Professor Susanna Gallani is the Tai Family Associate Professor of Business Administration in the Accounting and Management.
"Driving Fluid Teams’ Performance: Evidence from Operating Room Turnover"
ABSTRACT
This study examines the effectiveness of relative performance information and incentives in improving “fluid team” performance. Fluid teams are “groups with unstable membership that organizations create and hold responsible for one or more outcomes” (Bushe and Chu 2011). We use field data from a hospital setting where incentives – both implicit and explicit – were introduced to reduce operating room (OR) turnover time – the time between subsequent surgeries. The teams that perform these turnovers exhibit varying degrees of fluidity. In line with prior research, we find that greater team familiarity (i.e., lower fluidity) is associated with better performance. Contrary to what prior research has shown in the context of stable teams, we find that implicit incentives in the form of the provision of relative performance information (RPI) do not affect fluid teams’ performance, independently from the degree of fluidity. In contrast, explicit incentives in the form of tangible rewards (i.e., gift cards) have positive fluid team performance effects which are more pronounced when familiarity among team members is higher (i.e., in less fluid teams). Our results extend our knowledge of fluid team performance by examining the effectiveness of implicit and explicit incentives. Since fluid teams are commonly used in many organizational settings across industries, our findings have important practical implications for managers operating in such environments.
Bio: Susanna Gallani is the Tai Family Associate Professor of Business Administration in the Accounting and Management unit. At HBS, she teaches in various executive education programs, including the Program for Leadership Development, Managing Health Care Delivery, Driving Corporate Performance, several custom programs, and courses on the strategic implementation of Value-based Health Care. She has previously taught Executing Strategy in the MBA elective curriculum and Financial Reporting and Control in the required curriculum. She collaborates with Harvard Medical School by teaching and co-directing the Health Care Delivery and Leadership module in the required course Essentials of the Profession II. She teaches in the post-graduate medical education programs Surgical Leadership Program and Leadership in Medicine: Southeast Asia.
Details:
Type: In Person
Time: Friday, May.17,2024 from 1:00 to 2:30 PM
Location: Room 2120
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