This is an excerpt from an essay I wrote about Catherine Durnell Cramton’s “Attribution in Distributed Work Groups” for a UW class that focused on Computer-Supported Collaborative Work.
Attribution refers to the method people use to determine the cause of an event. For example, a manager might overhear an employee discussing having a hangover and conclude that they are an irresponsible person who parties until the wee hours of the morning. However, the hangover could be because the employee’s father suddenly died and the employee was consoling another family member. In one of those situations, the manager could attribute the hangover to a flaw in the person’s character, and perhaps even conclude that this could be a repeated issue. If additional information was available, the manager might be more inclined to attribute the hangover to a traumatic situation that would be less likely to recur.
Psychologists have researched what factors contribute to people’s judgments about other people and groups. People are more likely to attribute their own behavior to situational factors and the behavior of others to their inherent personality and disposition. This phenomenon is referred to as the “fundamental attribution error.” Additional studies have indicated that the same problem can apply to groups of people, and that people are more likely to attribute negative behaviors in their own social group to situational factors and negative behaviors in other social groups to dispositional factors. This problem can become exacerbated when multiple teams of people attempt to collaborate remotely. Research has indicated that the tools people use to communicate can play a role in how they form their judgments of others. Teams who work in the same geographic location were found to be more likely to have positive opinions of each other than teams who work remotely, even when using video conferencing. This happens partly because information doesn’t always flow freely between teams, especially if it’s information that isn’t thought to be very relevant.
To address these issues, project managers should view communication as crucial, especially when teams collaborate remotely. Brief, frequent status reports can often be more useful than lengthy infrequent meetings. Teams can have a central source of information (like a wiki or intranet) where data can be stored and accessed at any time. Video conferencing is useful, but meeting in person increases the likelihood that team members will think positively of each other and view members of the other group as being coworkers rather than competitors. Providing a way that geographically disparate groups can socialize outside of a strictly work context can also increase the likelihood that they will feel like part of a community. One research paper I read earlier this year for another class described a study where video monitors were set up in two offices in different cities that faced a lunchroom. Employees could “stop by” and have an informal chat with whoever happened to be there… both about work-related topics and non-work related topics. The researchers found that using the monitors that way rather than using them solely for formal meetings caused the employees to think of each other more like people working in the same group as opposed to distant, faceless names sending emails.
In my own projects, I hope to apply this by having team members periodically meet in a less formal setting where we can talk about both project-related issues and non-project related issues. Having a larger sense of who your teammates are as individuals helps provide a context when they seem to be behaving in ways which aren’t helping the group.
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