As defined for this study, a "shared vision" is a mental picture team members agree on regarding "the future state of the team or its tasks that provides the basis for action within the team." This is different from a leader handing down a vision. A shared vision results from members working together to create their own. The researchers wanted to know what effect, if any, a shared vision had on a team's ability to create and manage change.
A company that designs and builds car engines and transmissions put in place 71 process- and product-innovation teams, with each team member receiving 20 hours of teamwork training. Nearly two years later, after the teams had time to mature, researchers submitted questionnaires to team members, managers, and the internal "customers" of the teams' output in the spring and autumn of that year.
The higher the degree of shared vision among team members in the spring, the higher the team's ability to innovate, sense of power, teamwork, altruism toward other members, and courtesy that autumn. The opposite was true as well: the higher the springtime effectiveness, sense of power, etc., the higher the shared vision in the fall. "Social loafing"—the failure of some people to do their share of team tasks—in the spring hurt the level of shared vision by autumn, but shared vision had only a small effect in reducing loafing.
Source: Pearce, C., and M. Ensley (04), "A Reciprocal and Longitudinal Investigation of the Innovation Process: The Central Role of Shared Vision in Product and Process Innovation Teams (PPITSs)," Journal of Organizational Behavior 25:259.
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© 2009 by Jim Morgan. All rights reserved.