"Flash" Organizations and Temporary Teams - On the Rise?

Lately, I’ve been reading a number of articles on the rise of so-called temporary organizations. While such types of teams have been around for a while (e.g., movie crews, emergency response teams), several related trends seem to be driving their prevalence. One is the reluctance of workers who get laid off to move elsewhere to find work. Related to this is the growing number of workers doing freelance work in what is known as the gig economy. Third is the rise of crowdsourcing. And fourth, with the increasing opportunities in technology and software for groups to get together quickly, so-called “flash organizations” are popping up, where freelance workers get together for a limited amount of time to work on specific projects with clear deadlines and end points (Valentine et al., 2017).

What do we know about such temporary organizations and their effectiveness? Are there lessons learned that we can apply to large, traditional organizations - management practices from these temporary organizations that are transferable to permanent organizations?

In their paper, Valentine et al. (2017) describe flash organizations as “crowds structured like organizations to achieve complex and open-ended goals.” In fact, they unequivocally state that “Flash organizations advance a future where organizations are no longer anchored in traditional Industrial Revolution-era labor models, but are instead fluidly assembled and re-assembled from globally networked labor markets.”

In a recent research piece, Burke and Morley (2016) propose defining a temporary organization as “a temporally bounded group of interdependent organizational actors, formed to complete a complex task.” (p. 1237) Such temporary organizations of course are nothing new, both within and outside the context of traditional or permanent organizations. Task forces, committees, project teams, surgical teams, and special assignment teams are examples of the former; movie or theater productions, software development teams, and emergency response teams are examples of the latter. What they all have in common is a fixed end point, whether that is defined by time or by the achievement of a certain objective.

On the other hand, it does not seem like large organizations are going away soon. The big four technology companies – Facebook, Amazon, Google and Microsoft – have been increasing their headcount every year, as have the largest U.S. Fortune 500 companies. In my recent book (Henson, 2016), I wrote that despite the changes going on in organizations today (especially with automation and robotics), the three organizational building blocks or “infrastructure” elements of structures, rewards, and processes will continue to be in place to help an organization achieve its strategy and objectives. The modern organization, despite much criticism, is arguably still a great invention, and will continue to evolve. And these building blocks of structure, rewards, and processes will remain essential to any organization.

Take the so-called “gig” economy, where there exists an increasing number of part-time and freelance jobs. According to a 2016 McKinsey Global Institute report, these constitute approximately 4% of the U.S. workforce. However, the Wall Street Journal (August 9, 2017) reports that this segment will most likely shrink due to a labor market that is strengthening as well as disillusionment with this type of work. After the 2007-09 recession, as companies reduced their workforce or shut down completely, the unemployment rate increased and laid-off workers sought part-time employment. With the labor market now growing, companies are hiring once again, and they are hiring full-time workers. Uber for example recently hired over 100 drivers for customer-support jobs. Even for their part-time and freelance workers, many companies are offering perks. Uber’s competitor Lyft has implemented a “tiered perks” program with enhanced tax, health and car-maintenance services to its 700,000 drivers, depending on the number of rides completed. DoorDash, a food-delivery start-up, offers its independent contractors health-insurance plans and next-day payments. Signing and referral bonuses are not uncommon in these companies.

McAfee and Brynolfsson (2017), who earlier wrote the masterful The Second Machine Age, recently published a sequel to that book. In their chapter entitled “Are Companies Passé?”, they try to answer this question by drawing on the work of the Nobel-prize winning economist Ronald Coase. Coase wondered why, if markets were so great, a lot still happens within companies. For Coase, the choice between firms and markets comes down to costs. While markets are efficient, they have higher costs than firms in several areas, e.g., the costs of negotiating and making decisions, the costs of concluding separate contracts and enforcing them. Therefore, he concluded, big firms will continue to exist. In addition, as McAfee and Brynolfsson point out, companies offer additional advantages:

“Companies also exist because they serve several other economic and legal functions that would be difficult to replicate in a world made up only of freelancers who constantly wrote contracts to work together. Companies are assumed to endure indefinitely … which make them suitable for long-term projects and investments. They are also governed by a large and well-developed set of laws … that provide predictability and confidence. As a result, companies remain the preferred vehicle for conducting many kinds of businesses.” (p. 319)

Having permanent employees provides advantages to companies as well: stronger psychological contracts between employer and employee, greater stability of the workforce, a larger repository of tacit knowledge, greater protection of intellectual property, clearer lines of succession, and a “stickier” corporate culture. Permanent organizations also help employees in these organizations achieve the four drives that Lawrence and Nohria (2002) have identified that we have acquired through evolution - to acquire, bond, learn and defend - more so than temporary organizations do.

While there will always be a segment of the workforce choosing to remain independent, many still find satisfaction with belonging to a company (see the four drives above). Uber found that in 2016, 45% of new drivers left the platform in their first year. According to a JPMorgan Chase Institute report, while about one in six workers in the gig economy are new each month, more than half exit within a year.

Not surprisingly, flash organizations make use of the three building blocks of structures, rewards, and processes, but with some twists. For example, as Valentine et al. (2017) have argued, permanent organizations have what is known as asset specificity, the pattern of relationships that gets established as employees work together over a period of time and learn to coordinate and collaborate together.  In flash organizations, roles for workers are clearly defined, and these roles are then arranged in a hierarchy to make sure that authority and decision-making are also clear.

Valentine et al. provide examples of flash organizations in software, project and game design. In all three cases, the organizations lasted three weeks, and they all completed their goals to the satisfaction of the leader and received an acceptable quality rating by three expert reviewers. These flash organizations had 93 crowd workers, 22 team leads and 24 teams. As a specific example, one such flash organization was the EMS Trauma Report group, which was tasked to develop an Android application for emergency medical technicians that they could use to send advance reports to the hospital while they were still in the ambulance. Valentine et al. wax optimistic about the future of such organizations: “We envision a world in which anyone with an internet connection can assemble an organization from an online labor market and then lead that organization in pursuit of complex, open-ended goals.”

In a recent article about their research and on the rise of flash organizations, the journalist Noam Scheiber (2017) point to three lessons from these types of organizations. First is the importance of technology in facilitating the emergence of these teams. Some groups collect many data points on potential candidates to identify the best mix of members. Second is the need to define clear roles and responsibilities. And third is the need for what Scheiber calls “middle managers” but who are actually team coaches, project managers or leaders. None of these lessons are particularly unique to flash organizations; in fact, these organizations are continuing to utilize the infrastructure elements of structures and processes.

For those responsible for organizing temporary teams, here is some advice. First, select team members carefully, making sure the teams have the right technical skills but also the right balance of interpersonal and soft skills needed for members to work together and develop what Meyerson et al. (1996) call swift trust. Swift trust is important especially when these temporary teams are virtual, as many of them are. Iacono and Weisband (1997) have suggested that trust in such virtual teams is built around “doing” more than “relating” and these involve two mechanisms: initiating interactions, and relevant and timely responses. In their study, those virtual teams that had frequent messages initiated by members regarding work content, and frequent as well as timely responses to these messages, tended to build trust more quickly and ended up performing better than other teams.  

Second, define roles and responsibilities carefully while allowing for some flexibility. This is especially important when managing and resolving conflicts with members or groups in the temporary organization who identify with different entities. For example, in an interesting case study of the Panama Canal Expansion Program, where there were multiple parties (including a local Panamanian company and U.S.-based contractor), conflicts often arose that were not necessarily resolved by defining roles and responsibilities alone (van Marrewijk et al., 2016). The authors found that interventions (such as having celebrations, creating images of a unified team) were necessary. Presumably, this also helped to build trust. There are some who have argued that since members of these temporary organizations are not likely to work again in the future (with some exceptions; this is certainly not true of temporary organizations within organizations), they are less concerned about long-term benefits (for example, acquiring teamwork skills). Rather, the focus of these teams is on the task, for example, clarifying roles and responsibilities. However, as the Panama Canal project study has shown, an exclusive focus on the task is not sufficient. Interpersonal relations still need to be considered. Furthermore, because of the need to develop swift trust, leadership skills become very important.

Third, for teams that are embedded within large organizations, proactively shape the right culture for the team. Some of the key cultural elements to have in place include transparency, adaptability, trust, and teamwork. And fourth, make sure the leader is an effective “boundary-spanner.” Such leaders have not only the desire but the skills to network, build alliances, involve different kinds of stakeholders, and the ability to influence upward and laterally. They willingly share information and collaborate with different groups. When these teams are embedded within a larger organizational context, the issue of knowledge sustainability and transfer become critical. Capturing lessons learned is important, not only in terms of the content of the project but also in terms of collaboration. The larger organization can learn a lot about effective collaboration from those temporary teams that become truly effective.

In addition to a rise in temporary organizations, we are also seeing a rise in temporary workers within organizations. Estimates are that roughly 20-30% of the workforce is made up of independents working for more than one organization. Independents are “separate and not equal” in many organizations.

There is perhaps a larger issue here that is beyond the scope of this post, but worth mentioning. Some have suggested that the decline of permanent employees may have contributed to the rise in wage inequality in the United States. In the past, when organizations hired many employees for all sorts of work (including janitorial work), there was at least in principle the opportunity to get promoted. With the increase in outsourcing, many organizations have trimmed their permanent payroll to focus on their core activities. Such outsourced firms generally pay less, with fewer benefits and fewer opportunities to get promoted and get pay raises.

At the same time, as McAffee and Brynollfson have pointed out, jobs that require high social skills have increased as a share of total employment. They state three reasons for this. First, since the world is becoming more complex and fast-paced, managers are needed to serve as “transmission belts” and facilitate the challenges of coordination (e.g., communicating, negotiating, etc.). Second, we are more persuaded by good stories and anecdotes than statistics and data. Third, we are social animals and like to work together. They argue that the companies of the future need to be more egalitarian and more transparent, i.e., that they share more information more widely than those in the past. 

Bakker, R. (2010). Taking Stock of Temporary Organizational Forms: A Systematic Review and Research Agenda. International Journal of Management Reviews, 12: 466-486.

Burke, C. and Morley, M. (2016). On Temporary Organizations: A Review, Synthesis and Research Agenda. Human Relations, 69 (6): 1235-1258.

Iacono, C. S. and Weisband, S. (1997). Developing Trust in Virtual Teams. https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/49fb/0072ab1c85bbb6a2ec3c60c85594f1f9f24d.pdf

Meyerson, D. et al. (1996). Swift trust and temporary groups. In Kramer, R.M. and Rylwe, R. R. (eds.), Trust in Organizations: Frontiers of Theory and Research. Thousand Oaks, CS: Sage, pp. 166-195.

McAfee, A. and Brynjolfsson, E. (2017) Machine-Platform-Crowd. New York: W. W. Norton.

Scheiber, N. (2017). The Pop-Up Employer: Build a Team, Do the Job, and Say Goodbye. The New York Times, July 12.

Valentine, M. et al. (2017). Flash Organizations: Crowdsourcing Complex Work by Structuring Crowds as Organizations. www:http://hci.stanford.edu/publications/2017/flashorgs/flash-orgs-chi-2017.pdf

Van Marrewijk, A. et al. (2016). Clash of the Titans: Temporal Organizing and Collaborative Dynamics in the Panama Canal Megaproject. Organization Studies, 37 (12): 1745-1769.

What Do Workers Want? A Hint From - Of all Places - Nationalists

What do today’s employees have in common with “nationalists?” I recently attended a lecture by Anne Marie Slaughter, president of a think tank and former Princeton professor, who described the rise of nationalists in the U.S. and around the world. In her view, nationalists are citizens who seek sovereignty at the national level rather than at the global level. They are those who are anti-globalization, anti-free-trade and against the U.S. having a leadership role around the world.

She then explained what she considered to be the three bases for nationalism. The first is a sense of belonging. Nationalists are rooted in a place; they are what David Goodhart (2017) calls the people who see the world from somewhere (versus the people who see the world from anywhere). In Goodhart’s categorization, “Somewheres” are those who are “…feeling uncomfortable about the modern world, having a more ‘fellow citizens first’ view of national identity, and being prepared to sacrifice liberty for security.” (p. 45) Somewheres have a strong sense of ascribed versus achieved identity. These are terms from sociology referring to characteristics that a person has at birth or has no control over (e.g., your race, your birthplace) versus those that a person has acquired (e.g., your profession, your educational level). By contrast, “Anywheres” are those who are “… feeling comfortable about the modern world, having a loose and open idea of national identity, and putting liberty before security in the civil liberties debate.” (p. 45)

The second basis for nationalism is a strong sense of autonomy or independence. Nationalists want sovereignty, and they do not want their country to be dependent on other countries, or perhaps worse still, global institutions. As she has pointed out (Slaughter, 2017):

By maintaining sovereignty at the national rather than the global level, borders can be defended and communities defined and maintained. If those borders dissolve, what binds human beings to one another is no longer their community or their common cultures, but only their identity. 

The third basis is a strong feeling of fairness, of wanting a level playing field; the nationalists sense that their countries are being taken unfair advantage of.

As she spoke, I was struck by the parallels between these bases and what many organizational researchers have identified as the key drivers of employee engagement, commitment, work satisfaction and job performance: belongingness, autonomy, and fairness. In addition, I would add a sense of purpose as another basis for nationalism as well as another key driver of employee engagement and work satisfaction.

First, belongingness. The drive to bond and to form alliances is strong in the human species, and workers who feel a sense of belonging tend to have what researchers call “affective commitment.” Affective commitment - the emotional attachment, identification with and involvement with an organization – is a powerful driver of retention, organizational citizenship behavior and job performance (Meyer et al, 2002). People like to be with people who are like them, even if sometimes those similarities are superficial and can be manipulated easily.

Second, autonomy. Hackman and Oldham (1980), among many others, have found that workers having some degree of autonomy feel more responsible for work outcomes. Many organizations these days have jobs that have been designed to provide workers with a greater degree of autonomy, from assembly-line work to managerial activities. For example, Toyota has long been known for allowing workers to pull a cord in the assembly line whenever they see something that seems defective or not right. Telecommuting, another indicator of the desire for more autonomy, has become more common; The Wall Street Journal (June 5, 2017) recently reported for example that 59% of Dell’s 110,000 employees work remotely at least one day a week and that they are encouraged to do so. Although IBM recently asked employees to start working at one of its regional offices rather than at their homes, the company has developed its own tools to facilitate remote work, and advises many of its own clients on telecommuting. In fact, according to surveys by Gallup, the proportion of Americans working from home has gone up to 43% (from 39% in 2012), and the proportion working remotely went up to 20% from 15%. As yet another example of providing greater autonomy, a few corporations such as Whole Foods and Zappos have implemented versions of self-managing teams. With the increased complexity in many organizational forms, as well as larger spans of controls by many managers, giving employees more latitude for performing their jobs as well as allowing for more fluidity in defining job responsibilities has become more commonplace.

Third, fairness. In the field of organizational behavior, fairness is part of the concept of organizational justice - employees’ perceptions of what they consider to be fair in the workplace. Of course what is considered fair can be very subjective, and prone to self-serving biases. Nonetheless, researchers have identified three aspects of organizational justice. Distributive justice refers to perceived fairness of outcomes allocated, such as pay and other rewards (e.g., was the raise or bonus that I received fair?). Procedural justice refers to fairness of the process used (e.g., did I feel that the process used to determine my raise or bonus was fair; was it explained clearly to me?). Interactional justice refers to whether workers feel they are treated with dignity and respect (interpersonal) and on the quality of the explanations given to them (informational) when procedures are being implemented or outcomes are being distributed.  Of these three aspects, distributive justice seems to be most strongly related to organizational commitment and job satisfaction.

Fourth, a sense of purpose. Although Slaughter did not mention this explicitly, a belief in a broader mission or purpose could easily be a fourth basis for nationalism as well as a driver for worker engagement and satisfaction. Many companies are beginning to recognize this, and are focusing on employer branding and, in their recruiting efforts, on the attractiveness of the company mission. Companies like Chipotle, Etsy, IDEO and Warby Parker are good examples. With their current employees, they are emphasizing how shared value provides meaning to their work; in fact, this is one of the key success factors for start-ups.

What do we make of these parallels and their implications for managers? I think this reflects both the changes in the external environment, as well as certain universal human behavior basics (which I explain in more detail in Chapter 3 of my book, Successful Global Leadership). The pace, scope and complexity of changes we are exposed to have unsettled many, and seeking comfort in the familiar is an understandable response. The following are four management practices that might help in continuing to foster belongingness, autonomy, fairness, and purpose.  

First, strive to create a climate of “psychological safety” for your employees. This concept has been researched thoroughly and has recently experienced a resurgence (Edmondson and Lei, 2014) perhaps because of macro conditions such as the global financial crises and widespread job uncertainties. Psychological safety has been shown to positively impact job performance, learning and innovation in all kinds of teams – from surgical teams to pilot crews. Edmondson (1999) has in fact created a survey measure of psychological safety with statements that include: “People on this team sometimes reject others for being different” and “If you make a mistake on this team, it is often held against you.” As Edmondson and Lei have stated, “People are more likely to offer ideas, admit mistakes, ask for help, or provide feedback if they believe it is safe to do so.” (p. 36) Not only that, but the research is fairly robust in showing that establishing psychological safety helps enable performance. In my experience, a manager’s behavior is the most important factor in setting up a climate of psychological safety within a work team. Of course, employees also have a responsibility by taking risks, asking questions, and testing the boundaries that might in fact influence their managers’ perceptions and behaviors.

Second, be aware of employees’ concerns about fairness. In my discussions with students in the classroom, I have pointed to the difference between treating everyone equally and treating everyone fairly. Doing the former may at times conflict with doing the latter. Fair treatment practices include, among other things, not playing favorites, adhering as much as possible to meritocracy and merit-based practices, giving a voice to employees, and treating everyone with respect.

Third, ramp up your listening skills. In his biography of Henry Kissinger (Isaacson, 2005), the author mentions that people are surprised that Henry Kissinger’s brother Walter does not have Henry’s heavy German accent. When asked why, he replied. “I am the Kissinger who listens.” There is enough research on the value of effective listening that I don’t need to elaborate more on this topic, yet I continue to meet senior executives in my own consulting practice who fail to listen well. In my experience, this happens for one or more of the following reasons: one, they are not even aware that they are poor listeners; two, they have not developed effective listening skills (such as nodding, paraphrasing what they heard, suspending judgment); three, through the years, they have started to believe in their own press and think they have all the answers, so why listen; and four, they are insecure and don’t really want to hear feedback or what others have to say.  In this day and age, when employees are expecting greater transparency and to have a voice, being a good listener is a foundational element of effective managers.

Fourth, seek to integrate. Goodhart quotes from another author (Stenner, 2005): “Ultimately nothing inspires greater tolerance from the intolerant than an abundance of common and unifying beliefs, practices, rituals, institutions and processes.” (p. 31) Despite the diversity of your employees, some of whom may be reporting to you from different parts of the world, creating a common goal and a sense of community will help you build a more effective organization.

Colquitt, J. et al. (2001). Justice at the Millennium: A Meta-Analytic Review of the 25 Years of Organizational Justice Research. Journal of Applied Psychology, 86 (3): 425-445.

Edmondson, A. C. 1999. Psychological Safety and Learning Behavior in Work Teams. Administrative Science Quarterly, 44: 350-383.

Edmondson, A. and Lei, Z. (2014). Psychological Safety: The History, Renaissance, and Future of an Interpersonal Construct. In Annual Review of Organizational Psychological and Organizational Behavior, 1:23-43.

Goodhart, D. (2017). The Road to Somewhere: The Populist Revolt and the Future of Politics. London: Hurst & Company.

Hackman, R. and Oldham, G. (1980). Work Redesign. Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley.

Henson, R. (2016). Successful Global Leadership: Frameworks for Cross-Cultural Managers and Organizations. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.

Isaacson, W. (2005). Kissinger: A Biography. New York: Simon & Schuster.

Meyer, J. et a. (2002). Affective, Continuance, and Normative Commitment to the Organization: A Meta-analysis of Antecedents, Correlates, and Consequences. Journal of Vocational Behavior, 61: 20-52.

Slaughter, A. (March 23, 2017). https://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/nationalists-and-globalists-trump-wilders-by-anne-marie-slaughter-2017-03

Stenner, K. (2005). The Authoritarian Dynamic. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.