Date of Award
1-1-2024
Document Type
Dissertation
Degree Name
Ph.D. in Business Administration
First Advisor
Kristin Cullen-Lester
Second Advisor
Kristin Cullen-Lester
Third Advisor
Houston Lester
Relational Format
dissertation/thesis
Abstract
Drawing from social networks and leadership perspectives, I advance our understanding of team assembly – which I define as the goal-motivated, multi-step, and iterative process by which two or more potential team members interact to organize into nascent teams via formal and/or informal influence. Across three essays, I aim to redirect the conversation from who will become part of a team to how individuals assemble teams, placing leaders assembling teams and potential team members at the forefront of this research.
In Essay 1, my interdisciplinary integrative conceptual review revealed four opportunities to clarify how people assemble teams. First, I use existing knowledge to establish a clear definition of team assembly. Second, I develop a network utilization framework for studying team assembly as a process. Third, I create a leadership typology of team assembly, explaining the role of leaders and followers, which uncovers a novel type of assembly – Network-Leveraged Teams (NLTs). Fourth, I organize and synthesize the literature to explicate what is known and unknown and advance directions for future research.
Essay 2 focuses on NLTs and uses the network utilization framework to investigate how individuals who lack formal authority assemble teams by activating (thinking of), mobilizing (reaching out to), and realizing (recruiting) potential team members from their networks. In particular, I study whether political skill explains differences in the quality of the network utilization process and the resulting impact on proximal and distal team outcomes. I investigate these ideas in a sample of informally-led student project teams with communal goals.
Essay 3 investigates how the status of informal leaders influences who they reach out to and successfully recruit to join their NLT. Using archival data from NCAA college football recruiting, I examine two research questions. First, does informal leaders’ status influence whether they take shots at mobilizing more helpful potential team members (including those that may be unrealistic to recruit) and their success in doing so? Second, does geographical proximity to potential team members impact choices by higher- and lower-status leaders to mobilize (ask) and realize (successfully recruit) more valuable team members? bers?
Recommended Citation
Solanelles, Pol, "Team Origins: Leveraging Network Utilization and Leadership to Explain Team Assembly" (2024). Electronic Theses and Dissertations. 2878.
https://egrove.olemiss.edu/etd/2878