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Little Teams, Big Data: Big Data Provides New Opportunities for Teams Theory

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  17 December 2015

Dorothy R. Carter ,
Raquel Asencio ,
Amy Wax ,
Leslie A. DeChurch  and
Noshir S. Contractor
Dorothy R. Carter*
Affiliation:
Department of Psychology, University of Georgia
Raquel Asencio
Affiliation:
School of Psychology, Georgia Institute of Technology
Amy Wax
Affiliation:
Department of Psychology, California State University, Long Beach
Leslie A. DeChurch
Affiliation:
School of Psychology, Georgia Institute of Technology
Noshir S. Contractor
Affiliation:
Kellogg School of Management, Department of Communication Studies, and Department of Industrial Engineering and Management Studies, Northwestern University
*
Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Dorothy R. Carter, Department of Psychology, University of Georgia, 125 Baldwin Street, Athens, GA 30602. E-mail: dorothyrpc@gmail.com
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Extract

Over the past 25 years, industrial and organizational (I-O) psychologists have made great strides forward in the area of teams research. They have developed and tested meso-level theories that explain and predict the behavior of individuals in teams and teams operating within and across organizations. The continued contributions of I-O psychologists to theory and research on teams require us to address the challenges—several of which were well described in the focal article (Guzzo, Fink, King, Tonidandel, & Landis, 2015)—and embrace the opportunities that are being ushered in by big and broad data streams (Hendler, 2013). We suggest that a principal unique value add of the I-O psychologist to the basic scientific endeavor of understanding small teams comes in the form of theory—theories that explain why, when, how, and to what end individuals form relationships needed for teams to function in unison toward the accomplishment of collective goals. Some have argued that the big data revolution means “the end of theory,” suggesting petabyte data render theoretical models obsolete (Anderson, 2008). On the contrary, we submit that big-data enabled social science holds the promise of rapid progress in social science theory, particularly in the area of teams.

Type
Commentaries
Information
Industrial and Organizational Psychology , Volume 8 , Issue 4 , December 2015 , pp. 550 - 555
Copyright
Copyright © Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology 2015 

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