The Power of Playing Nice: Team Member Exchange in an Academic Setting

Abstract

Universities are complicated organizations with varying institutional missions and priorities, centralized and decentralized operations, divisions of employee type (staff versus faculty versus contingent employee), and competing affiliations between the institution and the academic or professional discipline on a national, or international, scale. While many in our industry will argue against the corporatization of the academe, and understandably so, I believe it is useful to draw comparative parallels between the research on business culture and organizational behavior to relationships that exist within the academic enterprise. In order to do this, I choose to adopt the position that despite the unique purpose of the academic mission, overall universities function like corporate businesses. Parker (2012) found that “despite regional and national differences, both public and private universities are found to exhibit a global trend towards operating as predominantly market funded commercial organizations” (p. 247). Universities may employ thousands of people in hundreds of internal departments or suborganizations. Like large multilevel corporations, people work in cross-functional teams and collaborate with other departments or divisions. Resources, in terms of human capital, revenue, and information, flow throughout the organization in accordance with systemic constraints as well as the culture of the organization and its subunits. Drawing upon organizational behavior research, team member exchange (TMX) offers one framework to apply the impact of resource flow on relationships in a business setting. TMX research evidences the power of workplace relationships to influence positive business outcomes. Where employees score high on indicators of TMX, researchers found this to be an indicator of highquality working relationships, correlated with improved employee performance ratings and increased measures of job performance, satisfaction, and organizational commitment (Banks et al., 2014; Liden, Wayne, & Sparrowe, 2000). Teams scoring high on the TMX instrument engage in more cooperative communication within the group, which reinforces a sense of group cohesion, both of which impact effective work group performance (Abu Bakar & Sheer, 2013). I found limited references to TMX in the education literature or included in research applied in an academic context, but still propose it can be usefully applied. Three recent studies indicated the promise of bringing this construct into the field because, as Lucas, Voss, and Krumwiede say, “students’ experience with their educational institution may help or hinder their classroom performance, for the same reasons for which employees’ experience with their organizations on this measure affect their motivation and sense of trust in their leadership” (2015, p. 97). Lucas and colleagues’ work created a selfreport tool for students to respond to TMX statements as well as other measures of communication and exchange behavior (2015). In addition, universities are places of employment and function like businesses in that regard. One study did indirectly assess TMX among university faculty and