Contextualizing ties among teammates

The focus of this article is the pattern of interactions that arise within small work teams, or what we call ties among teammates, and how organizational and institutional factors play a role in shaping these ties. Based on an ethnographic study of teams across three national contexts, we provide a thick description of the variation in ties among teammates. We further show how different patterns of ties form mutually reinforcing systems with aspects of the organizational context. Our findings suggest a nested theory of structuration, which has a range of implications for better understanding both stability and change in organizations.