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Task conflict and idea sharing in interdisciplinary research groups: Diversity salience matters

Academy of Management 2011 Annual Meeting - West Meets East: Enlightening. Balancing. Transcending, AOM 2011

Todorova, Gergana; Brake, Matthew R.; Weingart, Laurie

Although interdisciplinary research attracts more and more interest and effort, the benefits of this type of research are not always realized. To understand when expertise diversity will have positive or negative effects on research efforts, we examine how expertise diversity and diversity salience affect task conflict and idea sharing in interdisciplinary research groups. Using data from 148 researchers in 29 academic research labs, we provide evidence on the importance of social categorization states (i.e., expertise diversity salience) in understanding both the information processes (i.e., task conflict) and the creativity processes (i.e., idea sharing) in groups with expertise diversity. We show that expertise diversity can either increase or decrease task conflict depending on the salience of group members' expertise in a curvilinear way: at a medium level of expertise diversity the moderating effect of diversity salience is strongest. Furthermore, enriched group work design can strengthen the benefits of task conflict for creative idea sharing only when expertise diversity salience is low. Finally, we show that idea sharing predicts group performance in interdisciplinary academic research labs over and above task conflict.

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TYPE Conference YEAR 2011
ScopusOSTI

A hybrid approach for the modal analysis of continuous systems with localized nonlinear constraints

Brake, Matthew R.

The analysis of continuous systems with nonlinearities in their domain have previously been limited to either numerical approaches, or analytical methods that are constrained in the parameter space, boundary conditions, or order of the system. The present analysis develops a robust method for studying continuous systems with arbitrary boundary conditions and nonlinearities using the assumption that the nonlinear constraint can be modeled with a piecewise-linear force-deflection constitutive relationship. Under this assumption, a superposition method is used to generate homogeneous boundary conditions, and modal analysis is used to find the displacement of the system in each state of the piecewise-linear nonlinearity. In order to map across each nonlinearity in the piecewise-linear force-deflection profile, a variational calculus approach is taken that minimizes the L2 energy norm between the previous and current states. To illustrate this method, a leaf spring coupled with a connector pin immersed in a viscous fluid is modeled as a beam with a piecewise-linear constraint. From the results of the convergence and parameter studies, a high correlation between the finite-time Lyapunov exponents and the contact time per period of the excitation is observed. The parameter studies also indicate that when the system's parameters are changed in order to reduce the magnitude of the velocity impact between the leaf spring and connector pin, the extent of the regions over which a chaotic response is observed increases.

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TYPE Conference YEAR 2010
OSTI
Results 101–125 of 130
Results 101–125 of 130