Remote workers’ wellbeing in the age of COVID-19

Social isolation measures used worldwide to reduce the impacts of COVID-19 led many office workers to work remotely with little notice. While researchers have studied remote collaboration for more than two decades, the scale and context of remote work during a pandemic is unprecedented and has changed personal and work dynamics. In this paper, we discuss a survey study investigating the impact of remote work during the COVID-19 pandemic in Brazil, informed by Olson & Olson's framework for distributed collaboration. We report preliminary findings from this study, focusing specifically on workers' wellbeing. Our results suggest that the main factors influencing workers' well beings are Common Ground Challenges, Collaboration Readiness, Collaboration Technology Readiness, Organizational Management, and Interruptions.

3336 Who’s ready to collaborate? Evaluating new measures of collaboration readiness among early career scholars in the CTSA network

OBJECTIVES/SPECIFIC AIMS: Many CTSA network activities aim to promote collaboration. Who should we target, and how should we evaluate short-term success? This study examined the validity of recently developed collaboration readiness indices among early career scholars, an important and understudied portion of the translational workforce. METHODS/STUDY POPULATION: Participants were 107 scholars within 10 years of completing terminal degree or residency (mean age = 38; 69% female; 29% MD) who applied to one of two week-long NCATS-funded Innovation Labs (www.buffalo.edu/innovationlabs.html). Measures included the MATRICx (Mallinson etal., 2016), which assesses 17 collaboration motivators and 31 threats; the Transdisciplinary Orientation Scale (TDO; Misra etal., 2015), an assessment of attitudes and behaviors theorized to predict effective collaboration; and a brief measure of one’s perceived ability to succeed in different aspects of collaboration (i.e., self-efficacy; see teamscience.net). RESULTS/ANTICIPATED RESULTS: Factor analyses of individual measures and evaluation of cross-scale correlations suggest that collaboration readiness is multi-dimensional. Factor analysis of the MATRICx suggests 3 moderately-correlated facets of motivators (benefits to world, self, and others rs = +.50 to +.62) and threats (process concerns, external barriers, and leadership style, rs = +.29 to +.53). Most correlations between motivator and threat scales (except process concerns) were modest, suggesting they reflect relatively independent aspects of collaboration readiness. The TDO scales seemed to capture a different aspect of collaboration readiness; correlations with MATRICx motivator and threat scales were mostly modest (rs = -.26 to +.43). As expected, collaboration self-efficacy was positively related to collaboration motivators and TDO (rs = +.41 to +.59) and negatively related to collaboration threats (particularly process threats, r = -.47). Participants typically scored in the upper half of the TDO, MATRICx motivator, and collaboration self-efficacy scale ranges, and in the lower half of the MATRICx threat scale ranges. DISCUSSION/SIGNIFICANCE OF IMPACT: Collaboration readiness is a reasonable short-term target of efforts to promote collaboration. However, this work suggests that no single scale captures the entire conceptual space, and multiple measures should be assessed. The implications for efforts to enhance collaboration are intriguing. In samples already high in collaboration readiness, these measures will have limited ability to detect positive change. However, assessment of collaboration readiness may be particularly useful in identifying scholars who could most benefit from collaboration-enhancement programs (i.e., scholars with moderate scores on one or more of these metrics) and in personalizing intervention (e.g., selectively targeting TDO, collaboration motivators, and/or collaboration self-efficacy, and/or perceived threats to collaboration).

Pilot analysis of the Motivation Assessment for Team Readiness, Integration, and Collaboration (MATRICx) using Rasch analysis

Healthcare services and the production of healthcare knowledge are increasingly dependent on highly functioning, multidisciplinary teams, requiring greater awareness of individuals’ readiness to collaborate in translational science teams. Yet, there is no comprehensive tool of individual motivations and threats to collaboration that can guide preparation of individuals for work on well-functioning teams. This prospective pilot study evaluated the preliminary psychometric properties of the Motivation Assessment for Team Readiness, Integration, and Collaboration (MATRICx). We examined 55 items of the MATRICx in a sample of 125 faculty, students and researchers, using contemporary psychometric methods (Rasch analysis). We found that the motivator and threat items formed separate constructs relative to collaboration readiness. Further, respondents who identified themselves as inexperienced at working on collaborative projects defined the motivation construct differently from experienced respondents. These results are consistent with differences in strategic alliances described in the literature—for example, inexperienced respondents reflected features of cooperation and coordination, such as concern with sharing information and compatibility of goals. In contrast, the more experienced respondents were concerned with issues that reflected a collective purpose, more typical of collaborative alliances. While these different types of alliances are usually described as representing varying aspects along a continuum, our findings suggest that collaboration might be better thought of as a qualitatively different state than cooperation or coordination. These results need to be replicated in larger samples, but the findings have implications for the development and design of educational interventions that aim to ready scientists and clinicians for greater interdisciplinary work.

Team dimension of relational competence of organisation – psychological perspective

SummaryThis article is a part of theoretical model for the research project titled “Relational competence as a determinant of effectiveness and efficiency of inter-organizational relations”. The authors deliberate upon team-level determinants of relational competence of organizations involved in inter-organizational cooperation in the light of classic and modern psychological theories and concepts. The aim of this article is to present authors’ own approach used in research on relational competence of organizations and based on multilevel analysis of influence regulation in teams (individual-, team- and organizational levels) together with motivation and work engagement. We search for correlations between psychological variables and relational competence and relation’s results. We assume that on individual- as well as on team-level preexist some features determining relation’s success, such as: open and effective collaboration, readiness to take responsibility for management, leadership division, autonomous motivation and work engagement.