In Basel, is silence between sites a team problem?
In Basel’s pharmaceutical industry, life sciences, Rhine logistics and international R&D, some teamwork depends on colleagues based elsewhere. The managerial question is specific: how can an unanswered message be prevented from becoming an unverified judgement about another site’s reliability?
What the literature establishes
Catherine Durnell Cramton (2001, Organization Science) examines collaboration difficulties associated with maintaining mutual knowledge in dispersed teams. The problems identified include missing information about local circumstances and difficulty interpreting silence. An unanswered message therefore cannot, on its own, distinguish disengagement from an unseen constraint.
The mechanism: attributing to the person what belongs to the context
Pamela J. Hinds and Mark Mortensen (2005, Organization Science) show that relationships between geographical dispersion and conflict vary with factors including shared identity, shared context and spontaneous communication. Their findings suggest treating informal exchanges as a resource for understanding, rather than merely as a distraction. Knowing that a colleague is waiting for quality approval changes the interpretation of their silence without necessarily speeding up that approval.
The premature conclusion
One might conclude that dispersed teams should communicate more and respond faster. These studies justify neither constant availability nor a higher volume of messages as a universal remedy. The useful distinction concerns the visibility of constraints: stating when a response will become possible is not the same as having to provide that response immediately. (our executive and employee training programmes)
What the evidence cannot promise
These studies are not controlled trials demonstrating that a response rule improves the performance of a pharmaceutical team in Basel. They illuminate mechanisms and associations but provide no optimal response time applicable to every occupation. In practice, making constraints visible must also respect confidentiality, quality procedures and periods when interruption would be inappropriate.
A practical check in Basel
Within SHR’s « Performance d’équipe » programme, one possible experiment is to select a cross-site workflow — sample transfers, quality documentation or a delivery involving Rhine logistics — and compare a baseline period with a trial period of equal length. During the trial, each request requiring a response has a named owner and an agreed deadline; if that deadline cannot be met, the recipient flags the obstacle and proposes a new deadline. The main indicator is the proportion of requests that pass their deadline without either a response or a notification, using timestamps as verifiable evidence. Also tracking total processing time helps check whether the team is reducing unexplained silence rather than merely postponing deadlines; this local comparison alone does not, however, establish causality. To go further: explore the Team Performance training in Basel in the canton of Basel-Stadt, or browse our executive and employee training programmes in Switzerland.
In pictures: Team Performance in Basel
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