"Be supportive! But not when it's complicated" :סמינר קבוצת המחקר התנהגות ארגונית וקבלת החלטות

The importance of communication and context in healthcare action teams

Abstract
Interdisciplinary heterogeneous action teams face challenges derived from the dynamic nature of the team's composition, the unpredictable performance events they take part in, heightened internal politics and the fundamental conflict between the need for integration on the one hand and the specialization of professional groups on the other. We argue that one way to enhance such teams' performance is through team members' supportive communication. However, drawing from theories regarding the impact of attention shifts during complex tasks, we also propose that the benefits of supportive communication may be contingent on task complexity. Using a sample of 409 surgical teams from a healthcare center in Israel we find that while supportive communication does not have a direct effect on such teams’ performance, such a relationship is apparent when tasks are relatively simple. Additionally, when task complexity is high, supportive communication actually hampers the performance of at least some team members. ​