Pensamiento Recurrente

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2010-09-28T18:10:00.000-07:00

Cognitive hypotheses should be applied to every single problem that you encounter because all problems and solutions are influenced by the unique cognitive map and thinking style of the individual. A large section in Chapter 2, Exploration
of the Cognitive Domain, provides the foundation for this chapter. Table 6.1 lists the four hypotheses in this category.
In most cases, after ruling out C1 (Utopian Expectations), the remaining cognitive hypotheses are integrated, as shown in the following:

Catherine, a 62-year-old successful at torney, is very frustrated with her failure to lose weight and keep it of f. Her therapist asked what her weight goal was to check out whether she had utopian expectations (C1) of regaining the figure
she had when she young. However, Catherine’s goal was realistic and losing 20 pounds would put her in the desired weight range for her age and height. She described how she brings low calorie frozen meals to work for lunch, but then
tells herself “I’m working hard. I deserve to eat what I like” (C4). When her therapist asked her to talk about her childhood eating pat terns, she recalled that her mother made her stay at the table, alone, with a plate of cold vegetables,
and not leave until her plate was clean. She discovered, suddenly, a core element in her faulty cognitive map (C2): “I get it. I must have decided, ‘When I grow up, no one is ever going to tell me what to eat ’.” The therapist pointed out that she was engaging in faulty information processing (C3): All-or-nothing thinking was demonstrated by her treating all rules about eating as if they were bad, instead of distinguishing the ones that she freely chose and were in her own best interest.
Very often, students and professionals, alike, assume that cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT) is the automatic choice of treatment when faulty cognitions are identified. By understanding the role of cognitive factors in a variety of theories, we become more open to seeing that cognitive hypotheses integrate the thoughts of diverse thinkers and that techniques can come from many different sources. Table 6.2 gives examples of cognitive terminology.

KEY IDEAS FOR C1 UTOPIAN EXPECTATIONS
The term “utopian syndrome” comes from the very important book Change (Watzlawick, Weakland, & Fisch, 1974) and is very similar to one of Adler’s “basic mistake”—a misperception of life and life’s demands. Expectations for an easy, effortless, pain-free life actually cause more pain than just accepting the reality of the human condition. When people learn that effort, disappointment, and painful experiences are a natural part of life, they can cope better
with whatever is bothering them. In avoiding the utopian, it is important not to discourage people from pursuing goals that are difficult, but not impossible, by misusing the term utopian to deflate the ambitions of people who are idealistic and set high standards.

WHEN IS THIS HYPOTHESIS A GOOD MATCH?
In the initial sessions, the Utopian Expectations hypothesis is intended to be a screening tool to help recognize when a person is mistakenly seeking therapy for difficulties that she is already coping with quite well. This hypothesis must be considered during the processes of problem definition (Chapter 11) and outcome goal setting (Chapter 12) to define solvable problems and set realistic goals. Because there is no disorder, DSM diagnoses should not be used at the same time as this hypothesis: You have a normal, healthy individual who just needs a reminder of life’s realities. However, if the client continues to hold on to faulty illusions rather than readjust expectations, there is a problem that needs to be addressed and C2 (Faulty Cognitive Map) becomes the appropriate choice of hypothesis.

Here are examples of how problem titles then might be worded:
Excessive bitterness and resentment over normal life dif ficulties
Dif ficulty accepting normal limits and frustrations of life

TREATMENT PLANNING
Therapists need to remember that sometimes “no therapy” is the treatment of choice. It may seem disrespectful, rude, and unprofessional to ever take the position “you don’t need to be here,” but in fact it can be a very positive message to a person who is feeling demoralized.
The following list provides guidelines for the therapeutic conversation:
Focus on the discrepancy between what is and how the person wants life to be. You want the client to understand that disappointments, unpleasant emotions, misunderstandings, and conflict in relationships are a normal part of living.
Be very empathic and supportive. Be careful not to shame clients by implying
that they were stupid to have such utopian expectations.
Discuss probabilities: If you choose to marry a person of a dif ferent culture from your parents, what is the probability that they will instantly rejoice and embrace your partner as one of the family? What are the odds that a person of 55 will have the same weight, the same body, the same energy, the same athletic performance, as he did when he was 25?
Use humor when appropriate. People often challenge each other’s utopian hopes with questions such as What have you been smoking? or comments like When you die and go to Heaven. You can judge when a joking comment or a humorous anecdote would be well received.

INTEGRATION OF HYPOTHESES
The concept of utopianism is especially useful when applying the following three hypotheses.

ES2 Avoiding Freedom and Responsibility
Mistaken assumptions about what is possible can prevent a person from taking responsibility to pursue realistic goals. For instance, a mediocre athlete who refuses to get a job but instead persists in training for the Olympics is operating with utopian expectations.

P3 Immature Sense of Self and Conception of Others
Standards of maturity can often be very utopian. For instance, Bowen’s (1994) theory of “differentiation of self ” may set expectations for independence that are unrealistic.

SCE2 Cultural Context
Expectations need to be examined in a cultural context.What is unrealistic in one culture may be normal in another (e.g., the expectations of parents to have control over the choice of a child’s spouse and to be taken care of by children in old age).

KEY IDEAS FOR C2 FAULTY COGNITIVE MAP
Through the use of language, each person creates a personal reality. Many different terms are used for this concept: model of the world, schemas, assumptive world, perceptual system, narrative, construct system, and cognitive map. These cognitive models provide meaning and purpose, a rule book on how to behave in the world, and a framework that provides predictability and stability in our daily lives.

Cognitive Maps
The term cognitive map allows us to use a metaphor that is easily explained to clients. Bandler and Grinder (1990), integrating ideas from many theories and philosophies in The Structure of Magic, taught the slogan: “The map is not the territory.” The “real territory,” discovered through sensory experiences, refers to objects with a separate existence from our minds—roads, rivers, mountains,
and bridges. A map is a representation of the territory. Laborde (1987) wrote:

Once we have perceived the real world with our senses and coded experiences in our brains on a map or series of maps, then this coding or representation determines our behaviors. Often people’s frustration or unhappiness is the result of limitations in their coding, in their representation of the real world.
Sometimes, the very thing to bring about their happiness is available once that thing (or person) is placed on their maps of reality.
Faulty cognitive maps create impossible goals and imaginary obstacles. A person might direct a lifetime of energy toward the goal of “finally winning my father’s approval.” The father may be incapable of expressing approval or may even be dead, yet the behavior directed toward an impossible goal persists. Imaginary obstacles may be beliefs like “I’m not smart enough to go to college”; “I need the approval of others to feel good”; and “men shouldn’t show feelings.”

Behavior Makes Perfect Sense
Cameron-Bandler (1985) wrote, “Human behavior, no matter how bizarre or resistant it may seem, makes sense when it is seen in the context of the choices generated by a person’s map or model.” Without the concept of a cognitive map, we would be unable to explain how different people go through the same experiences and end up with radically different feelings and behaviors. Whenever our clients’ positions seems irrational or inexplicable, we have to stop ourselves from making judgments or trying to persuade them to a more rational point of view. We must first get inside their model of the world, and see how their choices make perfect sense. Cameron-Bandler explains:

It is not that our clients are making the wrong choices, it is just that they do not have enough choices available when needed. Each of us makes the very best choice available to us from our model of the world. (pp. 223–224)
In working with a suicidal client, it is especially important to understand how the wish to take her own life can make perfect sense. People commit suicide over the breakup of a relationship, failing grades in college, and rejection letters from medical school not because of the events, but because of how they interpret them in terms of their self-worth and possibilities for future happiness. Here is a cognitive formula for suicide: A person experiences a thwarted need (which we all do in our lives), judges the need to be the most important, believes that there was only one way to satisfy it, concludes that it will never be satisfied, decides that life is not worth living without it, and evaluates the pain as unbearable. With this tunnel vision, suicide is the only logical choice.

Maps Must Be Updated

A map that inaccurately represents the territory will mislead and confuse rather than help. It is probably worse than no map at all, because the existence of the map carries an aura of authority and inhibits the explorer’s willingness to trust his senses and rely on his own exploratory skills.
Maps become outdated because change is inevitable: New roads are built, empty fields are converted to housing developments, and a freeway can be severed by an earthquake. A map developed in childhood cannot be completely valid in adulthood, not only because of change in the world and in oneself, but because it was constructed with the cognitive capacity of a child.

Bridges we used to rely on no longer get us where we want: Throwing a tantrum no longer gets other people to take care of me.
People still drive the same old bumpy roads, even though new super highways have been constructed: We select friends and partners who are difficult in the same way as our parents and siblings, when we can find others who are easygoing, comfortable, and fun to be around.

The midlife crisis refers to the need for a major overhaul of the map. Failure to attain a deeply desired goal would lead to a permanent state of misery if people were not able to create a map toward a different goal where there is possibility of success. Successes and failures bring the need for new maps. Attainment of a desired goal, such as getting an advanced degree, marrying, or retiring, terminates the usefulness of the map that guided us toward that end.

Normal Resistance to Change
Before you rush in to change clients’ maladaptive maps you need to realize that these models serve important needs. Stable models of reality provide guidelines on how to behave, how to predict consequences, how to maximize satisfaction, and how to reduce pain and anxiety. Models make life easier and allow people to function efficiently, because each new situation can be categorized as something familiar rather than treated as completely novel. Without understanding how a faulty cognitive map fills emotional needs, you will have difficulty dealing with the resistance people have to changing these maps.To varying degrees, people fear the unknown and want to hold on to the familiar. Given the need for stability, some resistance to change is expected and adaptive. When people recognize the shortcomings of their map, they experience anxiety, tension, uncertainty, and confusion. These emotions interfere with openness to change. Furthermore, the recognition that much of their own suffering came from their own failure to update their maps leads people to feel
foolish and become angry with themselves: “Why didn’t I realize this sooner? What a childish, stubborn, and irrational fool I have been.” The awareness of lost time and opportunities can awaken feelings of loss, sadness, grief, and self-blame.
Therapists need to understand the emotional issues in relinquishing old maps and creating new ones. Often, when the therapist explores the painful childhood context in which a child developed the cognitive map, it becomes easy to admire the child’s resourcefulness, resilience, and intelligence. A client will be less resistant to challenges to faulty thinking when she has first experienced your appreciation for her creative, if outdated, solution to getting her needs met, reducing pain, and protecting her vulnerable self in difficult circumstances.

Alfred Adler’s Cognitive Approach
Adler, an early follower of Freud, created his own theory of individual psychology, which emphasized the cognitive domain, and was an important influence on both Viktor Frankl and Albert Ellis. By studying Adler (e.g., Adler, Ansbacher, & Ansbacher, 1989), we remind ourselves that cognitive therapy did not begin as an offshoot of behavior therapy. According to Adler, the roots of neurotic functioning lie in the dogmatized guiding fictions and the basic mistakes of childhood.
Adler used the term lifestyle for “the convictions individuals develop early in life to help them organize experience, to understand it, to predict it, and to control it” (cited in Mozak, 2000, p. 55). Table 6.3 presents Mozak’s examples of Adler’s basic mistakes (p. 73).

Albert Ellis’s Rational Emotive Therapy
Albert Ellis, creator of Rational Emotive Therapy (now called Rational Emotive Behavioral Therapy [REBT]) believed that core irrational ideas are at the root of emotional disturbance. Table 6.4 presents a version of one of these lists from Ellis and Grieger (1977).
More than just teaching a list of faulty beliefs, Ellis provided an ABC model for teaching clients the role of cognitions in determining their emotional reactions. We usually operate on the assumption that events or people make us feel a certain way: “I got depressed because he didn’t call.” “She makes me mad when she asks where I’m going.” “He told me I had to work on the weekend, so I snapped.” This cause-effect assumption can be drawn with the letters A and C:
[A] Event ® Causes ® [C] Feelings

Then the therapist can explain why this isn’t so: The same event can cause different feelings. There is something that intervenes between A and B, and that’s what you think:

[A] Event ® [B] Thinking ® [C] Feelings

Once this model is understood, clients become collaborators in searching for the thoughts that cause their feelings. Their cognitive map undergoes a radical change from “I am controlled by my emotional responses” to “I have control over my thinking, and therefore I can alter the way I feel.”

Aaron Beck’s Cognitive Bases for Emotions
The ABC model is particularly powerful when the presenting problem is an extreme emotional state, such as depression, excessive anxiety or anger, or paranoid feelings. Aaron Beck and his associates (e.g., Beck, 2000; Beck, Emery, & Greenberg, 1985; Beck, Rush, Shaw, & Emery, 1979) used a similar framework, but instead of focusing on irrational thoughts, they helped people discover the deeper assumptions that laid the foundation for emotional reactions. For instance,
the belief that good things happen to good people, and bad things happen to bad people is a core assumption shared by members of our culture, which states a principle that is frequently violated by experience, leading to extreme reactions of anger or depression. Table 6.5 shows some associations between types of emotional experiences and the cognitive elements that support them.

Jeffrey Young’s Early Maladaptive Schemas
Jeffrey Young (1999), a cognitive-behavioral therapist, developed a list of schemas for personality disorders, presented in Table 6.6. Schemas are the link between early childhood experiences and the cognitive map of the adult and can be the focus of treatment.
If the wording of the schema is softened, these schemas are typical of people who do not suffer from personality disorders but instead have problems with work, relationships, self-esteem, and emotional regulation.

Narrative Therapy
Narrative Therapy is a relatively new school of therapy, but its core hypothesis of faulty cognitive maps is familiar. A narrative is a cognitive map extended through time. White and Epston (1990) explain:

In striving to make sense of life, persons face the task of arranging their experiences of events in sequences across time in such a way as to arrive at a coherent account of themselves and the world around them. . . . This account can be referred to as a story or self-narrative. The success of this storying of experience
provides persons with a sense of continuity and meaning in their lives, and this is relied upon for the ordering of daily lives and for the interpretation of further experiences.
(p. 10)

Unfortunately, the self-narratives do not only provide benefits; they also limit choices and create pain. Success in helping people to change their narratives requires the ability to take a postmodern perspective. A comparison of three baseball umpires describing their job illustrates what postmodernism means:

First umpire: There’s balls and there’s strikes, and I call ’em the way they are.

Second umpire: There’s balls and there’s strikes, and I call ’em the way I see ’em.

Postmodernist umpire: There’s balls and there’s strikes, and they ain’t nothin’ until I call ’em.

The typical client is like the first umpire, believing that the stories she tells are accurate descriptions of reality. After listening and understanding the stories without trying to squeeze them into preexisting categories, the therapist helps the client to deconstruct them, which means to realize (a) they are not reality, (b) they have been influenced by stories available in the society and culture,
and (c) there are alternate stories possible. Freedman and Combs (1996) explain that therapists help clients develop new narratives that offer “new selfimages, new possibilities for relationships and new futures,” noting:

in any life there are always more events that don’t get “storied” than there are ones that do—even the longest and most complex autobiography leaves out more than it includes. This mean that when life narratives carry hurtful meanings or seem to offer only unpleasant choices, they can be changed by highlighting different, previously un-storied events or by taking new meanings from alreadystoried events, thereby constructing new narratives. (p. 32)

WHEN IS THIS HYPOTHESIS A GOOD MATCH?
It is hard to imagine any human situation that is not profoundly influenced by an individual’s cognitive construction of reality. For example, according to McCullough (2005), the outcome of the Revolutionary War depended on the interpretation that the Battle of Trenton was a huge success and a major turning point for the Americans rather than on an objective measure of any military advantage accomplished by that small victory.
Therefore, you can apply this hypothesis with every single client. Although this hypothesis contains the word faulty in its title, the therapist must recognize the healthy, functional, and rational elements of the cognitive map, as well as the elements that lead to problems.

TREATMENT PLANNING
In Persuasion and Healing, Frank and Frank (1991) explain that the prescribed treatment (or therapeutic ritual) must match the belief system of the person who is seeking help: A pilgrimage to Lourdes is only beneficial to people who believe in the power of that location to produce miracles. A client who believes that “problems are resolved by following guidance from experts” needs a different therapeutic approach than one who believes “I need to find my own answers.”
When the treatment of choice is discrepant from the client’s cognitive map, the therapist needs to address that issue and offer a rationale that the client will accept. This stage of persuasion is important when a somatizer is referred for psychotherapy. The client believes that the problem is medical and thinks that being“sent to a shrink” means that the doctor does not believe that the pain is real. The therapist needs to explain the beliefs of health professionals regarding the effects of stress on physiology, providing a link between psychological interventions and physical benefits. When the client comes from a different culture, therapists need to understand the beliefs about healing and the available indigenous healing rituals, and integrate them into treatment planning.

Cognitive-Behavior Therapy
Training in CBT will give tools for working with faulty cognitive maps and will build competence in cognitive formulations. The approach of CBT is to use an agenda, a didactic approach, and structured activities. However, an exclusive reliance on CBT will limit your treatment options. Reinecke and Freeman (2003) make the point that:

Any intervention or technique that alters a patient’s perceptions or beliefs might be viewed as cognitive. The number of techniques that are potentially available is virtually infinite. . . . The effective cognitive therapist is able to provide patients with experiences in a creative, f lexible manner that will refute their maladaptive
beliefs. (p. 245)

Create a Collaborative Relationship
In terminology from Transactional Analysis (TA), you want to “hook the Adult” in your client, or to use a Freudian term, you want to make an alliance with the client’s “observing ego.” In Aaron Beck’s language, you are engaging in “collaborative empiricism,” helping the client learn how to test beliefs against empirical reality and learn to function as a “personal scientist.” Instead of taking the attitude that you have to change the client, assume that an adult of normal intelligence will want to make changes when he discovers that his own patterns of thinking are creating and maintaining problems. Monitor the process of the relationship and be able to switch to an empathic, responsive style when the alliance is threatened by ill-timed cognitive challenges.
In TA terms, it is essential to maintain an “Adult-Adult” alliance with the client, and to avoid slipping into the role of “Critical Parent” by criticizing or shaming the client for illogical or primitive thinking. Even when you are careful to avoid the pitfall of sounding like a Parent, clients may easily distort your intentions and react defensively. Catch yourself when you begin to lecture or preach to a client who appears bored, sullen, or uninterested. You can avoid Parent-Child dynamics by creating a contract or agenda with the client for each session, in which the client makes the choice about the desired target of change.

Use Metamodel Questions

Table 2.7 in Chapter 2 presented the nine types of metamodel violations and the specific questions for challenging them. These skills should become automatic: They serve not only as data-gathering tools but also as interventions for faulty cognitive maps. For instance, the belief “I have to try my hardest and never give up” is a lost performative and can be challenged by asking, According to whom?
This question leads to an understanding that (a) this is an arbitrary rule, not a statement of fact; (b) it is too rigid to be an adaptive approach to all situations; and (c) the client can create a new principle for how hard to work and when it’s okay to quit.

Explanations and Teaching
Educate your client about the concepts of faulty cognitive maps and maladaptive schemas and teach the client how to evaluate beliefs by examining empirical evidence, effect on mood, rationality, or impact on achieving goals. For instance, you can explain Ellis’s ABC model (described previously) and give examples of how thinking—attributing meaning to the event, or putting it into a category— affects feelings. Explain to the client that (a) it is her own thinking that is creating
pain and frustration, and (b) she has control over how she thinks and therefore can choose to think differently. It is helpful to use an example of how the same event produces different emotional reactions.
Rejection letter from a graduate school
Three people can have very different reactions:

Person 1: It means a catastrophic proof of worthlessness, leading to depression.

Person 2: It is an unfortunate but impersonal event, understood as a reasonable outcome given the high number of applicants for few positions and the arbitrariness of admissions procedures. This person decides to apply again, this time to more schools.

Person 3: The rejection letter means that he is now free to pursue what he loves
instead of pleasing his parents, so he feels relief and elation.

Persuasion and Direct Inf luence
Sometimes when clients uses absolutistic, inflexible thinking, therapists directly instruct them to substitute more flexible and realistic terms:
Change always to often.
Change never to rarely.
Change I need to I prefer.
Change I must to I want to.
Change I shouldn’t to It would be preferable not to or I choose not to have the
consequences of.
Change I can’t to I won’t or I would find it dif ficult or I am afraid of. Therapists also teach clients about the cognitive concept of “rights” and about how beliefs about the rights of the self and others contribute to either unassertiveness or aggressiveness instead of an appropriate level of assertiveness. Lange and Jakubowski (1978) illustrate how socialization messages that are more commonly given to girls than boys can limit their sense of personal rights:

I have no right to place my needs above those of other people.
I have no right to do anything that would imply that I am better than other people.
I have no right to feel angry or to express my anger.
I have no right to make requests of other people.
I have no right to do anything that might hurt someone else’s feelings.

Here are some examples of rights that empower people to speak up and express
their thoughts and feelings, ask for what they want, and say no to what they
do not want:

I have the right to assert my needs because they are as important as those of other people.
I have a right to show my abilities, enjoy my accomplishments, and take pride in myself.
I have a right to my angry feelings, and I have a right to express them appropriately at the time they occur so they won’t build up and explode.
If my rights are violated, I have the right to make demands for change.
I have the right to express my thoughts and feelings, even if occasionally someone’s feelings get hurt, as long as I am not deliberately trying to inflict hurt.

How to Challenge Schemas, Assumptions, and Beliefs
Very often, when clients actually see or hear their faulty beliefs, they spontaneously realize—sometimes as a dramatic epiphany—how irrational they sound. There are several approaches that will get the client to recognize and challenge
faulty cognitive maps:

Discuss a list of faulty schemas: Tables 6.3, 6.4, and 6.6 provide items that can be directly presented to the client, or the therapist can prepare an individualized list. The client can select the items that she identifies as her own way of thinking.

Interpretation: The wording of a schema or belief is offered to the client after listening to what is said and observing the client’s behavior: I get the idea that you are expecting your boyfriend to meet the needs that your mother never met. You seem to have the expectation that I will provide you
answers and that this problem can be solved without your having to expend any ef fort. The wording and tone of voice show that the therapist is tentative, awaiting the client’s agreement or disagreement.

Challenging questions: The metamodel gives one approach to asking questions. The therapist can use variety in framing questions, to help the client recognize faulty thinking. Was there ever a time when you did confide in someone and it was a positive experience? That belief that you’re not good enough—Where specifically does it come from?

Conversations
Cognitive maps will be changed in the course of any type of therapeutic conversation. Sometimes the conversation is a philosophical discussion of the client’s view of the world and an evaluation of its tenets in terms of truth, morality, expediency, and other values. Narrative therapists encourage clients to tell stories about their lives and use techniques that they call externalizing or reauthoring
conversations. Therapists can tell stories of their own lives and struggles, talking about their own schemas and how they were changed through experiences and choices.

Reframing
This is a cognitive technique that helps the client shift the category in which an event or behavior is placed. Table 2.8 in Chapter 2 provides a foundation for the skills of this technique. The metaphor of frame is used because we know that the same picture can look very different in a different frame. When the client has created a frame that causes pain and limits choice, the therapist helps her shift
to a new frame, which creates positive feelings and contributes toward achieving desired goals. Milton Erickson’s therapy (Haley, 1993) gives many examples of this technique. Here is an example adapted from one of his cases:

A woman in her 70s lives alone and spends a great deal of time keeping her house in per fect order. Whenever her children and grandchildren come to visit, they mess up her house, and she feels very angry, resentful, and helpless. The therapist asks her to use visual imagery and picture a time in the future when the house is perpetually spotless. Af ter completing this visualization exercise, she repor ts feeling lonely and isolated. She realizes that the clean house is not that impor tant and that what she values is the company of her family.

In reframing, the behavior or event is unchanged—it is the interpretation that is modified. In the original frame, “messy house” is part of the category things people do which show lack of consideration and make my life more dif ficult. In the new frame, “messy house” has shifted to the category proof that I am part of a loving, connected family, and that my family members are comfortable, relaxed, and enjoying themselves when they visit me. Reframing is a very appropriate
technique for this case because the client’s goal, “to have my family visit and keep my house perfectly neat every minute of their visit,” was impossible—a perfect example of utopian thinking (C1). Reframing, as a technique, carries the risk of making the client feel misunderstood
and invalidated, as in this example: The client says, “My daughter fights me every step of the way,” and the therapist responds, At least you know that you brought up a strong and independent person. Whether that response would be helpful to the client depends on the timing, the context, and the relationship between client and therapist.
A very effective approach to reframing is to ask questions about the purposes and benefits of a behavior that the client has framed as a self-defeating and stupid behavior, over which I have no control.
What purpose does this behavior serve?
What benefits (payof fs, positive consequences) do you get?
How does this behavior help you?
When you were young, how did this behavior help you survive?
Is there any other way of looking at this?

The answers to these questions can help the client shift the behavior to a positive frame: protection, positive intentions, attempts to get my needs met, or things I do to survive and reduce pain. Once in the new frame, the negative feelings and self-blame are reduced, and the client can examine whether there are better ways to achieve those benefits.

Downward Arrow Technique
By repeating the same questions (And that means? And then? And next?), a series of responses lead the client from the original thought to deeper schemas and core beliefs. When the questions do not produce a “deeper” response, then the core belief has been identified and then the therapist can move on to challenging that belief. Once this technique has been demonstrated in a session with the
therapist, the client is able to use it as a homework assignment. Drawing a downward arrow on paper as each successive response is written is helpful in showing that the movement is toward a deeper, fundamental level. When the client identifies a negative thought that leads to anxiety about performance, good questions to ask are If that thought were true, why would it be upsetting? or What would that mean to you? A client will move from “I might make a mistake” to “My colleagues will think I’m stupid” to “They will know that I don’t deserve this job” to “That would mean I’m worthless.” Clum (1990) provides an example of a person with panic attacks who has a
fear of driving on the interstate.

Identifying the Irrational Belief
Therapist: What will happen?
Client: I will have a panic attack.
Therapist: What will happen next?
Client: I will have to pull of f the road.
Therapist: And next?
Client: I will be there forever. Challenging the Belief
Therapist: How likely is it that you will be there forever?
Client: Of course I wouldn’t be there forever. Either my panic attack would subside and I’d drive off, or someone would come to help me. Panic attacks always end, so I’ll be able to drive away. And the police always stop to help cars stopped alongside the road.
Cost-Benefit Analysis
Instead of addressing whether a core belief is rational or true, this method engages the client in an examination of whether it is useful to continue to maintain that belief. The belief is written down, and then under it are drawn two columns, one for advantages or reasons for maintaining and the other for disadvantages or reasons for changing. Then, when the two lists are finished, the client divides 100 points between the two columns to indicate the relative weight given to each
argument. Burns (2005) provides an example for the belief “I need everyone’s approval to be worthwhile.”

Advantages
I’ll work hard to get people to approve of me; I’ll respect other people and pay careful attention to what they say and how they feel; I’ll sell lots of life insurance and make lots of money; I’ll be a people person and have lots and lots of friends. I’ll feel great when people do approve of me.

Disadvantages
Other people will control my self-esteem; I’ll get upset when people criticize me; I may try too hard and turn people off; I may not know what I believe in or stand for; My emotions will go up and down like a roller coaster depending on whether people like me. In the example, the client gave 30 points to the advantages and 70 to the disadvantages.

Focus on Changing Behaviors
Behavior change can precede schema change. To change poor self-esteem, the person needs data that he or she is behaving in a way worthy of esteem. Get the person to break a task into small steps and succeed, and he or she will begin to view the self as competent and masterful. If the cognitive map creates fear by labeling many situations as “threatening and dangerous,” it can be very beneficial to help the person engage in risky behaviors, doing what is difficult, in spite of fear. Then when the client masters those situations, the cognitive map will change and the situations will no longer be labeled dangerous. For instance, Albert Ellis gave this assignment to a client who had catastrophic beliefs about the consequences of appearing silly in public: Take the New York subway and as you approach each station, shout out the name of the stop.

INTEGRATION OF HYPOTHESES
The C2 hypothesis is almost always a useful partner to the following hypotheses. BL3 Skills

Deficits or Lack of Competence
Therapists have a tendency to want to build self-esteem, instead of considering that low self-esteem is justified. Often people have negative beliefs about their competence and adequacy because they lack the level of competence expected of people at their age or in their occupation. The appropriate approach is to help the client improve his skills and competence, thereby earning a positive evaluation from others and the self.

ES1 Existential Issues
People who are struggling with existential issues are searching for a new cognitive map, a term that embraces philosophy of life. Whereas the original cognitive map provided meaning that was derived from parents and society, the therapist is helping the client create her own meaning and discover that she is free to choose her response to events that are imposed.

ES2 Avoiding Freedom and Responsibility
Freedom, limits, and responsibility are topics for cognitive exploration. Therapists help people relinquish their fictions, illusions, and self-deceptions to enjoy the benefits of freedom, recognize aspects of the world that cannot be controlled, and accept responsibility for the consequences of their actions. Existential therapists believe that adults can make the choice to think in more mature
ways once they recognize their errors in thinking and the price they pay for them.

P1 Internal Parts and Subpersonalities
Different parts of the personality hold on to different cognitive maps of reality. It is a very common experience that people have a rational part that can recognize faulty thoughts, although there is an emotional part that continues to act as if they are true. When therapists find that cognitive therapy is not working, they should suspect that the Adult part of the personality is not as powerful as other parts. It is essential to engage the “Adult-in-the-Child” (the “little professor” from TA) because this could be the part that originated and still believes the
maladaptive schema.

P2 Reenactment of Early Childhood Experiences
In gathering data about early childhood, you are not looking for disconnected facts, but are trying to learn specific information that helps explain how the client constructed the faulty cognitive map that directs his or her way of living. By tracing the roots of faulty schemas back to childhood and the dynamics of the family of origin, we can discover how they “make sense” and served survival
functions for the little child. To relinquish them, the client must be able to tolerate painful feelings and to have more mature strategies for getting emotional needs met. It is also important to integrate C2 with P2 so that psychodynamic formulations do not remain vague and overly general. A formulation that states She is bringing elements of her early experience into the present needs to
go further and describe the specific elements, for instance the belief that she is unlovable, the assumption that men can’t be trusted, or the decision, “I’ll make them sorry.”

P3 Immature Sense of Self and Conception of Others
Clients will differ in their ability to separate thinking from the sense of self. If clients do not have the capacity to critically examine their own thinking, they will construe your efforts to challenge their model of the world as if they are personal attacks and failures of empathy. If that happens, the psychodynamic hypothesis P3 should be considered. Items 6, 8, and 10 from Jeffrey Young’s list of maladaptive schemas (Table 6.6) are capturing what psychoanalytic psychotherapists would consider developmental defects, narcissistic disturbances, or character disorders.

SCE2 Cultural Context
Many terms that we use to describe culture are cognitive in nature: for example, norms, values, beliefs, rules, and expectations. An exploration of cultural issues involves many cognitive frameworks: How the person views his own culture, how he thinks others view his culture, how norms and rules for behavior differ between cultures, and how people from different cultures have different stories or narratives about the same historic periods. You must respect the diversity of cognitive maps stemming from culture and seek to increase choice and improve cognitive
skills, not indoctrinate people with your preferred beliefs. Goals for cognitive change must be supported by specific problems and desired outcomes; otherwise, the judgment that certain patterns of thinking are dysfunctional can be driven by cultural and personal bias.

KEY IDEAS FOR C3 FAULTY INFORMATION PROCESSING
All thinking has distortions. The minute we impose meaning on the raw data of our senses, we call it perception instead of sensation. There are always different ways of perceiving the same events. We are bombarded with information from the environment as well as from our internal world; it would be impossible to attend to and process everything. When you sit on a park bench, reading a book, thoroughly absorbed, you are not hearing the birds or seeing the trees: There is always selective attention. Thus, the goal in using this hypothesis is not to aim for perfection in thinking; rather, you want to identify those patterns of thinking that result in psychological pain, poor problem-solving and coping skills, and interference with achieving goals. Furthermore, therapists need to be aware of their own tendencies toward faulty thinking. Levy (1997) teaches tools of critical thinking for clinicians—essential skills in developing effective case formulations.

Common Errors in Thinking
Therapists can help clients correct their faulty information processing and acquire tools for avoiding future difficulties by teaching them to recognize specific errors in thinking. Table 6.8 gives names and examples for some of the most common of these errors (Beck & Weishaar, 2000).

Maturation of Cognitive Capacities
Many problems of adults stem from their immature thinking: They are egocentric, concrete, rigid, and confuse fantasy and reality, as do young children. Piaget’s (2002) theory of cognitive development in children explains that children’s cognitive capacities develop in stages: Styles of thinking that are normal at one age are considered immature at a later age. For instance, a little child may have the word “daddy” for all men. Then that term gets restricted to one man, and new labels are developed for other men. A 3-year-old child is naturally egocentric: Events are interpreted from one point of view—the self—and the child is unable to switch to the point of view of other people. The capacity for abstract thinking does not arrive until adolescence: At this stage, the individual can think of hypothetical situations and use the scientific method to gather evidence and test the validity of conclusions.
Piaget is the source of the term schema, which is commonly used for cognitive structures. When the data of experience are consistent with the schema, the schema assimilates the data and remains unchanged. However, when the data are inconsistent and cannot be assimilated without distortion of reality, the schema must undergo accommodation and change to be consistent with the data. Cognitive dissonance is a term for the inconsistency between preexisting beliefs and new information, and this state needs to be resolved, either by modifying beliefs or by
screening out and avoiding the discrepant information. Reality testing is a process of checking the match between schema and the sensory data from reality. In healthy maturation, schemas are constantly revised. If the individual does not independently recognize that the schema is faulty, other people—parents, teachers, friends, police—give corrective experiences. If schemas fail to change despite confrontation with inconsistent data, the person is going to be ill equipped to deal with challenges of life.

Parataxic Distortions and Transference
Freud used the term transference for the client’s distorted view of the therapist and Sullivan (1968) recognized the same process in all relationships, calling it parataxic distortion. A distorted perception of other people is a common experience:
We meet a new acquaintance and respond based on similarity to someone we knew in the past. However, as we spend more time with that person, we are supposed to process the information that reveals who that person is in reality, not fantasy, and adjust our beliefs, expectations, and assumptions. When distortions are extreme and the adult cannot effectively test reality, there are likely to be severe problems in relationships. Examples include an adult woman who expects
her boyfriend to meet the needs her father never met and a competent professional man who stammers with anxiety when his reasonable and friendly boss asks a question.

There are two ways of clearing up parataxic distortions and transferences:
1. Get to know the real person, for who he or she is in reality, which involves listening to that person describe his or her internal process, intentions, and feelings, as well as observing behavior and drawing inferences from the facts of that behavior rather than from fantasies about the person.
2. Check out perceptions and assumptions with a group of other people. Group therapy is an effective modality because it provides the opportunity for a client to compare perceptions with a group of people, not just the therapist (Yalom, 1995). If others agree with the perception—yes, the person did insult you and treat you rudely—you have achieved consensual validation
for your hunch, but if they disagree, then you need to correct your faulty thinking.

Cognitive Styles
People differ in their style of processing information, and a variety of theories and tools exist that classify these styles. Differences in cognitive styles have implications not only for defense mechanisms and pathology but also for talents, interests, preferred learning modalities, occupational choice, and creation of compatible relationships. Jung developed a typology for modes of processing— sensing, intuition, thinking, feeling; a personality assessment tool, the Myers-
Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI ), identifies sixteen personality types, based in part on those differences (Hammer, 1996):

Sensing: Using physical senses of seeing, hearing, touching, smelling,
and tasting.

Intuition: Using past experiences and more abstract thinking.

Thinking: Making decisions objectively and impersonally, based on laws,
principles, and factual information.

Feeling: Making decisions subjectively and personally, based on relationships
and values.

An important distinction in cognitive style is whether a person thinks in global, undifferentiated terms or focuses on details, differentiating the whole into component parts. This difference can be assessed with the Rorschach test: Some people will respond to the whole card, with little attention to details, whereas others have many responses for details without forming a concept for the whole card. Although people have a preference for one style or another, the most effective individuals have the flexibility to use both styles, and make deliberate choices about which style is most adaptive for a specific situation. David Shapiro (1965) identified several “neurotic styles” and noted how people’s style determines what they search for and attend to in the environment:
Compulsive individuals seek technical data; paranoid persons search for clues; and hysterics notice “the immediately striking, vivid, and colorful things in life” (p. 119). Shapiro describes individuals with the two most common styles as having the following characteristics:

Hysterical style: Gives answers in terms of impressions rather than facts; lacks focus on detail; seems incapable of persistent or intense intellectual concentration; distractible; satisfied with relying on hunches and intuitions; lacks intellectual curiosity; highly suggestible; fails to see things that are obvious to others; and able to keep unpleasant experiences on the periphery.

Obsessive-compulsive style: Attention has a sharp, intense focus; concentrates on detail; seems unable to allow his attention to wander; rarely seems to get hunches; seems incapable of a relaxed, impressionistic cognition; attempts to reach a decision by invoking a rule or principle; and alternates between uncertainty and dogma.

WHEN IS THIS HYPOTHESIS A GOOD MATCH?
Techniques of cognitive therapy have received strong research support (Reinecke & Freeman, 2003) for the following targets: depression, Generalized Anxiety Disorder (GAD), Panic Disorder, Posttraumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), Social Anxiety, Body Dysmorphic Disorder, Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder (OCD), anger management, psychotic disorders, and eating disorders.
Table 6.9 presents the biases in information processing that Beck and Weishaar (2000, p. 251) have noted for various psychological disorders.

A focus on faulty information processing is effective in marital therapy. For instance, partners need to distinguish between behaviors in each other that are volitional and therefore are able to be changed, and those characteristics that reflect genetics, personality, and core attributes and therefore need to be accepted (Christensen & Jacobson, 2000).

TREATMENT PLANNING
The following strategies focus directly on faulty thinking; be aware that errors in thinking or rigidity in cognitive style can also be modified indirectly, through therapeutic conversations.

Collaborative Empiricism
Aaron Beck encourages the client to function as a “personal scientist” and examine the data of reality to see if it fits the client’s beliefs and predictions. He recommends:
Teach the client about the relation of thoughts to feelings and behavior.
Use questions to get the client to assess the validity of thinking.
Give the client specific homework assignments.

Teaching
One treatment method is to teach the client about common errors in thinking, using an educational approach to correct errors and teach better reasoning skills, perhaps giving the client a copy of Table 6.8. Here is an example of how a therapist might present this strategy to the client: “People often make certain kinds of errors in the way they look at situations and these errors in thinking may contribute to arriving at premature or incorrect conclusions, which cause (insert the clients specific problem).”

Questions
The metamodel questions that were presented in Chapter 2, Table 2.6, are interventions to correct faulty information processing. They promote changes, not only as a result of helping the client to access information that has been ignored, but because you are teaching the client the metaperspective—that his cognitive map probably contains distortions and errors that create limitations and interfere with the range of opportunities and choices that are available. You may challenge the mind reading in the client’s statement: “My husband feels resentful of my success” by asking, How specifically do you know? Three different kinds of change can result:

1.Specific change: I need to ask my husband how he really feels.
2. Pattern change that generalizes to new situations: I have this pattern of mind reading that gets me into trouble. I need to catch myself and remember to gather data from the other person.
3. Ability to change other patterns: I need to understand the map I’ve constructed and how I often distort my experience. I need to challenge my thinking and test reality on an ongoing basis.

Socratic Dialogue
The therapist asks questions that will help the client arrive at logical conclusions and process the data of experience more effectively, as in the following situations.

Consider alternate explanations:
—So when she didn’t invite you, you concluded that she doesn’t want to be your friend any more. Can you think of any other possible explanations?
—Could there be other reasons for the way she behaved, which had nothing to do with you?
Test conclusions by examining evidence:
—You say he loves you, but how does he treat you?
—How do you know that the teacher won’t give you an extension on your paper?
Recognize distortions by examining experience:
—You said you believe that if you try hard and are loving enough and anticipate
all his needs, he will have to love you. You have been acting on that belief for a long time. What have you noticed about his behavior?
—Has anyone else ever experienced that same event and reacted in a different
way?
Increase imagination and f lexibility:
—Could you imagine any other way of reacting?
—What other kind of information would you need?
Confrontation
In a confrontation, the therapist draws attention to contradictions and inconsistencies and allows the client to draw his own conclusions.

You say that you can’t count on anybody, but hasn’t your sister been there for you during this crisis?
You say you don’t need to study but last time you got a C on the test.
By challenging faulty information processing you can help the client modify schemas and assumptions and update the cognitive map, as in this example:

The therapist confronted the client: You say that you have to be perfect to be loved; how did your boyfriend respond when you told him about your mistake? When the client examines data of the boyfriend’s response, she develops a new schema: “When I show my fallibility, flaws, and weaknesses, my boyfriend still loves me; in fact, he becomes even more loving in his behavior.”

Homework Assignments
One helpful type of homework assignment is the use of structured journal keeping using a chart format (see Table 2.9 in Chapter 2 for an example). The client writes down a situation or event in the first column, and then writes down what he thought about it. Other columns are used to record the resulting feelings or Subjective Units of Discomfort Scale (SUDS) level and an alternate adaptive way of appraising the situation.

INTEGRATION OF HYPOTHESES
The recognition of faulty patterns of thinking will be very useful when you use the following hypotheses.

B3 Mind-Body Connections
The way a person processes the information from the environment affects the development of neural networks in the brain. Catastrophizing, an exaggerated response to perceived threat, results in fight-flight arousal states. Misinterpretation of bodily states is a component of Panic Disorder. The immune system may be affected by whether a person has positive or negative interpretations
of experiences: Pollyannaism is better for your health than pessimism.

CS2 Situational Stressors
The interpretation of a stressor affects how a person copes and whether crisis develops. Table 4.4 includes “perception of the event” as one of the three factors that predict the response to stressors. Crisis intervention techniques include a focus on thinking processes. In dealing with trauma, attention is paid to helping victims process their experience in words to avoid an overgeneralization
of affect to new situations and the magnification of threatening stimuli in the future.

BL3 Skill Deficits or Lack of Competence
Faulty information processing represents skill deficits in logic, scientific method, and analytic abilities. Therapist can directly teach problem-solving and decision-making skills.

P1 Internal Parts and Subpersonalities
We assume that in the client there is a part capable of competent information processing, rational reasoning, and effective scientific thinking, which can be labeled as the Adult or the personal scientist. The Child state engages in immature thinking and misinterpretations of reality. The Parent state carries arbitrary rules and dogma, plus the metarule: “Obey me without thinking.”

P3 Immature Sense of Self and Conception of Others
Certain people are unable to separate their thinking from their sense of self. Therefore, when the therapist challenges the client’s thinking, the person reacts defensively as if he, himself, rather than the faulty thinking, is being attacked. A good way to test the goodness of fit of hypothesis P3 is to challenge faulty thinking and examine the client’s responses.

P4 Unconscious Dynamics
When a client maintains faulty thinking despite the best tools of cognitive therapy, it is useful to consider the hypothesis that unconscious defense mechanisms are involved. For instance, a person who distorts social cues to mean rejection may be protecting herself from the vulnerability that accompanies trust, and is hence avoiding emotional pain and a repetition of early childhood situations.

KEY IDEAS FOR C4 DYSFUNCTIONAL SELF-TALK
When people are asked, What were you thinking? or What did you say to yourself then? they give an answer that describes internal speech. There are various ways of describing it: “A voice in my head tells me to be careful”; “I keep telling myself that something bad is going to happen”; or “It’s like a broken record, saying over and over again, don’t trust him.” This level of cognitive functioning is easy to identify and work with; some therapists focus on this level without getting into deeper layers of the cognitive map. Others, like Aaron Beck, stress the importance of connecting automatic thoughts to underlying schemas (C2).

Behavioral Approach to Covert Speech
Internal speech can be treated as an ordinary behavior and is part of every comprehensive behavioral analysis. In addition to being the identified problem behavior, covert speech can be an antecedent to the problem behavior, or something that follows a behavior and serves as a reward or punishment (BL1). Mahoney (1974) and Meichenbaum (1977) developed a focus on the cognitions as behaviors, which was originally called cognitive behavior modification, now known as CBT. Meichenbaum used the term selfstatements and developed a self-instructional approach that teaches clients how to become aware of and modify their own self-talk. Thus, the modification of internal speech is viewed as a coping skill (BL3). He used the term stress-inoculation for a strategy of having clients practice four stages of positive self-statements with minor stressors to be prepared for dealing with more severe real-world stressors. Novaco (1986) developed a similar approach for
anger management.

WHEN IS THIS HYPOTHESIS A GOOD MATCH?
Table 6.10 gives examples of when dysfunctional self-talk is likely to be an important contributor to the problem.

TREATMENT PLANNING
Table 6.11 shows the different phases in a therapy plan to modify dysfunctional self-talk.

Three Techniques to Modify Self-Talk
The three options on page 224 allow the therapist to help the client modify self-talk.

1. Thought-Stopping: The client learns to terminate the troublesome thought, perhaps by saying “stop” when the thought begins.
2. Aversive methods: The client inflicts a painful stimulus on himself when he begins to think the thought he wants to eliminate. Snapping a rubber band against the wrist can be sufficient.
3. Reinforcing positive alternative: The person chooses an alternate sentence to substitute for the dysfunctional self-talk, practices it, and rewards herself for using it.

Stress Inoculation
A stressful situation—one that triggers anxiety, anger, or depression—is broken into four stages, and the client is taught to identify dysfunctional thought at each stage and then to create and practice more adaptive alternatives. Here are examples of positive self-talk at each stage:

1. Preparing for the stressor or provocation: I can handle it. Just take it one step at a time. Remember to breathe deeply. I’m prepared.
2. Confronting and handling the stressor or provocation: Find a friendly face in the audience. He’s trying to get your goat, don’t give him the satisfaction of losing control. Count to 10. Use that “broken record technique.”
3. Coping with arousal and feeling overwhelmed: Take a few deep breaths. It’s okay to tell them you need a little time to collect your thoughts. Take a time-out. you don’t have to stay in the room. It’s okay not to be perfect the first time you try something new.
4. Ref lecting on the situation and reinforcing positive change: I handled that really well. It’s a small step, but it’s important progress. It was a setback, but I won’t brood about it; next time, I’ll handle it better.

Homework Assignment
Homework is an essential part of a program to modify self-talk. Between sessions, the client keeps a chart, writing down self-talk in response to specific situations, and showing the corresponding feelings and behaviors. Then the client creates “alternate self-talk” that will lead to more adaptive feelings and behavior. The information from this chart is also helpful for C3 and C4. Table 6.12
shows a sample homework chart for the problem behavior: Dif ficulty controlling intake of food and drink.

Role-Play Activities
If the self-statements say negative things about the self, it is useful to externalize the voice and then challenge it. If the message is not already in a “you” form (You’re no good), then suggest the person change “I’m no good” to “You’re no good.” Ask the client to move to another chair and talk to “herself ” from that voice. The client switches back to the original chair and disputes the
message. Another activity is to ask the client to imagine that she is talking to another person, perhaps a young child, and to say the internal message to that person: “You’re no good. You’re a hopeless loser.” This helps the client see how destructive the inner voice is; he can then develop more constructive and caring self-messages.

INTEGRATION OF HYPOTHESES
Be sure to examine internal speech when using the following two hypotheses.

P1 Internal Parts and Subpersonalities
There is a very natural integration of P1 and C4. As you identify different internal messages, you often notice that they are spoken in different voices and actually represent different subpersonalities or inner parts. It becomes more appropriate to talk about an internal dialogue or group discussion rather than just a monologue.

ES2 Avoiding Freedom and Responsibility
Often, people argue that external events do cause their responses, claiming, “I can’t help the way I think.” But they can be persuaded that, even in uncontrollable external circumstances, they have a choice regarding the activity in their own minds: The example of Victor Frankl, a survivor of the Nazi concentration camps, provides compelling illustrations of how people could exercise the freedom to create their own thoughts.

SUGGESTED READINGS
These suggestions are for all cognitive hypotheses.

Unpacking the Concept of Virtuality:

2010-09-23T15:17:00.001-07:00

The Effects of Geographic Dispersion, Electronic Dependence, Dynamic Structure, and National Diversity on Team Innovation.

To understand why the virtual design strategies that organizations create to foster innovation may in fact hinder it, we unpack four characteristics often associated with the term “virtuality” (geographic dispersion, electronic dependence, structural dynamism, and national diversity) and argue that each hinders innovation through unique mechanisms, many of which can be overcome by creating a psychologically safe communication climate. We first tested the lausibility of our arguments using indepth qualitative analysis of interviews with 177 members of 14 teams in a variety of industries. A second study constituted a more formal test of hypotheses using survey data collected from 266 members of 56 aerospace design teams. Results show that the four characteristics are not highly intercorrelated, that they have independent and differential effects on innovation, and that a psychologically safe communication climate helps mitigate the challenges they pose. We discuss the implications of these findings for theory and research.•

Virtual teams, variously defined as geographically dispersed, electronically dependent, dynamic, or comprising diverse members working remotely (Gibson and Cohen, 2003; Griffith, Sawyer, and Neale, 2003; Martins, Gilson, and Maynard, 2004; Kirkman and Mathieu, 2005), are growing in number and importance. A recent study by the Gartner Group indicates that more than 60 percent of professional employees work in teams characterized by virtuality (Kanawattanachai and Yoo, 2002). Such teams potentially make it easier to acquire and apply knowledge to critical tasks in global firms (e.g., Madhaven and Grover, 1998; Sole and Edmondson, 2002). For example, geographic dispersion and electronic dependence can provide access to relevant expertise even when it is scattered around the globe (Kirkman et al., 2002) and better understanding of global clients, operations, and suppliers (Boutellier et al., 1998; Gluesing and Gibson, 2004). A dynamic structure and diverse participants can enable creative and flexible responses to challenging development needs through access to diverse expertise and perspectives on an as-needed basis (Brown and Eisenhardt, 1995; Sole
and Edmondson, 2002). Such capabilities are central to innovation, the collective process of making sense of new and diverse information and incorporating this knowledge into new methodologies, products, and services (Nohria and Berkley, 1994; Nonaka and Takeuchi, 1995; Dougherty, 2001).
Innovation has become a critical means of competitive advantage for firms in a variety of industries because it allows organizations to diversify, adapt, and even reinvent themselves to match evolving market and technical conditions (Schoonhoven, Eisenhardt, and Lyman, 1990). This has been demonstrated in single industry studies, including technology (Vessey, 1991; Eisenhardt and Tabrizi, 1995; Galunic and Eisenhardt, 2001), pharmaceuticals (Zellmer-Bruhn and Gibson, 2006), and automotive settings (Clark and Fujimoto, 1991; Obstfeld, 2005), as well as in multi-industry studies, which often control for industry effects, such as agriculture, aerospace, retail, professional services, medical products, chemicals, telecommunications, and consumer electronics (Imai, Nonaka, and Takeuchi, 1985; Hargadon and Sutton, 1997; Gatignon et al., 2002). Innovation is especially critical in subunits charged with new product development, design, or research, but it is important even in those whose mandate is implementation (Brown and Eisenhardt, 1995). For example, Zellmer-Bruhn and Gibson (2006) documented how workers on a pharmaceutical manufacturing assembly line were rewarded for more efficient and effective work and had more satisfying internal team processes when they developed new mechanisms for coordinating their work across stages of
assembly, an essential form of innovation.
Teams—a set of interdependent parties, small in number, who recognize themselves as a team and have some degree of shared accountability (Cohen and Bailey, 1997)—are increasingly recognized as a key mechanism for innovation in complex firms, as they are pivotal in creating and acquiring knowledge (Edmondson, 2002; Gibson and Vermeulen, 2003). Edmondson (2002) argued that innovation inherently occurs at the team level because it requires learning behavior, or transmission of knowledge bounded by tasks and opportunities that takes place through conversations among a limited number of interdependent people. These interactions are necessary because they enable individuals to combine different insights and institutionalize knowledge beyond that held by a single member (Nonaka and Takeuchi, 1995). Similarly, empirical research by Tagger (2002) suggested that team-level innovation processes are needed to bring individual creativity into use. Without favorable group interactions, individuals’ insights and efforts may be carried out in vain, with no organizational benefits accrued.
Given the fundamental nature of innovation and the potential for teams to contribute to it, organizations increasingly implement them for that purpose, using designs that include some combination of geographic dispersion, electronic dependence, dynamic structure, or national diversity. Yet, to date the literature on such “virtual” teams has primarily documented the challenges involved, all of which have implications for the success of innovations (Cramton, 2001; Kirkman et al., 2002, 2004; Sole and Edmondson, 2002). For example, geographically separated team members lack “mutual knowledge” of each other’s situations, increasing coordination problems in acquiring knowledge and resources (Cramton, 2001). Electronic dependence creates logistical and technological constraints that limit informal spontaneous interaction, hindering knowledge interpretation (DeSanctis and Monge, 1999). In structurally dynamic teams, full disclosure is often hampered by inexperience with the other party and lack of a shared history (Gibson and Cohen, 2003). When collaborators represent different national backgrounds, each of which has its own set of values, orientations, and priorities, this can detract from effective internal communication (Watson, Kumar, and Michaelson, 1993). Accessing, combining, and applying knowledge relevant for innovation may be inherently problematic in teams characterized by these features. As a result, team members often struggle to understand each other and must resolve misinterpretations before they can truly innovate (Dougherty, 1992; Carlile, 2004). Just bringing people with the required knowledge and skills together virtually provides no guarantee that they will be able to work effectively and innovate across contexts.
Part of the problem in identifying the organizational performance implications of this relatively new form of teaming is that the term “virtual” has been applied imprecisely in the literature to represent very different types of teams: teams that are geographically dispersed (consisting of members spread across more than one location), mediated by technology (communicating using electronic tools such as e-mail or instant messaging), structurally dynamic (in which change occurs frequently among members, their roles, and relationships to each other), or nationally diverse (consisting of members with more than one national background). Early research on virtual work defined it as “work carried out in a location remote from the central offices or production facilities, where the worker has no personal contact with coworkers but is able to communicate with them electronically” (Cascio, 2000:85), while virtual teams were initially defined as groups of geographically distributed coworkers that are assembled using a combination of telecommunications and information technologies to accomplish a variety of critical tasks (Townsend, DeMarie, and Hendrickson, 1998). Definitions of this type assumed that teams can be viewed as either completely virtual or face to face, leading researchers to treat virtual teams as a single “ideal” type (Bell and Kozlowski, 2002: 16). A common research design in the early experimental research was comparing manipulations of pure face-to-face versus pure computer-mediated interactions (e.g., Kiesler, Siegel, and McGuire, 1984; Spears and Lea, 1992; Straus and McGrath, 1994; Walther, 1995; Huang et al., 2003).
Recently, scholars have shifted away from this dichotomy to focus on the extent of virtualness, recognizing that most teams can be described on a continuum of virtuality. There is conceptual agreement that virtuality is multidimensional (Cohen and Gibson, 2003; Griffith, Sawyer, and Neale, 2003; Martins, Gilson, and Maynard, 2004; Kirkman and Mathieu, 2005), but the number and complexity of the dimensions varies from one conceptual framework to another. Cohen and Gibson (2003) included two dimensions, electronic dependence and geographic dispersion. Griffith, Sawyer, and Neale (2003) developed three—level of technology support, percent of time apart on task, and degree of physical distance—as did Kirkman and Mathieu (2005): the extent to which team members use virtual tools, the amount of informational value provided by such tools, and the synchronicity of team members’ interaction. Martins, Gilson, and Maynard (2004) developed four dimensions: geographical dispersion, use of computer- mediated communication, temporality, and diversity.
Further, previous research has tended to lump together various features of “virtuality,” without examining the possible independent, differential, perhaps even unintended effects of each characteristic. A Web of Science search of articles published since 2000 in the organizations, communication, psychology, international management, and information systems journals indicates that the majority of studies have included at least three dimensions as defining characteristics of virtuality. Of the 143 articles published between 2000 and 2006 that contained variations of the search terms virtual, distributed, or dispersed in a work setting, 80 included at least three dimensions. For example, Nemiro (2002) defined virtual teams as geographically dispersed, relying heavily on information technology to accomplish work, with fluid membership. Majchrzak et al. (2000) defined virtual teams as those that are geographically distributed and reliant on technology, with a more malleable structure than traditional teams. Pauleen and Yoong (2001) defined virtual work as work performed across time and distance, using information and communication technology, by members from different countries, cultures, and functions. Baba et al. (2004) defined virtual teams as culturally diverse, involving two or more nations, physical and temporal distance, interdependence, and reliance on technology. Shin (2004) suggested that virtuality is the degree to which a group has temporal, cultural, spatial, and organizational dispersion and communicates through electronic means. Chudoba et al. (2005) wrote that virtuality depends on discontinuities in geography, time zone, organization, national culture, work practices, and technology. Paul et al. (2005) argued that virtual teams are those that cut across national, functional, and organizational boundaries and are connected by telecommunications and information technology.
Finally, Harvey, Novicevic, and Garrison (2005) defined virtual teams as geographically and organizationally dispersed, with members who work in different time zones, in different nations around the world, with membership that is often temporary and structure that is transitory, and who communicate primarily via technology.
Summarizing across this growing literature, the most common characteristics investigated are geographic dispersion and electronic dependence. The Web of Science search uncovered 138 articles that included geographic dispersion, 122 that included electronic dependence, 82 that included national diversity, and 23 that included a component representing fluid structure or membership. It is often assumed that teams that are more geographically distributed are also more electronically dependent, and thus more “virtual” (e.g., Baba et al., 2004; Kirkman et al., 2004; Majchrzak et al., 2004; Martins, Gilson, and Maynard, 2004; Ocker, 2005).
Although electronic dependence sometimes coincides with geographic dispersion, it doesn’t always. Teams whose members are located in the same office may use e-mail to avoid the trip up to another floor. Such teams are electronically dependent but not geographically dispersed. Their reliance on computer-mediated communication likely reduces informal exchanges and social cues, yet they share the same geographic context and hence will be unlikely to experience the challenges associated with linking numerous external networks.
The next most common defining characteristic is having members from multiple countries, assuming that if a team is “virtual,” it is nationally diverse (e.g., Maznevski and Chudoba, 2000; Baba et al., 2004; Chudoba et al., 2005; Paul et al., 2005; Janssens and Brett, 2006). In fact, many are of a single nationality and are less likely to experience the cultural differences in communication preferences that often cause internal process challenges. Finally, many of the published studies also define virtual teams as structurally dynamic, assuming that if a team is “virtual,” it has fluid membership (e.g., Majchrzak et al., 2000; Chudoba et al., 2005; Harvey, Novicevic, and Garrison, 2005; Shin, 2005). Yet teams that are geographically dispersed or electronically dependent are not always dynamic—they are sometimes stable across several years and hence do not experience the difficulties associated with changing membership. What is clear from our review is that we won’t understand the problems virtual designs create for innovation without examining individual elements of virtuality. To begin this task, we conceptualize virtuality here as a multifaceted higherorder construct comprising four independent defining characteristics identified in previous literature: geographic dispersion, electronic dependence, dynamic structural arrangements, and national diversity. Although they each contribute to the virtuality of the team, they are likely to have unique effects and should be considered independently.
Further, to understand how the problems associated with the elements of virtuality might be mitigated, we examine the climate for communication, because communication is so critical to virtual work, drawing on Edmondson’s (1999, 2003) concept of team psychological safety. A psychologically safe communication climate, defined as an atmosphere within a team characterized by open, supportive communication, speaking up, and risk taking (Gibb, 1961; Baer and Frese, 2003; Edmondson, 1999, 2003) may help turn geographic dispersion, electronic dependence, dynamic structure, and national diversity from liabilities into assets and promote innovation. We test these ideas in two studies, the first exploring the general plausibility of our arguments using qualitative analysis of interviews in complex teams representing a variety of industries and crossing many geographic contexts; the second constituting a formal test of our hypotheses using survey data from a larger sample of aerospace teams formed at the same point in time, allowing us to control for industry, organization, team and task type, and team longevity.

VIRTUAL INNOVATION
The ability of teams to innovate depends on how well they generate, import, share, interpret, and apply technological and market knowledge, particularly of local markets, economies, and customers. That knowledge is a combination of information, experience, context, interpretation, and reflection (Davenport, De Long, and Beers, 1998). It must be openly shared across contexts through relationships and networks, and there must be confidence in the value of that knowledge for achieving the objectives of the collaboration (Kanter, 1988). Once these requirements have been met, innovation involves dissemination and application of the knowledge, including combining and integrating it to develop novel insights, solutions, processes, or products (Obstfeld, 2005). In a comprehensive review, Brown and Eisenh (1995) chronicled several decades of innovation research published in major journals, ocusing on normative work in which projects were the unit of analysis, many of which involved teams developing new products or processes. They synthesized the research into a model of factors affecting innovation success that integrates common findings. Their theoretical framework is useful in understanding how the elements most commonly included in conceptualizations of virtuality each hinder the development of unique success factors for innovation.
Geographic dispersion. Rather than being an “on-off” switch (i.e., a team is distributed or not), geographic dispersion is a continuum (Cohen and Gibson, 2003; Griffith, Sawyer, and Neale, 2003). A team that spans multiple continents is more dispersed than one whose participants are located in the same city. A high level of geographic dispersion complicates and hinders three important innovation success factors related to knowledge and resource acquisition included in Brown and Eisenhardt’s (1995) framework: external communication with different contexts, support from those outside the project in the form of resources, and the speed/productivity of the innovation process.
First, as Brown and Eisenhardt (1995) documented, a stream of research in the innovation literature has focused on the benefits of flows of information into teams (e.g., Allen, 1971,
1977; Katz and Tushman, 1981). These studies highlight the importance of external communication outside the team for innovation success. Projects are more innovative when information is brought into the collaboration, translated, and dispersed to fellow team members. Second, support and resources predict innovation success. Teams whose members lobby for such support, buffer the team from outside pressures, engage in impression management, and coordinate the use of external information for technical or design issues are more innovative (Ancona and Caldwell, 1990, 1992b). The Stanford Innovation Project asked senior executives in the electronics industry to compare pairs of product successes (defined as profit contributors) and product failures in their firms. Products that had top management support in the form of resources and expressed commitment were
more likely to be successful (Maidique and Zirger, 1984, 1985; Zirger and Maidique, 1990). Finally, several studies have focused on the importance of speed in innovation, including lead time and productivity (Eisenhardt and Tabrizi, 1995). For example, Iansiti (1993, 1995) deductively examined all major products developed by the 12 chief competitors in Europe, Japan, and the U.S. in the computer industry and found that lead time and productivity were indicative of product integrity and the performance of new product development teams.
When team members are highly dispersed across different geographic locations, this hinders external communication, support, and speed of innovation. In geographically dispersed teams, members are embedded in different external contexts and thus have less shared contextual knowledge, with far greater understanding of their own (geographical) context than others’ context in the team (Gluesing et al., 2003). Participants in a site usually take for granted common knowledge and therefore often cannot readily describe that knowledge nor articulate its relevance to colleagues from other locations (Rennecker, 2001). Sole and Edmondson (2002) called this “situated knowledge” and found evidence from qualitative analysis of seven dispersed project development teams that the majority of conceptual misunderstandings resulted from lack of awareness of or failure to appropriate such knowledge. In contrast, co-location facilitates interaction and experience and generates greater understanding of local context and other hard-to-communicate aspects of work that
help facilitate information exchange for innovation (Tyre and Von Hippel, 1997; Carson et al., 2003).
Geographic dispersion also affects innovation by increasing the coordination requirements for acquiring resources, making the process less efficient and hindering productivity. Garnering
resources is far more challenging when there are numerous, diverse, and remote “environments” from which they are gathered, adding complexity that must be managed (Kirkman et al., 2002). In highly geographically dispersed teams, it is more difficult to coordinate resources, given that there are shorter windows of time for synchronous meetings,
and many meetings take place at other than standard hours. Certain team members with access to resources or top management support may even be inadvertently left out of decision processes because they are not physically present (Cramton, 2001). Decreased proximity may also result in less attention and effort by dispersed coworkers and more free riding (Kiesler and Cummings, 2002). A certain amount of focused, devoted attention, and mental energy is needed to pursue innovation, and context-specific circumstances that distract from this may not leave one with enough time devoted to the team (Csikszentmihalyi, 1996). In contrast, co-location affords greater efficiency in garnering knowledge and resources, as well as top management support from a single context (Carson et al., 2003). Thus, due to reduced contextual knowledge and coordination costs when collaborators are
geographically dispersed across multiple locations, innovation will be more difficult to establish:
Hypothesis 1 (H1): Geographic dispersion is negatively related to team innovation.
Electronic dependence. Some teams depend heavily on computer-mediated communication to stay in touch and get their work done. Again, electronic dependence is a continuum and is a question of the relative extent of computer-mediated versus face-to-face communication (Cohen and Gibson, 2003; Griffith, Sawyer, and Neale, 2003). A team that operates entirely through e-mail, text exchanges, and teleconferences, never meeting face to face, is more electronically dependent than a team whose participants meet monthly face to face. Two predictors of successful innovation Brown and Eisenhardt (1995) documented, subtle control and improvisation, are limited when electronic dependence is high.
Across industries, researchers have observed that exercising subtle control, such that resulting products or process improvements fit with overall corporate competitive strategy, is critical (Imai, Nonaka, and Takeuchi, 1985; Clark and Fujimoto, 1991). At the same time, Eisenhardt and Tabrizi (1995) showed that innovation teams that engage in more experimental or improvisational processes, through frequent iterations, more testing of ideas, and creative problem solving, develop more successful innovations.
Reliance on computer-mediated communication reduces opportunities for monitoring that enable subtle control and makes it more difficult to interpret knowledge during the improvisation process. Directly observing participants is often impossible (Carson et al., 2003), there is less informal feedback in computer-mediated communication (Hollingshead,
1996a, 1996b), and managers prefer to give feedback face to face rather than electronically (Kirkman et al., 2002, 2006), so there is often less knowledge of results, making corrective
behavior more difficult. Electronic groups have also been found to have more difficulty interpreting feedback in discussions (DeSanctis and Monge, 1999). Computer-mediated communication reduces nonverbal cues about interpersonal affections such as tone, warmth, and attentiveness, which contribute to message clarity and communication richness, and collaborators who use computer-mediated communication often use more direct styles of communication with fewer social cues than those in face-to-face conditions (Tidwell and Walther, 2002). Communicators use physical and linguistic “co-presence” to make inferences about one another’s knowledge. Difficulty in interpreting knowledge reduces experimentation (Hollingshead, 1998). Hence, by reducing understanding of a message, electronic dependence may have an impact on improvisation processes during innovation.
As a result we propose:
Hypothesis 2 (H2): Electronic dependence is negatively related to team innovation.
Dynamic structural arrangements. Work teams in organizations today are often structurally dynamic in that change occurs frequently among participants, their roles, and their relationships to each other (Brown and Eisenhardt, 1995).
Many firms partner with each other through informal, temporary, relatively unstructured arrangements, such as outsourcing or consortia, or using slightly more formal but dynamic
partnerships such as licensing, networks, or project-limited structural arrangements, especially on knowledge-intensive tasks (Carson et al., 2003). Structural dynamism negatively
affects a third set of factors related to innovation that Brown and Eisenhardt (1995) documented, pertaining to political processes, team member tenure, and planning. First, several researchers have noted the importance of managing the political process in innovation (Allen, 1971, 1977; Katz and Tushman, 1981; Katz and Allen, 1985). When key members of a project team act as politicians to manage the power dynamics both inside and outside the team, innovation is enhanced. Second, innovation research has established that teams with a short history together tend to lack effective patterns of information sharing and working together (Katz, 1982), limiting the amount and variety of information that can be communicated across team members. Third, extensive research has shown that planning and coordinating phases of development are critical to innovation. Examining product successes and failures in terms of profitability, sales, and market share in hundreds of industrial and manufacturing firms, Cooper and colleagues (Cooper, 1979; Cooper and Kleinschmidt, 1987) found that the internal organization of the innovation effort was crucial for success. Other studies (Hise et al., 1990; Zirger and Maidique, 1990; Dwyer and Mellor, 1991) have also found smooth execution of all phases of development by well-coordinated subgroups to be critical for innovation.
A highly dynamic team structure hinders the development of these success factors because it increases uncertainty and perceived risk, which complicates political processes. Turnover makes it nearly impossible to develop strong relationships and preserve organizational memory, and it makes it more difficult to plan and structure the flow of development. Dynamically structured collaborations typically include some degree of uncertainty (Chiles and McMackin, 1996), and so a complete contract specifying all relevant contingencies is impossible to write or enforce legally. Thus it is inevitable that the parties need to review, renegotiate, or reinterpret their initial agreements (Das and Teng, 1998), increasing the need to manage political processes but also making it more difficult to do so. Uncertainty often spills over into attributions and interpretations about the motives of the parties involved, resulting in hesitancy to share information in the innovation process (Dougherty, 1992, 2001). This exacerbates perceptions of risk, decreasing openness to new and innovative ideas that may come from interaction with other sites (Sole and Edmondson, 2002). Often, concerns about
confidentiality and proprietary knowledge prevent members from sharing knowledge across sites, hindering the team’s creative process and ability to innovate. A dynamic structure also reduces the strength of social ties among members of the team. The strength of a tie (or social relationship) is a function of the amount of interaction, emotional intensity, and reciprocity between any two individuals (Granovetter, 1973). Although it has been argued that weak ties potentially lead to greater creativity (Granovetter, 1982) because new participants bring fresh knowledge into the team, individuals often feel more comfortable sharing information that requires risk and candor across stronger ties (Perry-Smith and Shalley, 2003), such as those that have been built up over time in teams with a consistent membership. Further, it is more difficult to implement knowledge when the structure is dynamic (Burt, 2004; Granovetter, 2005). Obstfeld (2005) referred to this distinction as the idea problem versus the action problem and provided empirical evidence that the action problem may often overwhelm whatever information advantage certain structural arrangements such as networks of loosely connected actors may have. Given that innovation encompasses generating knowledge as well as making sense of it and incorporating that knowledge into new methodologies, products, and services (Nonaka and Takeuchi, 1995), the overall effect of a dynamic structure on innovation is likely to be negative. Without a shared history, the planning of development phases is hampered. When members lack knowledge of what each can contribute, it is more difficult to assign responsibilities and coordinate, especially around novel ideas (Obstfeld, 2005). Based on this argumentation, we propose:
Hypothesis 3 (H3): Dynamic structural arrangements are negatively related to team innovation.
National diversity. A final feature often assumed to coincide with virtuality is national diversity (e.g., Tan, Watson, and Wei, 1995; Jarvenpaa and Leidner, 1999; Maznevski and Chudoba,
2000). Cultures, broadly defined as characteristic ways of thinking, feeling, and behaving shared among members of an identifiable group (Earley and Gibson, 2002), exist at many different levels beyond national cultures, including organizational (e.g., General Electric’s culture as compared with Johnson and Johnson’s culture) and functional cultures (e.g., engineering as compared with human resources culture). But nationality is a superordinate determinant of identity that is engrained from birth and is likely to be more salient than a particular organizational or functional culture (Hofstede, 1991; Earley and Mosakowski, 2000). Being a salient source of identity, national diversity hinders a final set of innovation success factors Brown and Eisenhardt (1995) discussed that pertain to internal communication, conflict resolution, and the development of a shared vision. In the innovation literature, Ancona and Caldwell (1992a) found that teams with more thorough internal communication (e.g., they defined goals better, developed workable plans and prioritized work) had superior innovation performance. Similarly, research examining new product development efforts in over 20 firms
(Dougherty, 1990, 1992; Dougherty and Corse, 1995) has shown that when diverse members of project teams combined their perspectives in a highly iterative way to improve integrated information flow, they were more innovative. Members often had distinct “thought worlds”—they understood different aspects of product development in different ways—which led to varying interpretations of the same information, but strong internal communication bridged these differences. Relatedly, in a series of studies, Clark and his colleagues (Clark, Chew, and Fujimoto, 1987; Clark and Fujimoto, 1991) found that developing a shared, overall vision
contributed to innovation. Finally, Hayes, Wheelwright, and Clark (1988) described how bringing conflicts to the surface early in the development process was an important factor in
successful innovation. By resolving conflicts through mutual accommodation, a clear project vision was established early on.
Establishing effective internal communication and a shared vision for innovation is challenging when team members represent different nations, because national diversity creates different expectations for communication practices (Gibson and Vermeulen, 2003) and reduces identification with the team as a whole (Fiol, 1991; Hambrick et al., 1998; Gibbs, 2002). Thus, although collaborations that consist of members from different nations may have access to more information (Watson, Kumar, and Michaelson, 1993) as a result of different worldviews (Choi, Nisbett, and Norenzayan, 1999), they have been found to be fraught with difficulties that can hinder innovation through misunderstanding, stereotyping, and the inability to reach agreement, make decisions, and takeaction (Adler, 1997).
Many different orientations that vary across nations have been linked to team communication (see Earley and Gibson, 2002, for a review), and nationally diverse teams often have trouble communicating due to different expectations about the communication process. By way of example, some national cultures are “high context” and others are “low context,” referring to the importance of nonverbal, contextual cues in communicating or interpreting messages (Hall and Hall, 1987; Gordon, 1991). Members of high-context cultures tend to avoid negative or confrontational responses in communicating with members of their own work group in order
to save face and preserve a sense of harmony in the group (Adler, Brahm, and Graham, 1992). Members of low-context cultures use explicit language to convey exactly what is meant in a much more direct manner, even if the message is negative or confrontational. Beyond high- or low-context differences, other pertinent differences may include individualism-collectivism, uncertainty avoidance, power distance, or time orientation (Gibson and Zellmer-Bruhn, 2001; Earley and Gibson, 2002). During multicultural collaboration, differences across these dimensions are likely to cause communication breakdowns (Kirkman and Shapiro, 1997; Gibson and Zellmer- Bruhn, 2001), making it difficult to aggregate and process information, particularly for knowledge that is uncodified (Nonaka and Takeuchi, 1995).
In addition, high national diversity and members’ identification with their nationality are likely to lead to social categorization, a process in which individuals from different groups (e.g., nations) make “in-group/out-group” distinctions purely on the basis of nationality, particularly when they have inadequate information about others involved (Whitener et al., 1998). These distinctions can result in stereotyping, distrust, and suspicion of out-group members (Brewer, 1981), reducing team identification and integration as well as the team’s ability to leverage information (Adler, 1997; Hambrick et al., 1998). Although they examined collocated teams, Gibson and Vermeulen (2003) found a strong negative relationship in a variety of team types between the team’s demographic heterogeneity (including nationality) and team learning behaviors, a set of actions that teams are likely to engage in during innovation. In particular, developing a shared vision is precarious in nationally diverse teams because of strong identification with subgroups (Fiol, 1991; Mathieu et al., 2000), which may hamper innovation. As a result, we propose:
Hypothesis 4 (H4): National diversity is negatively related to team innovation.
Mitigating Effects of a Psychologically Safe Communication Climate
For teams characterized by a high degree of geographic dispersion, electronic dependence, dynamic structures, or national diversity, a psychologically safe communication climate may act as a moderating variable that helps overcome the negative effects of these features of virtuality to increase innovation. The general concept of communication climate is grounded in the organizational communication literature (Gibb, 1961; Bastien, McPhee, and Bolton, 1995) and refers to the environment in which communication occurs, including communicative phenomena such as management’s receptivity to employees and the accuracy of information (Dillard, Wigand, and Boster, 1986). Although it overlaps with the notion of organizational climate, communication climate has been established as a separate dimension (Welsch and
LaVan, 1981) and has been distinguished from other types of organizational climate, such as motivational climate or achievement climate (Poole, 1985). Further, communication climate has been shown to differ across teams or subunits within organizations (Falcione, Sussman, and Herden, 1987: 205), with a “group communication climate” defined as “those molar factors .|.|. which affect the message sending and receiving process of members within a given organizational group.” A supportive group communication climate has been shown to predict satisfaction and commitment (Guzley, 1992) and includes variables such as participation in decision making and communication openness (Trombetta and Rogers, 1988).
We focus on a specific type of group communication climate, a psychologically safe communication climate characterized by support, openness, trust, mutual respect, and risk taking. A psychologically safe communication climate facilitates innovation because it involves speaking up, raising differences for discussion, engaging in spontaneous and informal communication, providing unsolicited information, and bridging differences by suspending judgment, remaining open to other ideas and perspectives, and engaging in active listening. Psychologically safe communication climate draws on the construct of team psychological safety, defined as a shared belief that a team is safe for interpersonal risk taking (Edmondson, 1999). Most of the research on psychological safety represents it as a cognitive phenomenon comprising an aggregated set of individual perceptions (Edmondson, 1999; Edmondson, Bohmer, and Pisano, 2001), while our concept of a psychologically safe communication climate focuses more specifically on communication behavior and team members’ interactions, as constituted by messages and message-related events. Yet more recent research has acknowledged the importance of communication in creating psychological safety (Detert, 2003; Lee et al., 2004), and Edmondson (2003: 1447) indicated that “speaking up” is a behavioral manifestation of the psychological safety belief.
Further, although a psychologically safe communication climate involves trust, the two are not synonymous. Trust is an assumption that the actions of others will be beneficial to one’s interests and a resulting willingness to be vulnerable to such actions (Robinson, 1996). This assumption is likely in place when a psychologically safe communication climate exists, but a psychologically safe communication climate involves a broader set of communication-related behavior.
Finally, although a psychologically safe communication climate may help strengthen social ties among team members that are weakened through the effects of virtuality, it is not synonymous with cohesiveness, which can produce effects opposite to psychological safety, such as groupthink and decreased risk taking (Edmondson, 1999).
Psychological safety has been found to play a critical role in fostering team learning and innovation. Analyzing 51 work teams in a manufacturing company, Edmondson (1999) found
that psychological safety helped teams learn more effectively by mitigating the interpersonal risks involved and encouraging members to admit mistakes, question current practices, ask
for help, and solicit feedback. More recently, Edmondson and colleagues (Edmondson, Bohmer, and Pisano, 2001; Edmondson, 2003) drew on interviews with members of 16 cardiac surgery teams to illustrate the processes through which psychological safety leads to team learning and innovation: minimizing functional and status differences promotes speaking
up across such boundaries, and designing preparatory practice sessions and early trials helps encourage new behaviors in technology implementation. Other empirical studies have found that innovation was inhibited by the lack of psychological safety in dyadic teams, as fear of failure resulted in less experimentation (Lee et al., 2004), and that psychological safety moderates the relationship between process innovation and firm performance (Baer and Frese, 2003).
A psychologically safe communication climate likely helps overcome the challenges posed by elements of virtuality for a number of reasons. First, the establishment of a psychologically
safe communication climate can help overcome the barriers to innovation associated with geographic dispersion (Donnellon, 1996). Only if partners are able to share information across contexts despite their contextual differences will they be able to garner the resources and support they need to innovate. A psychologically safe communication climate can help in ironing out the potential kinks in daily operations across geographic locales and make for a satisfactory working relationship, increasing the likelihood that team members will efficiently accumulate the necessary external links to acquire knowledge and resources. In support of this, Sole and Edmondson’s (2002) analysis revealed that a team’s situated knowledge was more likely to be shared and appropriated across locations when members were familiar with ongoing practices in the multiple sites across which the team was dispersed, and this was more likely when there was open information exchange, such as that found in a psychologically safe communication climate.
Second, a psychologically safe communication climate helps to increase informal communication and giving and receiving feedback to overcome problems of subtle control, low message clarity, and knowledge interpretation that result from reduced face-to-face interaction (Short, Williams, and Christie, 1976) and lack of social cues (Sproull and Kiesler, 1986) during electronic communication. Empirical evidence points to the need for social and personal communication (in addition to the exchange of business or technical information) in electronically dependent teams and its role in balancing control with learning and experimentation (Knoll and Jarvenpaa, 1998; Gibson and Birkinshaw, 2004). A psychologically safe communication climate encourages frequent, spontaneous, informal, and direct communication in quick conversations or short e-mails (Monge, Cozzens, and Contractor, 1992). This type of communication has been found to be critical to the work of teams with innovative projects because it creates the opportunities to evaluate knowledge and ideas necessary for improvisation (Miner, Bassoff, and Moorman, 2001; Edmondson, 2003).
Third, a psychologically safe communication climate has been identified as particularly important in structurally dynamic collaborations because it helps create trust (Jarvenpaa and Leidner, 1999; Gibson and Cohen, 2003) and reduce perceptions of risk (Handy, 1995; Dutton, 1999). When a psychologically safe communication climate exists, collaborators are more likely to provide unsolicited information to other members as a way of showing both goodwill and intimacy, strengthening relationships in the team and creating incentives for building a shared history, which contributes to work flow (Das and Teng, 1998; Zaheer, McEvily, and Perrone, 1998). As the reciprocal process engenders credibility, a sustained information flow can overcome the uncertainty and weakened relationships caused by dynamic structural arrangements (Knoll and Jarvenpaa, 1998).
Finally, a psychologically safe communication climate may also help to bridge national differences and reduce ingroup/out-group bias (Gudykunst, 1991; Maznevski, 1994). Larkey (1996) argued that the social categorization process that occurs in diverse teams often results in “divergence,” defined as adherence to culturally based communication patterns, in contrast to convergence, defined as adjustment of one’s communication style to match one’s partner. Convergence is more common when there is a psychologically safe communication climate, and it helps to counterbalance ingroup/out-group dynamics (Larkey, 1996), which can facilitate
innovation. Open and accommodating communication is an important antecedent of shared cognition (Gibson, 2001); in its absence, teams’ mental models have been found to diverge over time (Levesque, Wilson, and Wholey, 2001). Team members who communicate more supportively with one another are more likely to develop a common frame of reference and shared mental model (Klimoski and Mohammed, 1994). Further, the innovation process requires that the parties involved suspend judgment, remain open to others’ ideas and perspectives, and put forth the effort required to integrate new knowledge with existing knowledge to produce the innovation. When this occurs, exposure to new processes of working or a new approach to a problem may propel one to pursue previously unexplored directions or to integrate new ideas, leading to novel and innovative solutions (Okhuysen and Eisenhardt, 2002; Perry-Smith and Shalley, 2003). In support of this, Gibson and Vermeulen (2003) found that the differences associated with national demographic heterogeneity in teams could be bridged if mild subgroups formed and created a psychologically safe environment. Through information exchange, members identified and developed more commonalities, reducing in-group/outgroup barriers and increasing information processing capacity (Gibson and Vermeulen, 2003). Based on these observations, we propose:

Hypothesis 5 (H5): A psychologically safe communication climate reduces the negative effects of (a) geographic dispersion, (b) electronic dependence, (c) dynamic structure, and (d) national diversity on team innovation.
Table 1 summarizes the elements of virtuality, the innovation success factors they each negatively affect, the mechanisms by which the effect occurs, and the potential moderating effect of a psychologically safe communication climate.

STUDY 1

Methods
Overview. Study 1 consisted of an exploratory interviewbased analysis of the plausibility of our arguments that geographic dispersion, electronic dependence, dynamic structure, and national diversity negatively influence innovation and that a psychologically safe communication climate helps to mitigate these effects. It was designed in accordance with recommendations by qualitative researchers (Glaser and Strauss, 1967; McCracken, 1988; Strauss and Corbin, 1990; Wolfe, Gephart, and Johnson, 1993) and recent research on related topics (e.g., Gibson and Zellmer-Bruhn, 2001; Mohrman, Gibson, and Mohrman, 2001). Specifically, we (1) verified the existence of the elements in our model, (2) elaborated on and defined them in terms of measurable variables, (3) examined interrelationships among the variables proposed, and (4) verified the relationships in context. To provide a deeper understanding, each author independently conducted a more holistic content analysis of the interview transcripts, studying illustrative team interactions in the context of the full interviews to corroborate and generate richer insights.
Sample and contexts. The analysis includes a total of 177 interviews across 14 teams. Within these teams, 7 industries, 18 nations, 32 cities, 16 organizations, 45 organizational subunits, and 11 different functional areas were represented. Thirty percent of the sample was women. Team size ranged from 4 to 23 members, and we were able to interview 83–100 percent of each team, with a mean of 92 percent of each team represented in the sample. Team longevity varied from two years to indefinite, and we followed each team for six months to two years. Teams varied in the extent of their geographic dispersion, electronic dependence, structural dynamism, and national diversity. Table 2 provides descriptions of the teams.
Procedure. Interviews were one to two hours in duration and were conducted on site, including multiple sites for each team. All were tape recorded, and about 50 percent were videotaped, except when we were denied permission. Interview questions were broad and pertained to the structure of the team, members’ roles, the nature of work, communication processes, the technology used, interpersonal relationships and processes, team characteristics, and team experiences. The Appendix provides a summary of the interview protocol. We also collected archival data, including background information about the teams, organizational charts, email or other electronic transcripts, evaluations of the team, project plans, and written mission statements. We transcribed all the interviews and entered them into a content analysis text database. This text database consisted of over 1,000 pages, including 399,474 words, with an average of 2,257 words per interview. We used the Atlas.ti software program for content analysis, which allowed us to use flexible non-hierarchical qualitative coding as well as to create frequency distributions and take inventories of specific words or categories in a text.
Measures. For geographic dispersion, following team heterogeneity research (Bantel and Jackson, 1989; Bunderson and Sutcliffe, 2002), we used Blau’s (1977) formula to calculate a measure of categorical dispersion across locations in each team. This measure takes into consideration both the number of locations and the number of individuals in the team residing in each location. The minimum value for this variable was 0, indicating that all members had the same location, and the maximum value was .85, indicating extreme geographic dispersion (e.g., 4 locations represented by approximately 2–3 members in each location), with a mean of .42 and a standard deviation of .35. To measure electronic dependence, we employed two independent raters external to the teams to rate each team. Raters were Ph.D.-level assistants in organizational behavior, experienced at coding and knowledgeable about the general domain. We measured electronic dependence at the team level based on work by De Jonge et al. (1999) and Karasek and Theorell (1990), who argued that as reflections of the objective work environment, team-level measures of job characteristics are less prone to bias than individual-level self-reports. The two raters coded the teams using a 3-point Likert scale based on overall subtext analysis of the team’s interview transcripts, as well as records of email traffic, with “1” representing a low level of electronic dependence, “2” representing a moderate level, and “3” representing a high level. These categories were inductively derived based on overall subtext analysis and comparisons across teams. A subset of teams clearly used electronic communication much more than all other teams; we considered these highly dependent. Likewise, a subset clearly used electronic communication much less than all other teams; we considered these low on electronic dependence. All other teams were considered moderate. We computed an interrater reliability of .87 (Cohen’s kappa) across the two raters, and because it showed adequate internal consistency, we averaged the two ratings to arrive at one score for each team. A quote from a member of Design Team at Office Systems reflects low electronic dependence: “We often meet face to face .|.|. there is a common visual. Work is supported visually. Everyone is looking at it. We devote more time to it.
There is more of a sharing of information.” A quote from a member of Function Team at Auto Unification Company demonstrates high electronic dependence: E-mail—I respond to probably 30–50 per day and receive 100 per day. That has been an incredible benefit to us. I can’t imagine doing
the job that I have now before having it. Two and a half years ago, it would have been a manual fax, or hard copy mail, and there would have been a 3 to 5 or 10 day delay, with all the issues of proofing and typing. You have responses within hours in some cases. You can collect and complete an initiative.
To measure the dynamism of structural arrangements, we asked the same two independent raters to rate each team, instructing them to examine archival data about each team, including organizational charts, team membership lists, intranet sites, and historical documents to determine the degree to which the members and structure had changed during the life of the team. Raters used a 3-point scale, with “1” representing a structure that had not changed, “2” representing a moderately dynamic structure, and “3” representing a highly dynamic structure. Again, categories were inductively derived based on overall subtext analysis and comparisons across teams. We computed an interrater reliability of .82 (Cohen’s kappa) across the two raters, which showed adequate internal consistency, so we averaged the two ratings to arrive at one score for each team. As an example, the Community Team, charged with knowledge management at Auto Unification Company, was highly dynamic, with numerous instances of temporary outsourcing and subcontracting and a constant flux in members, roles, and their relationships to one another. In contrast, Frame Team in the aerospace industry had no changes in membership or structure during its history.

To measure national diversity, following team heterogeneity research (Bantel and Jackson, 1989; Bunderson and Sutcliffe, 2002), we used Blau’s (1977) formula to calculate a measure of categorical dispersion across nationalities in each team. The minimum value for this variable was 0, indicating that all members had the same nationality, and the maximum value was .78, indicating extreme national diversity (e.g., 7 nationalities represented on the team with approximately 2–5 members in each nationality), with a mean of .30 and a standard deviation of .26. Nationality is not a reflection of where individuals were physically located but, rather, their national background, as indicated when asked about their nationality. In addition, nationality is not confounded with company (members often represented different firms but had the same nationality and vice versa).
We used a different approach to measure psychologically safe communication climate and innovation. Because these variables are more complex and not easy to characterize without intimate knowledge from the participants’ perspectives, we captured evidence of these variables by examining each individual team member’s experience as relayed in the interviews. The first step was to identify interview excerpts that contained this evidence. Following previous research (e.g., Kabanoff, Waldersee, and Cohen, 1995; Gibson and Zellmer-Bruhn, 2001), we compiled a list of key words pertaining to each variable based on a comprehensive review of survey instruments used to measure these variables, research articles, and a snowball synonym using dictionaries and thesauruses. For example, psychologically safe communication climate was captured by terms such as “empathy,” “openness,” and “understanding”; innovation was captured by terms such as “novelty,” improvement,” and “unprecedented” (the full set of terms is available from the authors).
We then instructed our content analysis program (Atlas.ti) to search for any word in a category for each variable and generate output files for each variable containing excerpts that included any word in the category list for that variable. Unitization was at the sentence level. During a process of “in-context verification,” excerpts in the subtext databases were then reviewed by two independent raters (with similar qualifications as those mentioned earlier) and coded as either (1) reflecting the variable or (0) not reflecting the variable. An interrater reliability coefficient (Cohen’s kappa) of .75 wascomputed for psychologically safe communication climate and .79 for innovation by comparing the codes of the independent raters. Discrepancies between codes were discussed and reconciled, eliminating any excerpt that was not coded as adequately reflecting each variable, to arrive at a final set of excerpts demonstrating evidence of each variable.
For example, psychologically safe communication climate was evidenced by excerpts such as “We’re really good at asking questions, helping people make incremental improvements in their understanding” (Office Systems, Design Team), and “People seem to feel comfortable discussing their problems and issues” (Auto Unification, Community Team). Innovation was evidenced in excerpts such as “We are strong on innovative ideas, and fairly flexible” (Machines Inc., Machine Team), and “We also felt that it was important

that we churn out new stuff all the time. This is a world where ideas are changing rapidly, and we are looking to building and churning out new things” (Professional Service, Competency Center Team). We then computed a frequency count for each interviewee for each variable of the number of times he or she used a word representing the variable to express evidence of that variable in his or her team. To control for differences in the length of interviews and capture the emphasis on a variable relative to an interview’s length, we weighted the number of occurrences by the total number of words in an interview transcript. Both a psychologically safe communication climate and innovation are team-level concepts, but we used individual interviews to derive measures of those characteristics. In the parlance of multilevel theory (Klein and Koslowski, 2000: 41), we considered these characteristics “shared unit-level constructs” and gathered data from individuals to assess teamlevel characteristics that we presumed to be shared within a team and capable of differentiating across teams. Conceptually, this makes sense, given that individual team members are most familiar with the extent to which the team exhibits these attributes. Yet it is critical with such aggregated variables that we statistically demonstrate within-unit agreement and between-unit differences (Klein and Koslowski, 2000). To do so, we computed intraclass correlation coefficients using one-way analysis of variance on the individual-level data with team as the independent variable and the scores on psychologically safe communication climate and innovation as the dependent variables. Others have suggested that an indication of convergence within teams is an ICC(1) value in the .05 to .20 range with a corresponding ANOVA F-statistic that is statistically significant (Kenny and LaVoie, 1985; Bliese, 2000). For psychologically safe communication climate, ICC(1) = .23, F = 5.11, p < .01. For innovation, ICC(1) = .20, F= 4.57, p < .001. Finally, rwg was used to assess internal agreement within a team for each variable, ranging from 0 (no agreement) to 1 (complete agreement) (James, Demaree, and Wolf, 1993). Glick (1985) suggested a cut-off criterion of .60. The mean rwg values were .80 for psychologically safe communication climate and .78 for innovation, indicating adequate internal agreement. Given these results, we aggregated this individual-level data to the team level by taking the mean across individuals in a team for each variable.
Construct validity analysis. We conducted several tests of convergent validity for our core concepts. To test that our objective measure of geographic dispersion involving locations corresponded to subjective perceptions of geographic dispersion, we constructed a perceptual measure based on word counts in the interviews as described above and then aggregated these to the team level. In our process of in-context verification, in which excerpts in the subtext databases were reviewed by two independent raters and coded as either reflecting or not reflecting the variable, interrater reliability was adequate (Cohen’s kappa = .70). Aggregation indices were adequate [ICC(1) = .11; mean rwg = .87], and this subjective measure was significantly correlated with our objective measure (r = .59, p < .001). We also constructed a perceptual measure of electronic dependence based on word counts in the interviews, which captured each time a respondent mentioned being reliant on electronic means of communication, aggregated to the team level. This variable also showed adequate interrater reliability (Cohen’s kappa = .85), and aggregation indices [ICC(1) = .19; mean rwg = .77] and was significantly correlated (r = .57, p < .001) with our objective measure of electronic dependence.
Results
We first assessed direct relationships between the features often associated with virtuality and innovation. We used nonparametric statistics, specifically Spearman’s Rho, which is an inferential test designed for small samples of ordinal or interval measures that are potentially not normally distributed (Saslow, 1982; Mohrman, Gibson, and Mohrman, 2001). The interrelationships among the variables are presented in table 3. As argued, the four team characteristics demonstrated varying degrees of association with each other, rather than consistent positive interrelationships. National diversity was closely associated with electronic dependence (rho = .65, p <.01) as well as with geographic dispersion (rho = .71, p <.01), but geographic dispersion was not significantly related to electronic dependence. Likewise, dynamic structural arrangements were not significantly associated with any of the other characteristics, although previous research has typically assumed that these features coincide.
Next, we examined relationships between each element and innovation. The relationship between geographic dispersion and innovation was negative and statistically significant (rho = –.55, p < .05), suggesting the plausibility of H1. The qualitative analysis supported that being distributed across multiple locations was often detrimental to innovation, as it impeded sharing information and made it difficult to coordinate interaction. For example, Platform Team in the agricultural product development business had a core team that was co-located, but many of its extended team members worked remotely. In addition, the managers of most of the team members were not on site but were based in different functional and engineering discipline groups. Almost all decisions were referred for approval through a complex maze of “hierarchical superiors” who were distant physically and were not themselves aligned. As a result, members of this team felt they were held hostage to slow processes of approval and micromanagement, which hindered the spontaneous innovation process. Requests for support to Europe from North America, for example, were often seen as disappearing into a
“black hole,” unless there was a relationship with people at the other end. People often did not know where to go for information, and the interface points were not clearly specified. The challenges of geographical dispersion for innovation are also illustrated through the following quote from a member of the Competency Center Team in a professional service firm:
I’m typically in a location where it’s very difficult to get to me, so I don’t participate to the extent that I desire to and probably the rest of the people who are working on it desire that I do. So I sort of
“fall into the cracks.” Any interaction with the team, I need to make some extraordinary effort to do that, and the team is under no obligation to make any extraordinary efforts to accommodate me, so
they don’t.
The relationship between electronic dependence and innovation was negative and statistically significant (rho = –.54, p <.05), suggesting the plausibility of H2. Our qualitative interview analysis corroborated this, providing numerous examples that electronic communication hindered message clarity and the motivation for improvisation. Many informants indicated that the creative synergy needed for innovation was much more easily established face to face. The difficulty in sparking a creative exchange of ideas over computer-mediated communication, rather than face to face, is illustrated in the following quote from a member of Professional Service’s
Competency Center Team:
It is really tough working on knowledge creation over the phone and via e-mail. A good example is this project. It is conceptual. We know there is something there, but trying to kick-start a conversation on
that is really tough. The way I have done it is that Jack and I have been in the same office with a white board, to at least kick-start it. When you are introducing concepts, that is really hard to do over
the phone. How do you motivate people when they aren’t in the same room? I think it is so valuable to be there in person.
There was no statistical evidence for the plausibility of the negative relationship between dynamic structure and innovation proposed in H3, although we did find evidence for a lack of relationship building due to member turnover and tensions and conflicts due to changes in reporting structures. For example, turnover was very high among purchasing representatives
in Machines Inc.’s Platform Team, and members reported that these representatives left just as they were starting to understand the complex trade-offs involved in living in a world of global purchasing and trying to meet the needs of the development platform. Members who were transferred to other teams were also perceived as not sufficiently dedicated to the team’s efforts, and their experience was often called into question. Several teams had a large number of new hires, but training and mentoring for them were limited, which created tension between the experienced and new members. As a result, innovation was inhibited.
Finally, suggesting the plausibility of H4 on the effect of national diversity on innovation, the relationship between these variables was negative and statistically significant (rho = –.66, p < .01). Corroborating this, many informants discussed how national differences in norms, expectations, and behavior hindered innovation. These differences included different definitions of concepts such as teamwork, as well as different values placed on work and hierarchy. Norms around knowledge sharing were culturally conditioned, as were communication styles, resulting in in-group/out-group dynamics that reduced information flow. Such differences are evident in the following quote:
The major issue is probably cultural. In America, knowledge sharing is a lot more promoted. People are very open about sharing knowledge and work in these open cubicles.|.|.|. I’m from Europe, which
is a little more competitive in terms of what you know. You feel like if you tell people what you know, then you are at a disadvantage. People are then a little bit more reluctant to share knowledge. They
also think that if you share a lot of knowledge, then maybe your job can be taken by somebody else. (Auto Unification, Community Team) We explored the plausibility of the idea that a psychologically
safe communication climate moderates the negative relationship between the elements of virtuality and innovation, using subgroup comparisons, the technique most appropriate for an exploratory, qualitative analysis (Roberts, 1997; Fielding and Lee, 1998), given that Study 1 was designed to explore the plausibility of our arguments rather than to be a definitive test of the relationships (Study 2 presents results of moderated regression analysis as a more formal test of hypotheses 5a–5d). First, we broke the sample into the most psychologically safe versus non-psychologically safe communication climates using a median split on the psychologically safe communication climate scores. We then compared excerpts that discussed the relationship between characteristics of virtuality and innovation in teams with high vs. low psychologically safe communication climates. Table 4 provides examples of these excerpts.
The strongest evidence for a moderating effect occurred for the relationships between national diversity and innovation and geographic dispersion and innovation. For teams without
a psychologically safe communication climate, national diversity was perceived as very detrimental, and innovation was dramatically low when diversity was high. For teams with a
psychologically safe communication climate, national diversity was not nearly so much of a challenge and in some teams was reported to be an asset. In terms of geographic dispersion,
in teams without a psychologically safe communication climate, geographic dispersion was perceived as a barrier to overcome in order to achieve innovation, while in teams with a psychologically safe communication climate, geographic dispersion was seen as either “just a given” or a “plus.” Less clear support was obtained for a moderating effect of a psychologically safe communication climate on the relationship between electronic dependence and innovation. For teams with a psychologically safe communication climate, electronic dependence was less of an issue in pursuing innovation. In contrast, for teams without a psychologically safe communication climate, innovation was higher when teams
relied less on electronic means of communication. Finally, most teams reported a slight decline in innovation when their structure was dynamic. Taken as a whole, these contrasts
provide preliminary support for the plausibility of the moderating effect of a psychologically safe communication climate, although this effect is not uniformly strong across characteristics.
Study 1 thus indicated that the negative direct effects of geographic dispersion (H1), electronic dependence (H2), and national diversity (H4) on innovation were readily apparent in the contextual analysis of the interviews, while the effect of dynamic structure (H3) on innovation was equivocal. Findings also provide preliminary support for the argument that a psychologically safe communication climate mitigates the negative effects of geographic dispersion (H5a) and national diversity (H5d) on innovation, with less clear support for the other proposed moderating relationships. Further, as we anticipated, the elements of virtuality were not all highly correlated.
This indicates that a team can be characterized as “high” on one element, while being “low” on another. Perhaps most importantly, geographic dispersion was not significantly related to electronic dependence, as conventional wisdom has often assumed. This coincides with our assumption that although electronic dependence sometimes goes hand in hand with geographic dispersion, this is not always the case.
We observed this in the automotive industry Community Team and in the professional services Competency Center Team. Although members were spread across the globe, they found it more efficient to meet face-to-face once a month rather than use electronic communication and in fact rarely communicated using e-mail or other electronic tools between meetings. Such teams are geographically dispersed but not electronically dependent. These findings provide preliminary support for the idea that the elements of virtuality are independent and that the absence of one element does not negate the effect of the other elements (e.g., having a “0” value on electronic dependence does not mean that a team should no longer be considered virtual). Extrapolating from this evidence suggests that it is inappropriate to combine the elements of virtuality in a multiplicative way (i.e., geographic dispersion electronic dependence dynamic structure national diversity), as has been suggested in
some of the conceptual literature (see Cohen and Gibson, 2003).
Our holistic analysis also confirmed that each element adds a unique facet to the experience of working virtually, indicating in a preliminary way that the elements are non-substitutable and that having more of one element does not compensate for having less of another. Combining the elements of virtuality additively to form a single index (i.e., geographic dispersion electronic dependence dynamic structure national diversity) may result in a loss of explanatory power, because the elements are differentially related to innovation. For example, an additive index fails to discriminate between a hypothetical “Team A” that scores equally on each of the four elements (e.g., 3 on geographic dispersion 3 on electronic dependence 3 dynamic structure 3 national diversity = 12) and “Team B” that scores differentially across elements (e.g., 0 on geographic dispersion 2 on electronic dependence 10 on dynamic structure 0 on national diversity = 12). But the results of this study suggest that geographic
dispersion and national diversity are negatively related to innovation, while dynamic structure is not related to innovation. Thus, Team A is more likely to experience problems in innovation because of its higher score on geographic dispersion and national diversity. This implies that a model including each element independently may have more explanatory power than one based on an additive combination.
Based on these preliminary findings, in Study 2, in addition to formally testing H1–H5, we explored the idea that independent effects of geographic dispersion, electronic dependence, dynamic structure, and national diversity will explain more variance in team innovation than a multiplicative or additive combination of these elements.
STUDY 2
Methods
Overview. Study 2 was intended to complement Study 1 in three ways. First, Study 2 consisted of a larger sample at the team level (56 teams, as described below) and quantitative
survey-based measures and thus enabled us to use hierarchical moderated multiple regression techniques to formally test H1–-H5. Second, the teams in Study 2 were all of the same team type and function (engineering project teams), had been existence for the same period of time (one year), and were from the same firm in the aerospace industry. This design controlled for many factors that may influence innovation and enabled us to isolate characteristics of virtuality and to examine effects of the communication climate. Finally, innovation in Study 2 was rated by internal customers of the focal teams, allowing for an independent assessment of the independent and dependent variables.
Sample. The 56 engineering project teams included in the study were working on a contract to design a state-of-the-art, next-generation military aircraft. Worth over $200 billion, this program was unique in that it represented a collaborative team effort across numerous nations and sites. The program’s managers had enlisted the assistance of the researchers to measure, document, and provide feedback about process and performance of the program, with the aim of improving innovation, effectiveness, and the satisfaction of team members. Viewing this as an opportunity to refine their day-to-day interactions, team members were highly motivated to participate, as evidenced by a high response rate and informal comments received, and eager to see results, which were presented after the analyses were completed. The measures for variables in this study were included as a part of a larger research effort testing numerous theories and hypotheses. A total of 266 individuals responded to the survey,
with an average team size of 4.75, ranging from 4 to 10.
The average response rate within a team was 79 percent. Discussions with project participants indicated that the sample was comparable to the population in terms of gender,
age, profession, and tenure, suggesting no evidence of nonresponse bias.
Procedure. An on-line survey was administered to all teams in the program and two to three internal customers of each team over a period of four weeks. Customers were selected by the program leader (who was two hierarchical levels above the teams), were internal to the program but downstream in design and production, and had ample familiarity with a given team’s work. For example, a team that worked on airframe design was rated by a representative from assembly and a representative from systems integration.
Teams varied in their degree of geographical dispersion, electronic dependence, structural dynamism, and national diversity, but they did not vary significantly in terms of task type. All
teams rated their design tasks as non-routine (mean of 3.63 on a 5-point scale), and ANOVA confirmed there were no significant differences between teams on task routineness (F =.90, n.s.).
Measures. We measured geographic dispersion as in Study 1, using Blau’s (1977) formula to calculate a measure of categorical dispersion across locations in each team. The minimum value for this variable was 0, indicating that all members had the same location, and the maximum value was .94, indicating extreme geographic dispersion (e.g., 4 locations represented on the team with approximately 1–2 members in each location), with a mean of .13 and a standard deviation of .29. Electronic dependence was measured by four items asking about the extent to which members relied on three forms of electronic communication (e-mail, teleconferencing, and collaborative software), as well as their overall reliance on electronic communication, using a 5-point scale (1 = not at all; 5 = to a very great extent). These four items loaded on a single factor with an eigenvalue of 2.06, accounting for 51 percent of the variance, with loadings ranging from .60 to .82. The reliability of this scale (alpha) was .72. We measured the extent to which the team had a dynamic structure with three items (“Members of this team change frequently”; “It is difficult to know who is on this team and who is not”; and “We lack a consistent operating structure in this team.”) using a 5-point scale (1 = not at all; 5 = to a very great extent). These items loaded on a single factor with an eigenvalue of 1.81, accounting for 60 percent of the variance, with factor loadings ranging from .63 to .86. Reliability (alpha) was .70. As in Study 1, national diversity was measured using Blau’s (1977) formula to calculate a measure of categorical dispersion across nationalities in each team. The minimum value for this variable was 0, indicating that all members had the same nationality, and the maximum value was .99, indicating extreme national diversity (e.g., 5 nationalities represented on the team with approximately 1–2 members of each nationality), with a mean of .26 and a standard deviation of .34. Discriminant validity of virtuality elements. To verify the distinctiveness of our constructs, we established discriminant validity through confirmatory factor analysis (Venkatraman and Grant, 1986). The analysis clearly supported the four-variable structure, with separate factors for each of the elements (chi square = 27.69, d.f. = 18, p < .07; GFI = .98, CFI = .97, root mean square residual = .04). We compared the four-factor model with a one-factor model which assumes that the items represent a single construct. The results showed reduced fit for the one-factor model (chi square = 32.51, d.f. = 17, p < . 01; GFI = .75, CFI =.75; root mean square residual
= .07). The four-factor model also had a significantly better fit than alternative models. These tests demonstrate that the items do not tap a single underlying construct.
As a final step, we created two additional variables to explore the idea derived from Study 1 that virtuality is best captured by considering the effects of the virtuality elements independently (geographic dispersion, electronic dependence, dynamic structure, and national diversity), rather than as an additive combination (geographic dispersion electronic dependence dynamic structure national diversity), or a multiplicative combination (geographic dispersion electronic dependence dynamic structure national diversity), as
has been traditionally assumed. The additive term was computed as the sum of the four characteristics, and the multiplicative term was computed as their product.
We measured the extent to which a psychologically safe communication climate existed by asking team members to indicate the extent to which their team was characterized by four items (“Members are able to say what they think”; “When there’s a problem, members talk about it”; “People use words that are considerate of others’ feelings”; and “Members are free to be assertive about what they think and feel.”) using a 5-point scale (1 = not at all; 5 = to a very great extent). The minimum score was 3.0, the maximum score was 5.0, the mean was 4.19, and the median and mode were 4.25. Items loaded on a single factor with an eigenvalue
of 2.49, accounting for 62 percent of the variance, factor loadings ranged from .70 to .87, and reliability (alpha) was .79. Innovation was measured by a survey administered to two to three internal customers of each team, as described above.
Customers were asked to respond to the following: “Compared to what is possible (100%), estimate how effective has this team been at innovation using a percentage. For example, if Team X is 80% innovative compared to what is possible, enter 80% for innovation.” The minimum rating given by customers was 60 percent innovative, the maximum was 100 percent innovative, the mode was 75 percent, and the mean/median were 80 percent. Convergent validity for this measure was demonstrated by the high correlation between innovation and technical performance (r = .53, p < .001) and between innovation and overall effectiveness (r = .42, p < .001) as rated by customers. In addition, our measure for innovation was positively correlated with a 4-item measure of knowledge sharing that customers completed (“Did members of this team share knowledge with non-team members in your organization?”; “Were people outside the team able to learn from the team?”; “Do you believe the success of this team will spur others in your organization”; and “Will processes and activities developed by this team provide a road map for other teams in the organization?”) (r = .35, p < .01).
Aggregation. As in Study 1, we computed intraclass correlation coefficients using one-way analysis of variance on the individual-level data with team as the independent variable and the scores on electronic dependence, dynamic structure, psychologically safe communication climate, and innovation as the dependent variables. For electronic dependence, ICC(1) = .09, F = 1.45, p < .05; for dynamic structure, ICC(1) = .07, F = 1.41, p < .05; for psychologically safe communication climate, ICC(1) = .09, F = 1.47, p < .05; and for innovation, ICC(1) = .08, F = 1.41, p < .05. Adequate internal team agreement was demonstrated for electronic dependence (mean rwg = .72), dynamic structure (mean rwg = .82), psychologically safe communication climate (mean rwg = .85), and innovation (mean rwg = .72). Given these results, as a final step, we aggregated the individual-level data to the team level by taking the mean across individuals in a team for each variable; for innovation, we took the mean across customers who rated a team.
Controls. We included four control variables: team size, task interdependence, leadership style, and team training effectiveness.
These four variables have demonstrated impacts on team outcomes in prior research, may vary across teams that have different levels of the elements of virtuality, and may represent alternative explanations for the variance in innovation (e.g., Campion, Medsker, and Higgs, 1993; Brown and Eisenhardt, 1995; Earley and Gibson, 2002; Gibson and Vermeulen, 2003). Team size is the number of people on the team. Task interdependence was measured using Campion, Medsker, and Higgs’ (1993) 3-item scale (e.g., “Members of this team depend on each other for completion of their work.”). Leadership style was measured using three items
that capture how proactive a leader is in taking initiative and action (e.g., “Our leader fails to take necessary actions to ensure team effectiveness,” reverse coded). Team training effectiveness was measured using three items that assess the extent to which team members perceived their team training as effective (e.g., “The training I have received on our computer systems helps me work effectively with others in the team.”).
Results
Table 5 displays the means, standard deviations, and zeroorder correlations for the study variables. Corroborating the results of Study 1, the four characteristics of virtuality demonstrate varying degrees of association with each other, rather than consistent positive interrelationships. As in Study 1, the relationship between national diversity and geographic
dispersion is positive and significant, while dynamic structural arrangements is not significantly related to geographic dispersion.
In contrast with Study 1, the relationship between national diversity and electronic dependence is non-significant, while the relationships between geographic dispersion and electronic dependence and between dynamic structural arrangements and electronic dependence are positive and significant. The relationship between national diversity and dynamic structure is also positive and significant. As expected, each of the elements of virtuality is significantly and negatively correlated with innovation, while psychologically safe communication climate is significantly and positively related to innovation.
Hypothesis tests. We tested H1–H4, on the negative direct effects of the four elements of virtuality, by regressing innovation on the controls (team size, task interdependence, leadership, and training) and geographic dispersion, electronic dependence, dynamic structure, and national diversity. As shown in table 6, none of the controls predicted a significant portion of the variance in innovation in step 2. The relationships between geographic dispersion and innovation, between electronic dependence and innovation, between dynamic structure and innovation, and between national diversity and innovation in the regression model were consistent with the correlational results, and the overall R2 value for
the model was significant, providing support for H1–H4.
We tested H5a–5d using moderated regression. Table 6 displays the results. In step 1, we entered the control variables. In step 2, we entered the main effects for geographic dispersion, electronic dependence, dynamic structure, and national diversity. In step 3, we entered the main effect of a psychologically safe communication climate. In step 4, we entered interaction terms for each of the four virtuality variables and the communication climate. As shown in table 6, adding the interaction terms results in a significant increase in R2, indicating moderating effects. In support of H5a–5d, the interaction terms for all four interactions are significant. As recommended by Aiken and West (1991: 12–13), for each significant interaction term, we then plotted the relationship between the element of virtuality of interest and innovation, at values of a psychologically safe communication climate one standard deviation above the mean and one standard deviation below the mean. We examined the slopes of the two regression lines to interpret the nature of the interaction.
These plots are shown in figures 1a–1d. As expected, the relationships between each element of virtuality and innovation are all less negative when a psychologically safe communication
climate exists than when it does not.
We conducted a final set of analyses to test the idea derived from Study 1 that virtuality is best captured by considering the effects of the virtuality elements independently, rather than as an additive or multiplicative combination. Using the approach recommended by Cohen and Cohen (1983), we computed an F-test for the difference in total variance explained by each model. Results supported our argument.
The total variance explained in model 1 (R2 = .46, F8,47 = 5.09, p < .01), which contained separate terms for each virtuality characteristic, was significantly greater than the total variance explained in model 2 (R2 = .43, F5,50 = 7.65, p < .01), which contained the additive term (F-test for the difference in R2 values = 2.42, d.f. = 55, p < .05). The variance explained
in model 1 was also significantly greater than that explained in model 3 (R2 = .33, F5,50 = 4.98, p < .01), which contained the multiplicative term (F-test for the difference in R2 values = 8.93, d.f. = 55, p < .01).
DISCUSSION
We set out to capture the concept of virtuality more precisely by unpacking the negative effects on innovation of characteristics most often conceptualized as dimensions of virtuality
and showing how they can be mitigated by a psychologically safe communication climate. The two studies we conducted are among the first to examine comprehensively and simultaneously the features of relatively new work designs that have proliferated rapidly. In doing so, we uncovered numerous important findings that have implications for future theory
and research in several areas: conceptualization and theory pertaining to virtuality, social network theory, and theories of communication climate and psychological safety.
Theoretical Implications
First, this research represents a more nuanced conceptualization of virtuality and one of the first comprehensive empirical attempts to operationalize multiple components independently. As a result, we teased apart the effects of geographic dispersion, electronic dependence, dynamic structure, and national diversity that have previously been either confounded in one variable or studied in isolation. Our measures captured these specific elements with greater precision than those in previous investigations. For example, some previous research has contrasted teams that are “virtual” with teams that are “not virtual” based on assignment to laboratory conditions or a simple count of the number of face-to-face meetings (e.g., Kirkman et al., 2004). Our results suggest that the four team characteristics often associated with virtuality are not as highly interrelated as previously assumed. For example, national diversity was not associated with electronic dependence in Study 2, contrary to research that has confounded these two distinct characteristics. Likewise, dynamic structure was not related to geographic dispersion in either study, suggesting that teams can be geographically dispersed
yet still have stable membership and structure. These findings indicate the criticality of considering each team feature in its own right. Researchers who lump them together are
missing important complexities in the realities of team work. Importantly, in Study 2, our attempts to operationalize the higher-order “virtual” construct by combining the four elements
failed to produce a model with superior fit and predicted less variance in innovation than did a model that considered each characteristic separately. This reiterates the importance of considering the independent effects of each characteristic.
Second, our results demonstrate the possible negative, often unintended and unanticipated effects of the four team characteristics on an important outcome, innovation. This has implications for organization design theory and innovation, which are of broad importance, given that features of virtuality are becoming commonplace in modern organizations and innovation has become such a crucial source of competitive advantage for organizations. Virtual teams have been proclaimed as a promising design for integrating firms and are often established to take maximum advantage of innovationcreating capabilities (Nonaka and Takeuchi, 1995). Yet our findings suggest that these characteristics also pose challenges that can be detrimental to innovation. We contribute to the extant literature on the success factors for innovation (Brown and Eisenhardt, 1995) by extending this framework to virtual teams, finding that national diversity, geographic dispersion, and electronic dependence had negative effects across the two studies, while dynamic structure had a negative relationship with innovation in the aerospace industry teams surveyed in Study 2. Our conceptual arguments suggest that these effects occur though unique mechanisms, which should each be considered to predict the ramifications for designing teams with a high degree of any one of these features.
These findings provide further support for network theory, which has shown that certain structural arrangements, such as those that result in contextual complexity, weak ties, and
structural holes can be problematic for innovation by preventing the implementation of ideas (Burt, 2004; Obstfeld, 2005).
In prior work, scholars have suggested that it is important to consider the potential benefits of teams with moderate levels of features of virtuality, such as geographic dispersion (Burke et al., 1999). This implies a possible curvilinear effect. To test this alternative relationship, we re-ran our models in Study 2, entering a squared term for geographic dispersion after the direct effects. But we found no evidence for a curvilinear relationship between geographic dispersion and innovation (i.e., the addition of the squared term did not result in a significant change in R2, and the coefficient for the term was not statistically significant), indicating that the relationship in our data is best described as a direct linear negative effect. Likewise, we explored the possibility that our contradictory evidence regarding dynamic structure (no relationship with innovation in Study 1; a negative relationship with innovation in Study 2) could be masking a potential curvilinear effect, such that moderate levels of structural dynamism are most beneficial. But again, we found no evidence for a curvilinear relationship: adding a squared term for dynamic structure after the direct effects did not account for significant variation in innovation in Study 2. Hence, even though some benefits may be realized in idea generation, our findings indicate that on balance, contextual complexity and weak ties created by geographic dispersion and dynamic structure may be problematic for innovation because of challenges in implementing ideas.
Finally, our findings in Study 2 revealed significant interaction effects, such that a psychologically safe communication climate reduced the negative effects of all four elements of virtuality on innovation. Although it is certainly not a panacea, a psychologically safe communication climate appears to be an important facilitator of innovation in teams by helping them overcome the challenges posed by virtuality. Our interviews revealed that the negative effects of geographic dispersion were often mitigated by a psychologically safe communication climate because it helped to raise and clarify contextual differences, helping teams coordinate and garner resources for innovation across contexts. The difficulty in sparking a creative exchange of ideas over computer-mediated communication was mitigated in some cases by a psychologically safe communication climate developed through expert use of the technology. The disadvantages of a dynamic structure for innovation, such as the lack of relationship building due to member turnover and tensions and conflicts due to different reporting structures, were lessened by a psychologically safe communication climate that helped overcome mistrust and turn the team’s fluid membership into a source of new ideas and expertise. Finally, mitigating the negative effect of national diversity, a psychologically safe communication climate helped raise and clarify differences in national orientations and norms, resolve conflict, and foster an open environment in which team members felt comfortable to ask questions, admit to a lack of understanding, and voice opinions. This increased innovation by allowing different perspectives and viewpoints to be heard, enabling the merging of ideas and helping to establish a middle ground and bridge differences.
These findings make important contributions to the research on communication climates and psychological safety. First, we extend theory on communication climates (Dillard, Wigand, and Boster, 1986; Trombetta and Rogers, 1988; Guzley, 1992) by being the first to demonstrate group-level effects on the important outcome of team innovation. Previous research has focused on effects on attitudes such as satisfaction and commitment. Second, we contribute to the theoretical refinement of psychological safety by conceptually developing the communication component of the construct and demonstrating new evidence of a direct relationship between this component and innovation, as well as moderating effects. This supports conceptualizing the construct as multidimensional and highlights important antecedents and outcomes. Further, our findings extend related prior research by testing relationships when teams varied on the four elements of virtuality and by indicating the critical role of psychologically safe communication in such settings. Importantly, it was not just the creation of trust that mitigated the effects of virtuality, as has been suggested in previous research (Jarvenpaa and Leidner, 1999). To help rule out trust as an alternative explanation, we included a nine-item measure of trust in our survey in Study 2. Replacing team scores on trust for the psychologically safe communication climate variable in our analyses produced an entirely different pattern of results. There was no significant main effect of trust on innovation, and there were no significant interaction effects between the elements of virtuality and trust. This provides evidence that it is a psychologically safe communication climate, and not trust, that is operating here to mitigate the negative effects of the elements of virtuality.
Limitations and Future Research
Our contributions must be understood alongside the limitations of our research stemming from the research design.
First, although we were able to unpack certain features assumed to be associated with virtuality, there may be other factors that contribute to innovation that we did not examine that are in some ways confounded by the features we included. For example, the underlying rationale for why national diversity is a challenge in virtual teams pertains to the complex differences that arise when members represent different nations, such as different cultural values, legal and economic systems, and religions (Earley and Gibson, 2002). We did not directly measure these more specific manifestations of national diversity, so we cannot be certain which mechanisms are driving the impacts on innovation. Harrison and col-leagues (Harrison, Price, and Bell, 1998; Harrison et al., 2002) suggested that the longer a team works together, the lower the importance of surface-level characteristics of diversity and the greater the importance of deep-level diversity, such as personality, values, and attitudes, become. The teams in Study 2 were all formed at the same time, so there was no variance in teams’ longevity, and we could not test this issue directly; however, our qualitative analysis in Study 1, in which teams did vary in longevity, still showed consistent negative effects of national diversity on innovation regardless of team longevity. That said, an important next step in research on teams is to examine the variety of factors underlying national diversity to determine their effects on innovation over time.
An additional step is to further examine the role of team type or work type. We addressed this concern to some extent through the design of our two studies. In Study 1, the type of team and work varied dramatically. Some of the teams were design teams charged specifically with innovation, while others were more standard work teams that executed services or other organizational processes. Yet the negative relationship between elements of virtuality and innovation was evident in all types of teams. In Study 2, we controlled for team type and work type by sampling teams that were all involved in non-routine design tasks, and we ensured this by confirming that there was no significant variance in task routineness across teams. Yet we saw different levels of the elements of virtuality and innovation across these teams. Hence, we can be fairly confident that the relationships we uncovered occur even after controlling for the type of team and work. At the same time, we acknowledge that the contexts we selected
may have restricted the range and variety of responses concerning innovation and a psychologically safe communication climate. But this restriction in range means that our results are fairly conservative, and additional research in even more varied contexts should provide that much more precision.
We also recognize the limitations of capturing innovation based on a relatively simplistic measure (in Study 1, perceptions of members; in Study 2, the percentage of innovation achieved as rated by customers downstream in the process).
The ideal design would include more objective measures of the incorporation of new and diverse information into new methodologies, products, and services, as well as stronger indicators of subsequent organizational performance implications. We provided evidence for the construct validity of our innovation measure in Study 2 by correlating it with overall effectiveness as rated by customers. Scholars in the innovation literature argue that although there may be some overlap in predictors of innovation and predictors of overall effectiveness,
the set of success factors for each criterion is not entirely the same (e.g., Brown and Eisenhardt, 1995). But an alternative explanation for our findings is that our models would hold if we were to replace our innovation dependent variable with an overall effectiveness dependent variable. We conducted this analysis and found that this was not the case.
Replacing innovation with overall effectiveness as the dependent variable in Study 2 produced a different pattern of results. There was no main effect for national diversity, electronic dependence, geographic dispersion, or a psychologically safe communication climate, and only one of the four interaction effects (dynamic structure psychologically safe communication climate) was significant. Although exploratory and post hoc, this analysis suggests that there is something special about the effects of the elements of virtuality and a psychologically safe communication climate on innovation that doesn’t pertain to general effectiveness. We argued that this is because of the negative effects of the elements of virtuality on specific factors associated with innovation that aren’t necessarily predictive of overall effectiveness in general. We encourage future research along these lines. Finally, although we did not directly examine the intentions or objectives firms had in implementing teams characterized by virtuality, this is an important avenue for future research. If increased innovation is explicitly the intended motivation, how often is this actually achieved? Longitudinal intervention studies that examine the level of innovation prior to and following the
implementation of elements of virtuality would be a welcome extension of our research.
The two studies reported here have unpacked the elements of virtuality and illustrated their differential interrelationships and negative effects on innovation. Our results indicate that organizations intending to implement teams characterized by national diversity, geographical dispersion, electronic dependence, or structural dynamism for the purpose of innovation should take heed that these teams may not fulfill this promise unless effective team processes are developed. Our findings underscore the need for psychologically safe communication in teams characterized by a high level of the elements of virtuality. Such communication behaviors should lead to improvements in the innovation process, which is of primary importance in today’s competitive business environment.

Perder un Amigo

2008-03-10T00:52:00.000-07:00

En el mundo todos los días muere gente es un hecho y generalmente eso no me preocupa mayormente, pero hace unos días no fue así, día a día son cientos de personas las que mueren e incluso más, pero el 22 de febrero hubo una que no lo olvidaré jamás.....
Gonzalo un joven de 20 años, ke no creo ke midiera mas de 1.60cm con unas margaritas eternas en su rostro, con su adiccion por ke era eso a la coca-cola, su facinacion por el yoghurt con cereales o al platano con leche y tantas otras cosas luego de trabajar durante todo el mes de enero fallece en chiloe ahogado......
son tantas las preguntas ke vienen a mi mente....pk el? pk de esa forma? pk tan joven? y todas tienen un factor comun ...intentar encontrar una explicacion a su muerte....
hace unos dias fue el concierto de iron maiden...el iba a ir a verlos antes de ke se murieran..irionias de la vida
Al Chalo lo conocia desde chica...cuando llegamos a vivir a la poblacion yo recien habia entrado al kinder asi ke saken la cuenta.....son tantos los recuerdos....
cuando eramos mas chicos nos juntabamos el chelin chico, la vero, el fredy, el chelin grande, el hugo, el diego, la pame, la andrea, la vane, la moni, el vampi, el petu, el armin, el mario, el dentin, el toto, el bigorra, el guidoti, el daza, el pilú, el nano, la naty,el chalo y yo.....hace unos días nos reencontramos todos, pero no para celebrar, ni para disfrutar, el chalo nos junto a todos para despedirlo....todos estabamos en torno a un ataud....
me costo tanto creerlo, aun me cuesta y lo ke se jamas podre olvidar fue su cara en el ataud su eterna sonrisa y su lagrima de sangre.....
son tantos los momentos compartidos, las risas, las xuxas, los enojos, los abrazos...tantas cosas ke no podre volver a compartir con el...
duele saber que el ya no estara cuando yo vuelva el proximo verano, que no me contara alguna historia ke no se kagara tooo por regalarme un cigarro todo para mi.....
kreo ke lo ke me keda de leccion de todo esto es a medir bien mis actos, gonzalo decidio bañarse en una desembocadura lo ke despues causaria su muerte, yo decidi no ser tan afectiva con mis amigos en sur pk asi no sufriria tanto su ausencia cuando no los tuviera cerka.....ahora me pesa no haberle dixo kuan importante era para mi vida, me keda el consuelo ke donde este el lo sabra.......

PD: si leiste todo, te lo agradezco, y solo puedo decirte que disfrutes a tus amigos y ke les hagas saber cuan importantes posn para ti.....

kual es tu log????

2007-09-27T03:27:00.000-07:00

me reconozco abiertamente como usuaria de fotolog y me he sakado fotos pensando subirlas al log, pero hoy me referire a los distintos fotolog como lo han hecho ya muchas personas [lo se no soi original..y ke??? algun problema con eso???]

Existen esos fotolog donde las feminas y los "galanes" se sacan como 94806140163 fotos y guardan en el pc 5 con suerte y dicen algo asi como : una foto ke me sake un dia x y aparezco super fe@....cuando todos sabemos ke hubo una produccion espantosa detras...
otro log es aquel donde la persona en sus fotos hace criticas sociales, politicas y escupe en contra todo el mundo cuando en la vida real es el tipo y/o tipa que esta donde calienta el sol, una persona sin opinion que copia las palabras de sus amig@s
podemos encontrar esos fotolog megalomaniakos donde lo unico ke encontraremos son fotos de la persona en distintas posiciones resaltando sus atributos ya sea existentes o imaginarios...mujeres porque mostrar tanta pechuga!!!! que se esfuercen si kieren ver algo los hombres hoy en dia...hombres pk se sakan las poleras pa las fotos algunos dan pena les daria unas cuantas cazuelas y otros no les daria de comer en meses por favor respeto a mi estomago!!!!
y aquellos con sus paisajes...o esas fotos que buskan en google con un poema ke encontraron en wikipedia....imaginacion es un concepto ajeno a estas personas, ya se que la mia es limitada, pero intento no ser tan descarada por dios bendito!!!!
aquellas personas que se autodenominan tal o cual cosa por dios no somos un articulo de supermercado haber ke me falta en mi casa aaa si lo gotico se me acabo mmmm no emo me keda un poko....me kedaba un pakete de anarko????
por dios!!!! si somos seres complejos no podemos encasillarnos....ya es suficiente con que a todos se nos concidere seres recionales porque no todo el mundo lo es a ke no???

si tienen algun otro tipo de fotolog me dicen ya ?????

hasta la proxima

=/

2007-09-13T23:40:00.000-07:00

Estoy con un trabajo de la U ...Psicología del Aprendizaje haciendo el video ke producto de imaginacion para weviar salio...la vdd fue ke era una talla pk tabamos hay pensando con las niñas y nada hasta ke tire una talla luego la adaptamos y salio... fue bastante vergonzoso grabar la cosa esta pk el video es en contra de prostitucion infantil tonce tabamos hay con las niñas con disfraz de putimbis y la gente nos miraba muy raro en la calle onda tabamos con camara y tooo pero yo ya veia ke un weon se acercaba y nos preguntaba la tarifa aahahhahahah pero ahora se viene lo realmente dificil...el informe en esta parte es donde uno vomita todo el contenido ke vio en clases y escupe un poko del verso propio para asi articular un informe ke te deje respirar un poko pensando enke podras pasar el ramosin irte a un examen y con mariela hay ke tener cuidado,el semestre pasao me relaje asi ke hay tube ke dar examen ¬¬ ufff ke fui una de los afortunados 4 ke paso el ramo [de komo 16] pero este semestre no kero aunke escribiendo aka no estoi siendo muy responzable...pero bueh.... ke no todo en esta vida es trabajo ni estudio asi ke la otra semanita estare literamente exada en mi cama [la mia no la de la pension] o en los sillones de mi casa con mi familia viendo tv cable!!!! y por la cresta ke se extraña a la familia de repente ademas como mamona reconocida soi ultra regalona de mis viejos hay momentos en los ke lo uniko ke kero es ke esten a mi lado [la wea mamona lose!!!]
ya me retiro no muy motivada a realizar mi labor estudiantil para cumplir con mi grupo ....

la fotito es de mis piernas el dia de la grabacion no muestro cuerpo entero pk no kero acoso ajjajajajjajaja

adiossssssssssssssssssssssssss

y ke???

2007-09-07T23:50:00.001-07:00

no les ha pasado ke derepente les bajan momentos mamones asi onda de exar de menos a alguien de ponerse a pensar kosas ke a estas alturas ya no tienen solucion???
como arreglar los kagasos de otros ke te afectaron a ti en el pasado??
en como debiste controlar un pokito mas lo ke tomaste en akel karrete pa no pegarte tanto kagaso junto???
weno io si y bastante a menudo....
soi mamona [en el sentido de emocional] lose y ke??? es ke hay, al ke le gusta bn. bienvenido a mi vida al ke no puta kagaste asi soi io si no te gusta facil ya sabes lo ke tienes ke hacer

toi enoja
toi sentimental
tengo pena
tengo miedo
toi cura
y ke??????????????
a la mierda con todo si total de ke me sirve preocuparme tanto por tooo si al final importa un carajo???

ya filo adios
hasta siempre...

La vida

2007-09-03T17:22:00.000-07:00

la vida...
nadie la tiene comprada, pero es dificil enfrentarse a situaciones donde descolokan todas las ideas ke uno tiene pal futuro, los planes...
espero ke el diagnostiko sea positivo...entre mis opciones ruego ke sea la con menos repercuciones en mi vida...la otra opcion me aterra ...como no hacerlo si todo mi mundo se vendria abajo

pero bue...

aun no tengo los resultados y voi a pensar positivo kreo ke es lo mejor...
asi ke a rezar se ha dicho...asi ke por mientras toda mi vida esta en los resultados de unas pokas kosas...

besos

Mi Cuerpo

2007-08-30T14:26:00.000-07:00

Con mis pekeñitos veintisiempre años mi cuerpo a comenzado a darme mas de un problemilla, es por eso, ke como mujer responsable fui a ver a un doctor kien amablemente me pregunto por el motivo de mi consulta a lo que respondi con rapidez esperando que me diera una solucion rapida y efectiva para mis males, cuando llegue al punto del insomnio hecho no menor que esta afectando considerablemente mi vida social, academica y sentimental me dijo: "Ahhh pero el insomnio es super normal en la U....¿algun otro malestar?"....le dije doctor es que he estado mas de 2 dias sin dormir....a lo ke me responde "pero = dormiste despues"...en ese momento comprendi que mis problemas con morfeo no le importaban nada....asi ke kontinue contandole mis malestares...luego procedio a examinarme y los resultados son:
-Alergia [explikacion de pk parezco siempre resfriada]
-Colon [tengo ke hacerme examenes para confirmar]
-Lumbago [duele mi "cintura", me aclaro ke ese sector no es espalda...]
por lo ke me reseto unas pastillas que tendre ke pagar con la plata ke me gane trabajando honradamente...me dio licencia por 3 dias [por eso no he ido a la U]y debo volver a hacerme un control en 2 semanitas y por ultimo me mando al kine...el ke me programo 10 sesiones...ya tube la primera y es bkn!! y me prohibio algunas cosas:
-Hacer la cama [por la posicion]
-Agacharme [en cuclillas si puedo]
-Hacer fuerza [puede agrabar mi situacion]
-Dormir de espaldas [solo de watita...como lo voi a hacer??? si me muevo pa tooos lados cuando duermo!!!]
-En general cualkier tipo de movimiento en el ke mi tronko no este recto

weno ke keren ke les diga tambien soi humana ajajajjajaj
ya besos adiosin

kultura

2007-08-25T03:03:00.000-07:00

En el dia a dia las palabras son akellas ke nos ayudan a expresar todo akello ke esta en nuestro interior, es por esto ke acontinuacion se explicitan una lista de palabras con su respectivo signifikado:

Alianza:
en política internacional, pacto entre dos ladrones, cada uno ha metido tanto la mano en el bolsillo del otro que deciden juntarse para robarle a un tercero

Amor a primera vista:
lo que ocurre cuando se encuentran dos personas poco quisquillosas y excepcionalmente calientes.

Atracción:
asociación entre calentura y una persona en particular.

Autoestima:
evaluación erronea.

Busto:
estatua de un hombre sin manos, o parte de las mujeres donde están las manos del hombre.

Cerebro:
órgano que sirve para que pensemos que pensamos.

Cura:
Es aquella persona a la que todos llaman Padre excepto sus hijos, que le llaman tio.

Desilución:
cuando el bonito trasero no coinside con la espantosa cara que se dio vuelta

Fácil:
dícese de la mujer que tiene la moral sexual de un hombre.

Felicidad:
agradable sensación que surge de la observación de la desgracia ajena.

Filosofía:
camino de muchos ramales que conduce a ninguna parte de la nada.

Filósofo:
una persona ciega en una habitación a oscuras que busca un sombrero negro que no existe.

Impaciencia:
esperar con prisa.

Indiferencia:
actitud que adopta una mujer hacia un hombre que no le interesa, que es interpretada por el hombre como 'se está haciendo la difícil'.

Ladilla:
piojo degenerado.

Mirada sensual:
método utilizado por la mujer para darle a entender al hombre que ella está interesada en él. Sin embargo, muchas mujeres no pueden lograr que los hombres le miren los ojos debido a que la mujer no tiene los ojos en los pechos.

Ninfómana:
término con el cual un hombre define a una mujer que desea tener sexo más a menudo que él.

Noche:
parte del día que no es día.

Remolacha:
papa con menstruación.

Señorita:
forma más elegante de denominar a una mujer que, a diferencia de una 'señora', aún no posee un macho fijo.

Suicida:
asesino introvertido.

Vida:
enfermedad de transmisión sexual.

Cristal dió en el clavo y nos mostro, como se habla en el Chile actual, pero, desde siempre, los chilenos hemos tenido nuestro propio idioma -poco entendible para los extranjeros- el que vamos modificando de generación en generación. Algunas palabras y frases se incorporaron para siempre a nuestro léxico. Otras quedaron en el olvido.

Aquí está la dura...

No somos callados, somos piolas
No nos apuramos, apretamos cachete
No somos esforzados, somos aperrados
No trasnochamos, pasamos de largo
No tenemos amigos, tenemos compadres
No tenemos problemas, tenemos ataos
No somos buenos, somos secos
No mentimos, vendemos la pomá
No decimos la verdad, contamos la dura

estas son algunas definiciones del asi denominado academico de la lengua:

Camboyana:
Maraca, profesional o vocacional, de primera línea de combate, aguerrida y sacrificada. Evoca a los combatientes de las interminables revoluciones y guerras civiles que han asolado ese país asiático y que los medios de comunicación muestran pequeños, entecos y dispuestos a todo.

Champañazo:
Eyaculación en la felación. Metáfora de óptimo señalamiento, el pene eyacula con la potencia del chorro de champaña cuando salta su corcho.

Cualquier micro me sirve:
En cuestiones sexuales, cualquier solución es útil, no discriminándose edad, sexo ni condición.

Gritar un Viva Chile:
Copular. Es metáfora festiva que relaciona los sanos sentimientos patrios con los no menos sanos del deseo. Debe utilizarse sólo para ocasiones señaladas.

Americana:
Determinado tipo de sexo oral durante el cual la mujer –o tal vez el hombre en las relaciones homosexuales- se traga completamente el semen.

Peinar la muñeca:
Estado alterado, lindante con un episodio sicótico.

Incursion:
relacion sexual, puede usarse como verbo, incursionar.

Concha de tu madre o Conchetumadre:
Ofensa de mayor calibre del catastro nacional de insultos. De difícil desciframiento puesto que es expresión apocopada que completa reza “ándate a la concha de tu madre”. Viene a significar, no sin una fuerte carga metafisica, “desanda el camino de tu existencia y vuélvete al seno materno porque tu vida no valio la pena ser vivida”.

Grado 1, grado 2, grado 3, grado 4, etc:
describe de manera sintética la progresión del encuentro erótico. Esta gradación, que vemos emparentada con las escalas sísmicas, grabadas a fuego en el inconsciente colectivo chileno, mide la intensidad creciente del encuentro amoroso. Así el grado 1 es de suaves besos y mano andar. El grado 2 de tocamientos y caricias de más elevada temperatura e intimidad. El grado 3 es ya el acto sexual, puro y duro. El grado 4 agrega la penetración anal, obsesión muy presente en la mentalidad nacional, definida como estancada en la fase anal-sádica (Viva Chile, mierda). Existirían aún grados 5, 6 y ¡7!, pero no es posible precisar la significación exacta de estos parámetros y más bien parecieran elaboraciones fantasiosas y barrocas. Así, para el grado 7 se precisarían dos varones y una mujer, resultando la sumatoria del grado 3, coito normal, y grado 4, coito anal, que ejecuta cada varón por su lado, sobre la misma mujer.

Este es un dato ke kreo vale la pena destacar:

Durante los ochenta, existió en algunas capitales europeas (Madrid y París entre otras) una entidad más o menos fantasmagórica, autodenominada “Academia Chilena de la Lengüita”. Agrupaba a poetas y escritores y su preocupación central eran las malas palabras chilenas o, como decía su Presidente Vitalicio, el poeta Gustavo Mujica, las “Chuchadas”. Una de las tareas asumidas fue la confección de un catastro de las mismas, tarea que se encargó a su Secretario Perpetuo, el escritor Radomiro Spotorno.

Spotorno recopiló, ordenó e investigó durante años y fruto de su trabajo y el aporte de los miembros de la academia y los amigos, escribió el Glosario del Amor Chileno, que la Editorial GrilloM publicó en 1987. Posteriormente, en 1995, la Editorial Planeta Chile publicó una segunda edición, corregida y aumentada, bajo el título Glosario Chileno del Amor, que rápidamente se agotó.

Actualmente Spotorno prepara la tercera edición del libro

Simple Plan

2007-08-20T04:21:00.000-07:00

me encontre este video en una de mis tantas noxes de insomnio xD lo ke megusto es ke podi ir cantando la cancion y la mismo tiempo ver ke wea estay cantando la raja... deberian ser asi los viedos....onda podi cantar y saber ke no estas cantando imbecilidades

lo se me gustan estos canadienses en especial pierre [vokalista] pero weno son mis gustos ahi les deje otro video en este aparece la traduccion numas

ya besos adiosin

Te gusta????

2007-08-11T17:08:00.000-07:00

¿Te gusta que te toquen...... ?

¿Te gusta que te acaricien...?

¿Te gusta que te rocen...?

¿Te gusta que te hagan transpirar ...?

¿Te gusta sentir el aliento de otro a tu lado....?

¿Te gusta que te respiren en la cara...?

¿Te gusta adoptar nuevas posturas.......?

¿Te gusta llegar hasta el fondo o quedarte en la entrada......?

¿Te gusta subir....o...Te gusta bajar.......?

¿Te gusta entrar.....o...Te gusta salir.....?

¿Te gusta con más de una mujer u hombre al mismo tiempo....?

¿Te gusta empezar frío y ..... terminar caliente y transpirado....???

¿Te Gusta que se queden dormid@ sobre tí..??

¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿ Si ????????

¿¿¿¿¿ Te Gusta ??????.......

entonces.......

¡¡¡¡¡¡¡¡Anda en Micro o en metro!!!!!!!! ¡
¡¡¡¡¡¡¡El Transantiago hace realidad todas tus fantasías!!!!!!!!!!!

ke pensaron lo koxinones?????

jajajjajajaj ta weno o no???

Hakuna Matata!!!

2007-08-09T13:28:00.000-07:00

heme aki con pilas recargadas para pasar todos los ramos de este semestre, para vivir, para cumplir metas y todo eso...
se han fijado ke generalmente guiamos nuestra vida en pos del cumplimiento de metas de sueños de ideales y todo eso????a veces me pregunto si todo eso realmente sirve, per luego miro a mi alrededor y veo a mi familia, a mis amigos y me doi cuenta ke si valen la pena lo uniko es ke debemos darnos cuenta cuales son realmene las cosas por las ke vale la pena luxar...
y lo importante es vivir de acuerdo a las propias convicciones y ser feliz o algo asi y recuerden akuna matata =P

mal dia

2007-07-23T09:05:00.000-07:00

la verdad es ke nadie lee mi blog, pero necesito deahogarme....
me exe mi primer ramo me siento como el orto...
muxos diran ke no soi ni la primera no la ultima y ke este no sera ni el ultimo ramo ke me exe... pero me siento mal...
mis padres no me juzgan me apoyan, me consuelan, me dan animos para seguir...algo ke hare por ellos y por mi...
kisiera poder empezar este semestre nuevamente, serian tantas cosas las ke haria y otras tantas ke no haria...pero he de ser realista, no puedo retrocerder en el tiempo aunke me gustaria tener una makina del tiempo....
se ke hay persona peor ke io en mxos sentidos, pero me siento tan desepcionada de mi misma ke me importa un carajo la situacion de otros...soi egoista y ke??? no tengo derexo???? no puedo pensar solo en mi por un dia??? se ke mxos encontraran pendeja mi actitud y saben ke me importa una mierda lo ke opinen de mi mi familia y amigos estan a mi lado, me apoyan y dan fuerzas para no rendirme..akellos ke no estan ni ahi o ke hablaran de mi a mis espaldas no son mis amigos y sinceramente son ellos los ke pierden pk se ke tengo mxas cualidades ...aunke la psicologia social no sea una de ellas xD!!!
gracias a kns estubieron,estan y estaran conmigo....
y vamos ke se puede hoy me fue mal, seguramene el dia no terminara mejor de lo ke empezo, pero saben ke?????? creo ke no llorare mas jajajajja y no sera por falta de ganas sino pk ya me las llore todas

ya voi a dormir un rato pk me duele la kbza y no hay nadie ke me apapaxe asi ke mejor me lanzo a los brazos de morfeo....

FOB

2007-07-21T21:30:00.001-07:00

sinceramente cuando mi hermana me hizo escuxar este grupo (fall out boys) no puse mxa atencion encontre guapo a uno (peter) y komo mi hermana ralla la papa cuando le gusta un grupo conoci sus canciones luego un amigo (felindope) tb los escuxaba asi ke io tb i si diganlo copiona de gustos musikales...pero akaso no lo somos todos???? weno como sea nus vemos adiosines

hay les dejo la mas conocida ke es dance dance

Tom Welling

2007-07-20T22:38:00.003-07:00

me encanta ver a este maxo estupendo en smallville es re lindo y pensar ke tiene 30 añitos cumplidos y esta felizmente casado....envidio mxo a su mujer jajajajjajaj

weno les alegrara saber ke smallville no acaba con la 7° temporada NO!!!!!!!!!!!! fue tan grande el exito ke WB hará 8° temporada mi kerido Tom Welling ya firmó contrato...el ke parece ke no sigue es LEX ese = ta bn ajajajajajja

ya adiosines!!!!!!!!!!

mis dias negros

2007-07-20T21:47:00.000-07:00

en mis dias negros muxas vecs siento ke la vida es una mierda, nada me sale bien se ke no soi una mujer muy bella asi komo tb se ke no soi un adefecio, con esto no busko cumplidos sino desahogarme ...
pk estoi sola ya me estoi xata de escuxar ke ya llegara el hombre adecuado, que me empeño mxo en buskar, ke no soi fea...ke debo confiar mas en mi misma y todo eso...lo comico es ke he dado esos mismos consejos, pero a mi ya no me sirven, estoy cansada de ser la amiga ke toka el violin, estoi feliz por mis amigos felices en sus relaciones, pero pk io no puedo tener lo mismo...mi pasado no esta grabado en mi cara como me dicen los mas cercanos....entonces porke????
supuestamente soi una amiga la raja eso me dicen, espero serlo pk los amigos son parte importante en mi vida, pero les cuento un secreto...a veces cansa ser la amiga wena onda, la que escucha la ke aconseja, el hombro donde lloran...se ke si no tuviera eso me sentiria peor, pero kiero alguien especial, alguien en kn konfiar, alguien a kn amar, alguien kon ken pueda ser io misma y ke me kiera, me acepte, me desee, me respete, me ame por ser simplemente io una mujer promedio de 21 años con sobrepeso, capaz de reirse, de llorar, de emocionarce, de enojarce, ser taimada, complicada......

weno me desahoge un poko, esto de los blog son wenos...

otro dia escribo...
gracias por leer...no tenias pk hacerlo, pero aki hay un pokito de mi

Pa ke sepan numas!

2007-07-20T21:38:00.000-07:00

hola mis keridos lectores....nose okupar bn esta weaita asi ke han de tenerme paciencia...o si no no vuelvan por aka ...asi de simple al ke no le gusta mejor no entre

inaguracion¡¡¡

2007-07-06T15:51:00.000-07:00

holiwis colapse con el fotolog asi ke komence una nueva era ....la del blog ajajjajajja

asi ke ahora nadie podra decirme ke escribo mxas weas lo cual es cierto ....podre desahogarme y escribir toooa la basura ke pasa por mi mente y las genialidades tb...aunke son mxas menos

ya adiosin¡¡¡¡