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PP 333
The Need for Professional Listening Competence Training to Promote Well-Being at Work – Perceptions of Business Administration
Students
S. Ala-Kortesmaa
1
1
University of Tampere, Communication- Media- and Theatre, Tampereen yliopisto, Finland
In this research, it is explored if there is a need to add some listening training to the curriculum of business administration and marketing undergraduate
students in order to offer means to them to promote their own professional listening competence as well as well-being at work.The study is related to a pilot
course that was tailored to see how teaching listening could be a seamless part of an organizational communication class. Previously, listening was not
included in the courses available for these students. In the study, the concept of professional listening competence is applied to the framework of positive
organizational behavior by studying its features and dimensions from the perspective of psychological capital as well as its connection to the well-being at
work of the students. When a person has acquired a level of listening that is required for succeeding in his or her profession, he or she is said to have a high
level of professional listening competence. The term includes both the features of the traditional definition of listening competence (Wolvin & Coakley,
1994) and the features of the professional aspect of the listening competence (Ala-Kortesmaa, 2015). Psychological capital is constructed of self-efficacy,
hope, optimism, and resiliency (Luthans, 2002). It has been noticed to help people to adapt and behave with change strategies, and it has become a nec‑
essary set of traits in the business world as both managers and their subordinates have to learn to use new strategies to attain redefined goals. However,
if business leaders are not aware of their own psychological capital and how the professional listening competence is related to it, it is hard for them to
apply strategies that would facilitate the adaptation and promote both their well-being and the success of the company. The participant group of the study
consisted of 42 business administration and marketing majors who were asked to answer to open-ended questions. The questions mapped out both their
perceptions of the professional listening competence they will need as well as the aptitude of them to promote their own well-being at work by using vari‑
ous listening strategies in their professional communication situations. The results of the study indicate that when the pilot course started, the participants
(N=42) were not fully aware of either the dimensions of professional listening competence or the psychological capital that their work will require. When
they were taught appropriate listening strategies, they understood the difference they can make in their own well-being and even in the success of their
company by applying their professional listening competence into their professional communication situations. The elevated level of their psychological
capital allowed them to see their professional requirements and how to respond to them more realistically. Thus, it is not only considered that the profes‑
sional listening component will be permanently added to the content of the organizational communication course but also that a separate organizational
listening course will be organized.
PP 334
Shared Leadership in Virtual Teaming: Temporality and Emergence
T. Horila
1
, M. Siitonen
1
1
University of Jyväskylä, Department of Communication, Jyväskylä, Finland
This study examines the development of shared leadership over time in virtual teams from the viewpoint of team leaders and members. Understanding
the effects of time is an important, yet rarely studied, part of virtual team research (Gilson et al., 2015). Indeed, there is a lack of research examining
shared leadership as dynamic rather than static, emerging over time through social interaction and multiple possible pathways (Clarke, 2012). Team re‑
search in general has been critiqued of ignoring temporality in the learning and development processes of authentic teams. As Connaughton and Shuffler
(2007) note in their review, much of the research on distributed or virtual teams initially emphasized their temporary nature. This has been partly due to
the prevalence of student teams as sources of data, but it also reflects the simple fact that the type of new communication technology that distributed
teams rely on was once - indeed - new. In the late nineties, for example, it was simply impossible to find a large number of experienced virtual teams to
study. This study inquires into virtual teammembers’constructions on the emergence of shared leadership over time. Adopting an open-ended, qualitative
approach, the study utilizes interview data (N=18) gathered from three teams in organizations in Finland. All of the included teams worked virtually,
while occasionally meeting face to face. Team A (8 interviewees) was a temporary project team with an estimated end date. Team B (4 interviewees) was
a permanent marketing and facilitation team that had been ongoing in one form or another for approximately fifteen years. Team C (4 interviewees) was
an intra-organization development team with a very loose membership structure. Based on an inductive thematic analysis, the results illustrate how in
authentic, long-standing teams shared leadership practices can be seen as developing over time. This development occurs simultaneously with the struc‑
turation of other communicative practices, the organizational and team culture, etc.The temporal span of this development might be years or even decades,
including cycles of adjustment and redefining (c.f. Marks et al., 2001). Shared leadership, on the other hand, can be seen as connected to the temporal de‑
velopment of traditions,‘rituals’, and interpersonal relationships. Implications of the results on theorizing shared leadership are discussed. Literature Clarke,
N. (2012). Shared leadership in projects: A matter of substance over style. Team Performance Management: An International Journal 18 (3), 196–209. doi:
10.1108/13527591211241024 Connaughton, S. L. & Shuffler, M. (2007). Multinational and multicultural distributed teams: A review and future agenda.
Small Group Research, 38(3), 387–412. doi: 10.1177/1046496407301970 Gilson, L. L., Maynard, M. T., Young, N. C. J., Vartiainen, M. & Hakonen, M. (2015).
Virtual team research: 10 years, 10 themes, and 10 opportunities. Journal of Management 41 (5), 1313–1337. doi: 10.1177/0149206314559946 Marks, M.
A., Mathieu, J. E. & Zaccaro, S. J. (2001). A temporally based framework and taxonomy of teamprocesses. Academy of Management Review 26 (3), 356–376.
doi: 10.5465/AMR.2001.4845785