Crooked Teams: Coordination for Deviant Purposes
The organizational literature on team coordination is vast but presupposes that teams work towards productive organizational ends; absent from our understanding is how deviant teams – those who aim to detract from organizational ends–coordinate. We inductively examine 84 videos of convenience store robberies conducted by deviant teams (i.e., interdependently committed by two or more individuals) to unpack the unfolding behavioral mechanisms that characterize coordination for deviant purposes. We find significant variation in performance across these teams: higher performing deviant teams engage in several key coordination processes which ultimately help them navigate a fundamental tension they face—simultaneous collective goals of performance and avoiding apprehension by enabling more efficiency. In addition to shedding light on coordination for deviant purposes, our inductive theory also contributes to a richer understanding of how team goal orientations shape coordination behavior and performance, which has previously focused on team learning and performance goals but has not explained how teams successfully manage the tensions inherent in approach and avoid goal orientations.
Katherine Decelles
Katherine Decelles is a Professor of Organizational Behavior and Academic Director of PhD Program at Rotman, and cross-appointed to the Centre for Criminology and Sociolegal Studies at the University of Toronto. She also holds the Secretary of State Professorship in Organizational Effectiveness. Katy’s research is on understanding the micro-mechanisms involved in conflict, emotion, morality, inequality, and crime, and has been published in outlets including Nature, Administrative Science Quarterly, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Psychological Science, and the Academy of Management Review. Her research has been highlighted in outlets such as the Smithsonian Magazine, Science Magazine, BBC, CNN, the Globe and Mail, and The New York Times. Katy's research has received awards from the Academy of Management and American Sociological Association, and she has been recognized for her MBA teaching by Poets & Quants (2018). Katy served as an Associate Editor for the Academy of Management Journal from 2016-2019 and as the Deputy Editor (Micro) for the Academy of Management Journal from 2019-2021. In 2024-2025, she was the Inaugural VMWare Women's Leadership Innovation Lab fellowship at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences at Stanford University (CASBS).