Document Type
Article
Publication Date
12-1-2017
Abstract
A qualitative study on team member interactions on projects suggests that successful teams are actively engaging in continuously constructing and maintaining a shared reality with one another through the process of making accounts. As a result of this study we propose extending the management definition of accountability to encompass the process of making accounts in the construction of a shared reality. This study found that the accountability process requires an environment of communication promotion, adequate time to develop a shared reality and a willingness by team members to continuously adapt their shared reality in response to new knowledge. This study also suggests that this accountability practice that maintains their shared reality is instrumental in supporting a team's ability to create new knowledge together. This new knowledge is created by the team engaging in teaching and learning from one another, actively correcting misconceptions and leveraging shared constructs which leads the team to use their knowledge to create simple solutions. Finally, these successful teams expressed positive emotions about their project experience as they developed a shared reality. In the absence of a shared reality project teams find themselves isolated and disconnected, creating complicated solutions and living in emotional turmoil throughout the project.
Keywords
organizational behavior, interorganizational relations, collaboration, Weatherhead School of Management, teams, shared reality, accountability, emotions, shared cognition, sensemaking, thinking, knowledge creation, accountability
Rights
© The Author(s). This is an open access work distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-Non-Commercial (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/) which permits non-commercial reuse, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License
Department/Center
Design & Innovation
Recommended Citation
Johnson, Susan, "Teams Building A Shared Reality to Create Project Success" (2017). Student Scholarship. 422.
https://commons.case.edu/studentworks/422