Deep Help in Complex Project Work: Guiding and Path-Clearing Across Difficult Terrain

Colin M. Fisher; Julianna  Pillemer; Teresa M. Amabile

Article | Academy of Management Journal | August 2018

Deep Help in Complex Project Work: Guiding and Path-Clearing Across Difficult Terrain

by Colin M. Fisher, Julianna Pillemer and Teresa M. Amabile

Abstract

How do teams working on complex projects get the help they need? Our qualitative investigation of the help provided to project teams at a prominent design firm revealed two distinct helping processes, both characterized by deep, sustained engagement that far exceeds the brief interactions described in the helping literature. Such deep help consisted of (1) guiding a team through a difficult juncture by working with its members in several prolonged, tightly clustered sessions, or (2) path-clearing by helping a team address a persistent deficit via briefer, intermittent sessions throughout a project's life. We present a model theorizing these processes, which has two noteworthy features. First, it emphasizes the socially constructed nature of helping behavior. That is, the parties must establish and maintain a helping frame for their interaction, especially when help-givers are high-status external leaders. Second, the model specifies that the rhythms of deep help—the duration and temporal patterns of giver-receiver interactions—are resource-allocation decisions that also contribute to the social meaning of help. These findings illuminate the theoretical and practical overlap between helping and external leadership in knowledge-intensive project work as well as the role of temporality in the helping process.

Keywords: helping; rhythm; prosocial behavior; external team leadership; social construction; time; qualitative methods; field research; Groups and Teams; Projects; Behavior; Leadership; Social and Collaborative Networks;

Format: Print

Find at Harvard Purchase

Citation:

Fisher, Colin M., Julianna Pillemer, and Teresa M. Amabile. "Deep Help in Complex Project Work: Guiding and Path-Clearing Across Difficult Terrain." Academy of Management Journal 61, no. 4 (August 2018): 1524–1553.

In recent years, progress has been made toward AI Creativity, which I define as the production of highly novel, yet appropriate, ideas, problem solutions, or other outputs by autonomous machines. I argue that organizational researchers of creativity and innovation should invest significant energy in studying artificial intelligence and computer-assisted human intelligence, the ways in which they might yield creative breakthroughs, and how those innovations might impact—and be impacted by—workers, consumers, organizations, and society.

Over time, the field of creativity research has seen a gradual shift away from an almost exclusive emphasis on the creative person towards a more balanced inquiry that centers both on individual difference issues and questions about the nature of creative products and the conditions that facilitate the creation of those products. The consensual assessment technique (CAT) allows for the assessment of the relative creativity of products and is based on the assumption that a panel of independent raters, persons who have not had the opportunity to confer with one another and who have not been trained by the researcher, are best able to make such judgments. Over 40 years of research have clearly established that product creativity can be reliably and validly assessed based on the consensus of experts. Although creativity in a product may be difficult to characterize in terms of specific features, it is something that people can recognize and agree upon when they see it.

There have been dozens of high-profile mass shootings in recent decades. This paper presents three main findings about the impact of mass shootings on gun policy. First, mass shootings evoke large policy responses. A single mass shooting leads to a 15% increase in the number of firearm bills introduced within a state in the year after a mass shooting. This effect increases with the extent of media coverage. Second, mass shootings account for a small portion of all gun deaths but have an outsized influence relative to other homicides. Third, when looking at bills that were actually enacted into law, the impact of mass shootings depends on the party in power. The annual number of laws that loosen gun restrictions doubles in the year following a mass shooting in states with Republican-controlled legislatures. We find no significant effect of mass shootings on laws enacted when there is a Democrat-controlled legislature, nor do we find a significant effect of mass shootings on the enactment of laws that tighten gun restrictions.

Faculty & Research

Deep Help in Complex Project Work: Guiding and Path-Clearing Across Difficult Terrain

Abstract

Citation:

About the Author

More from the Author