pace.edu
> Subject: team tenure measure
>
> Hello - I am looking for a measure of team tenure for a dissertation on team leadership.
>
> Prior research uses the average tenure of individual team members. However, the average will not be representative of the team's tenure in certain cases (for instance when one member has been part of the team for 20 years and all others started last week).
>
> 1) I would strongly appreciate your impressions regarding the validity of an alternative measure I am considering: calculating the average of individual members' tenures BUT only of the most recent half of the members in the team. This measure would reduce the problem mentioned in the example above, and would take into account the importance of the effects of newcomers on the roles, norms, and culture of a team.
>
> 2) I would also appreciate if you could direct me to publications where alternative measures to the average could have been used, such as the median (I couldn't find any).
>
> Thank you for your help!
>
> Maria
>
>
> Maria J. Mendez
> Doctoral Candidate in Management
> New Mexico State University
> mmaria@nmsu.edu<mailto:mmaria@nmsu.edu>
>

--
Jeffrey A. Krug
Associate Professor of Strategic Management
Virginia Commonwealth University
School of Business Administration
301 West Main Street, Box 844000
Richmond, VA 23284
Phone: (804) 828-8410
Email: jakrug@vcu.edu
Web: http://www.business.vcu.edu

Hi Maria,
I am also planning to use team tenure in my dissertation and am
thinking of using multiple measures - average and also
dispersion/separation. I have found that Harrison & Klein, AMR November
2007 is a very useful article on measuring diversity which is what you
are really looking at with team tenure as a team composition variable.
This article also helps you to think about what measure of tenure would
be most suited to the research question you are asking and how/why
tenure relates to the other variables in your model.

Hope this helps.

Frances

On Tue, 29 Jul 2008 20:28:07 -0700
"Maria J. Mendez" <mariajmendez@gmail.com> wrote:
> Hello - I am looking for a measure of team tenure for a dissertation
> on team leadership.
>
> Prior research uses the average tenure of individual team members.
> However, the average will not be representative of the team's tenure
> in certain cases (for instance when one member has been part of the
> team for 20 years and all others started last week).
>
> 1) I would strongly appreciate your impressions regarding the
> validity of an alternative measure I am considering: calculating
> the average of individual members' tenures BUT only of the most
> recent half of the members in the team. This measure would reduce
> the problem mentioned in the example above, and would take into
> account the importance of the effects of newcomers on the roles,
> norms, and culture of a team.
>
> 2) I would also appreciate if you could direct me to publications
> where alternative measures to the average could have been used, such
> as the median (I couldn't find any).
>
> Thank you for your help!
>
> Maria
>
>
> Maria J. Mendez
> Doctoral Candidate in Management
> New Mexico State University
> mmaria@nmsu.edu

Frances Tuer
PhD candidate, HRM
Michael DeGroote School of Business
McMaster University
Hamilton, ON
905-525-9140 ex 26171

Very interesting observations, Amit, team tenure is indeed a concept
worth unpacking :) I guess the measure depends a lot on how one
thinks team tenure matters/operates and for what one wants to use the
measure. It goes to the core of what you mean when you say that a team
is a team. I think exploring the theoretical reasoning for your
proposed measure, and why you find others problematic, would itself be
a useful contribution.

If one wants to 'work up' from membership to team (rather than, for
example, work down from team to participants such that a team could
exist even without members eg as named entity or a set of institutions/
rules) you might find the literature on Simmelian Ties to be
interesting; the central relevant proposition there is that a unit of
3 (+) is qualitatively different (and more influential) than a unit of
2, so it might give you ammunition to draw a line where and when
continuity in membership falls a Simmelian unit (ie 3 interconnected
(temporally overlapping) participants).

--J

On Jul 30, 2008, at 12:47 AM, Gal, Amit wrote:

> Interesting question. I have some thoughts, but they are not based
> on any literature that i am aware of).
>
> First I agree that average tenure might not be the right
> operationalization.
>
> For example, I think that team tenure can be in some cases greater
> than the maximum of the individual members' tenure. for example, if
> a certain team exists for a long time, and a member is replaced once
> in a while in a way which does not change the teams' routines,
> culture, the nature of tasks etc... in such cases, even if,
> eventually, the "oldest" member is replaced, the team itself does
> not get "younger" as a result.
>
> So I would argue that team tenure is the time that passed since the
> last major change in team membership and/or way of work. the
> definition of "Major change" maybe idiosyncratic: some teams would
> not be considerably affected by a turnover of 1 person per year,
> while some teams would.
>
> in your example, changing all team members but one is an abrupt
> change, and hence the team tenure would be a week. your solution
> seem to approximate this approach if abrupt changes are relatively
> frequent, in which case it is reasonable to assume that some team
> members have been in the team prior to that change event, and hence
> their individual tenure should be disregarded. However, your
> proposed measure don't deal well with contexts in which abrupt
> changes for the team are rare.
>
> this is my 2 cents. and again - not based on any literature, so take
> it with a grain of salt.
>
> hope it helps,
>
> amit
> ________________________________
> From: Organizational Behavior Division Listserv
> [OB@AOMLISTS.pace.edu] On Behalf Of Maria J. Mendez [mariajmendez@GMAIL.COM
> ]
> Sent: 29 July 2008 23:28
> To: OB@AOMLISTS.pace.edu
> Subject: team tenure measure
>
> Hello - I am looking for a measure of team tenure for a dissertation
> on team leadership.
>
> Prior research uses the average tenure of individual team members.
> However, the average will not be representative of the team's tenure
> in certain cases (for instance when one member has been part of the
> team for 20 years and all others started last week).
>
> 1) I would strongly appreciate your impressions regarding the
> validity of an alternative measure I am considering: calculating
> the average of individual members' tenures BUT only of the most
> recent half of the members in the team. This measure would reduce
> the problem mentioned in the example above, and would take into
> account the importance of the effects of newcomers on the roles,
> norms, and culture of a team.
>
> 2) I would also appreciate if you could direct me to publications
> where alternative measures to the average could have been used, such
> as the median (I couldn't find any).
>
> Thank you for your help!
>
> Maria
>
>
> Maria J. Mendez
> Doctoral Candidate in Management
> New Mexico State University
> mmaria@nmsu.edu<mailto:mmaria@nmsu.edu>
>

to my defense, I can say that in the middle of the night it seemed to me that "team tenure" is a global team property "beyond question" - and that all the insightful comments made me think again. it seems that I was right in one thing, though: it is in an interesting question.

the discussion seem to address more the question of "what is team tenure" and not "how to measure team tenure", and that's probably a good thing.

here are a few more cents I have to throw in to the discussion:

I agree with James that how you theorize about team tenure (and tenure in general) may affect the way you jump from the individual to team level. for example, if you see tenure as a measure of time in which one was part of an organization and during which the organization determined/influenced that person's behavior and attitudes - then moving to the team level, my original interpretation probably makes sense - it is when the team was formed (or went through a major change) that's matter, and this is a global team property regardless of individual memberships.

However, one could theorize about tenure, for example, that the long the tenure is the less a person is able to be influenced by the outside environment, or bring in ideas/connections from previous connections. in individuals, both aspects go inherently together. However, moving to team level this need not be so. under this interpretation of tenure, it might be wise to measure "team tenure" as the minimum (or median, if this is a simple majority decision making team) of individual tenure. in this sense, team tenure is indeed a configural property of team. individual tenure matters, but also the individual's position in the team - so that they can indeed bring the influence.

at this moment I cannot think about an interpretation of tenure that would lead to a shared property at the team level (but I'll be happy to take it back once I hear one or come up with one myself).

Personally, when I am faced with a concept that is not clear I try to put some "use cases" to clarify the concept (probably due to my software engineering background) here are some use cases I formulated:

a) a big software company want to launch a new project for developing innovative technology. they choose 10 of their best engineers, each with a tenure of 2-3 years in the organization (those engineers have never collaborated before), and they launch the project in a big 5 days off-site kick-off event on 1/1/2010. what would be the team tenure on 1/1/2012 ?
b) similar to a. but instead of taking engineers from within the organization, they hire 10 new engineers (with relevant experience of course). the kick-off is on 1/1/2010, what is the team tenure on 1/1/2012 in this case?
c) extension of both a and b: in 1/1/2012 the project is close to an end, and now they need few QA persons to help with making the product ready for market. so they recruit 2 new QA persons which start to work on 1/1/2012. how does the team tenure change as a result? and after a year (i.e. 1/1/2013)? what if the QA persons were not newly recruited but have a 5 years tenure within the organization as QA engineers for different projects?
d) another extension of a and b (but disregard c). on 1/1/2012 2 engineers decide to leave the team. since much of the work has already been completed the organization decide not to recruit new members. how this affects team tenure? does it matter what is the individual tenure of the people who left?

my own answers to the above scenarios (for both a and b, team tenure would be 2 years and both c and d does not change the situation) suggest that after all team tenure is, in my view, a global team property. of course - there may be more use cases. and maybe some people will even treat my use cases differently....

I hope these comments are useful.

amit

________________________________
From: Organizational Behavior Division Listserv [OB@AOMLISTS.pace.edu] On Behalf Of Michael Johnson [mdj3@U.WASHINGTON.EDU]
Sent: 30 July 2008 11:18
To: OB@AOMLISTS.pace.edu
Subject: Re: team tenure measure


Maria,

Kozlowski and Klein (2000) really helped clarify the operationalization of team-level constructs. They suggested that there were three basic types of team-level properties: global, shared, and configural. Global properties originate at the team level; team size and structure are two examples. Shared properties originate at the individual level, but show agreement across team members. Examples could include team member perceptions of team efficacy and team cohesiveness, and statistics like ICC(1) and (2) and rwg indicate the extent of agreement. Configural properties reflect the pattern of individual-level characteristics in the team, and do not assume agreement or similarity across team members. Demographic characteristics are good examples of configural properties.

I think Amit's suggestion is conceptualizing team tenure as a global property of the team, where it measures the life of the team and not the duration of any team member's participation in the team. Although this is intriguing, I would caution against it. Klein et al. (1994) suggested that researchers only operationalize a construct as a global property when the level of the construct is "beyond question" and when researchers lack the data to assess similarity among team members.

Instead, team tenure seems to be more of a configural property. As you note, simply using the mean of individual member tenure may not capture all that is of interest in this variable, and K & K suggested that means are usually not the appropriate summary statistic for configural properties. They suggest, however, that the mean may be supplemented by an indicator of variation. In other words, you may be able to capture what you need by using both the mean and the variance (or standard deviation) of the individual team members' tenure.

Hope this helps!

Mike

Michael D. Johnson
Assistant Professor
Department of Management and Organization
Michael G. Foster School of Business

University of Washington
(206) 616-2756
mdj3@u.washington.edu<mailto:mdj3@u.washington.edu>

http://faculty.washington.edu/mdj3/mjohnson/


> -----Original Message-----
> From: Organizational Behavior Division Listserv
> [mailto:OB@AOMLISTS.pace.edu] On Behalf Of Gal, Amit
> Sent: Tuesday, July 29, 2008 9:47 PM
> To: OB@AOMLISTS.pace.edu
> Subject: Re: team tenure measure
>
> Interesting question. I have some thoughts, but they are not
> based on any literature that i am aware of).
>
> First I agree that average tenure might not be the right
> operationalization.
>
> For example, I think that team tenure can be in some cases
> greater than the maximum of the individual members' tenure.
> for example, if a certain team exists for a long time, and a
> member is replaced once in a while in a way which does not
> change the teams' routines, culture, the nature of tasks
> etc... in such cases, even if, eventually, the "oldest"
> member is replaced, the team itself does not get "younger" as
> a result.
>
> So I would argue that team tenure is the time that passed
> since the last major change in team membership and/or way of
> work. the definition of "Major change" maybe idiosyncratic:
> some teams would not be considerably affected by a turnover
> of 1 person per year, while some teams would.
>
> in your example, changing all team members but one is an
> abrupt change, and hence the team tenure would be a week.
> your solution seem to approximate this approach if abrupt
> changes are relatively frequent, in which case it is
> reasonable to assume that some team members have been in the
> team prior to that change event, and hence their individual
> tenure should be disregarded. However, your proposed measure
> don't deal well with contexts in which abrupt changes for the
> team are rare.
>
> this is my 2 cents. and again - not based on any literature,
> so take it with a grain of salt.
>
> hope it helps,
>
> amit
> ________________________________
> From: Organizational Behavior Division Listserv
> [OB@AOMLISTS.pace.edu] On Behalf Of Maria J. Mendez
> [mariajmendez@GMAIL.COM]
> Sent: 29 July 2008 23:28
> To: OB@AOMLISTS.pace.edu
> Subject: team tenure measure
>
> Hello - I am looking for a measure of team tenure for a
> dissertation on team leadership.
>
> Prior research uses the average tenure of individual team
> members. However, the average will not be representative of
> the team's tenure in certain cases (for instance when one
> member has been part of the team for 20 years and all others
> started last week).
>
> 1) I would strongly appreciate your impressions regarding the
> validity of an alternative measure I am considering:
> calculating the average of individual members' tenures BUT
> only of the most recent half of the members in the team. This
> measure would reduce the problem mentioned in the example
> above, and would take into account the importance of the
> effects of newcomers on the roles, norms, and culture of a team.
>
> 2) I would also appreciate if you could direct me to
> publications where alternative measures to the average could
> have been used, such as the median (I couldn't find any).
>
> Thank you for your help!
>
> Maria
>
>
> Maria J. Mendez
> Doctoral Candidate in Management
> New Mexico State University
> mmaria@nmsu.edu<mailto:mmaria@nmsu.edu>
>

Hi Jeffrey - Thanks for your insights. I am studying the
characteristics of leadership in teams and one of my hypotheses
relates the characteristics of the team's leadership to the team´s
tenure (not good nor bad, just different :-). The dependent variables
are then various dimensions that characterize team leadership.

Maria

On Jul 30, 2008, at 4:57 AM, Jeffrey A. Krug wrote:

> Maria:
>
> What is your dependent variable and primary research question?
> Also, what theory do you plan to use to support your research
> question? Tenure might be argued to be good (e.g. upper echelons
> theory, whereby turnover and team diversity are valuable tools for
> breaking organizational inertia) or bad (e.g., resource-based view,
> whereby tenure may be a valuable tool for developing and sustaining
> capabilities). Both team tenure and team turnover might be
> measures to capture different aspects of these questions.
>
> Jeffrey
>
> Gal, Amit wrote:
>> Interesting question. I have some thoughts, but they are not based
>> on any literature that i am aware of).
>>
>> First I agree that average tenure might not be the right
>> operationalization.
>>
>> For example, I think that team tenure can be in some cases greater
>> than the maximum of the individual members' tenure. for example,
>> if a certain team exists for a long time, and a member is replaced
>> once in a while in a way which does not change the teams'
>> routines, culture, the nature of tasks etc... in such cases, even
>> if, eventually, the "oldest" member is replaced, the team itself
>> does not get "younger" as a result.
>>
>> So I would argue that team tenure is the time that passed since
>> the last major change in team membership and/or way of work. the
>> definition of "Major change" maybe idiosyncratic: some teams would
>> not be considerably affected by a turnover of 1 person per year,
>> while some teams would.
>>
>> in your example, changing all team members but one is an abrupt
>> change, and hence the team tenure would be a week. your solution
>> seem to approximate this approach if abrupt changes are relatively
>> frequent, in which case it is reasonable to assume that some team
>> members have been in the team prior to that change event, and
>> hence their individual tenure should be disregarded. However, your
>> proposed measure don't deal well with contexts in which abrupt
>> changes for the team are rare.
>>
>> this is my 2 cents. and again - not based on any literature, so
>> take it with a grain of salt.
>>
>> hope it helps,
>>
>> amit
>> ________________________________
>> From: Organizational Behavior Division Listserv
>> [OB@AOMLISTS.pace.edu] On Behalf Of Maria J. Mendez
>> [mariajmendez@GMAIL.COM]
>> Sent: 29 July 2008 23:28
>> To: OB@AOMLISTS.pace.edu
>> Subject: team tenure measure
>>
>> Hello - I am looking for a measure of team tenure for a
>> dissertation on team leadership.
>>
>> Prior research uses the average tenure of individual team members.
>> However, the average will not be representative of the team's
>> tenure in certain cases (for instance when one member has been
>> part of the team for 20 years and all others started last week).
>>
>> 1) I would strongly appreciate your impressions regarding the
>> validity of an alternative measure I am considering: calculating
>> the average of individual members' tenures BUT only of the most
>> recent half of the members in the team. This measure would reduce
>> the problem mentioned in the example above, and would take into
>> account the importance of the effects of newcomers on the roles,
>> norms, and culture of a team.
>>
>> 2) I would also appreciate if you could direct me to publications
>> where alternative measures to the average could have been used,
>> such as the median (I couldn't find any).
>>
>> Thank you for your help!
>>
>> Maria
>>
>>
>> Maria J. Mendez
>> Doctoral Candidate in Management
>> New Mexico State University
>> mmaria@nmsu.edu<mailto:mmaria@nmsu.edu>
>>
>
> --
> Jeffrey A. Krug
> Associate Professor of Strategic Management
> Virginia Commonwealth University
> School of Business Administration
> 301 West Main Street, Box 844000
> Richmond, VA 23284
> Phone: (804) 828-8410
> Email: jakrug@vcu.edu
> Web: http://www.business.vcu.edu
>
>

Hi all,
I haven't followed each and every post in this rich thread, so apologies
if someone has raised this point. However, if we look at sports teams
and how they are perceived by the public, media, and insiders, an
important perception regarding team tenure seems to revolve around a
team's nucleus. Who are the key contributors and leader(s) of a team
and how long has that nucleus been more or less intact? Those of you
who are basketball fans may remember the Chicago Bulls team that won six
NBA titles between 1991 and 1998. They had a good deal of team turnover
in their "role" or periphery players over that time, but the nucleus -
Michael Jordan, Scottie Pippen, and coach Phil Jackson - all remained
together. Similarly, the great New York Yankees baseball dynasty from
1949-1964 featured relative continuity among some key players and the
manager through most of the era (Berra, Mantle, Ford, and manager
Stengel) but a great deal of change on the periphery.
Many measures discussed would either fail to pick up such a phenomenon,
or would only weakly pick it up with a great deal of contamination
and/or deficiency. I realize that this now makes identification and
measurement of "nucleus" problematic, but team tenure seems like a very
complex and multifaceted (yet worthy!) construct.
Thanks,
Bob