Organizational Behavior and Healthcare

Leadership and the Role of Team Structure

I’m involved in a number of projects with my colleagues at Kenan-Flagler that examine the role of leadership in team performance. One study focuses on leadership in the creative process, while another study focuses on how leadership interacts with team structure to predict performance trajectories over time.

Sensemaking and Self-Organization in Medical Teams

In hospital settings, physician teams care for patients within a complex system that is fraught with uncertainty. Uncertainty is inherent in diagnosing and treating patients. It also exists in interactions with other services (e.g., specialists) and with fellow team members. As complex adaptive systems, these teams are self-organizing; that is, different patterns of relationships emerge over time. I am interested in studying how relationship patterns predict sensemaking, improvisation, and learning—three important factors in adaptive team functioning. These processes may affect patient care, medical education, and physicians’ well-being. In this line of research, I am interested in using quantitative and qualitative methods, with particular attention to modeling nonlinear change over time. This work was recently published in the Journal of Hospital Medicine.