The study examines a relationship that links accountability and interdependent behavior to enhanced team consequences. The high-accountability teams relied on more interdependent behaviors, experienced greater satisfaction with their team, and expressed higher success than low-accountability teams. Implications for practicing managers and for strengthening training programs are discussed.
The purpose of this study was to determine what predicts employee intent to stay at commercial television stations. Above-the-line employees of five commercial television stations completed a survey questionnaire, which focused on employee turnover in three departments: news, production, and sales. Data analysis indicated that a category of system outcomes predicted perception of equity; that a category of interpersonal outcomes, in conjunction with opportunity and perception of equity, predicted job satisfaction; and that job satisfaction, in conjunction with perception of equity and education, predicted intent to stay.
A field study was conducted to examine the effect of timing of leader opinions on group problem-solving performance. University residence life teams ( N= 19) were asked to solve two typical residence hall problems. Teams were randomly assigned to one of two experimental conditions in which leaders either (a) stated their opinions immediately after the presentation of the problem or (b) withheld their opinions until later in the discussion. As predicted, groups with leaders who delayed stating their opinions generated significantly more alternative solutions to the problems, and these alternatives were rated more feasible and more likely to be adopted.
Recent studies have suggested that self-esteem may be an important variable in employee burnout, although questions remain as to how it affects burnout. Using separate, large samples of police officers (N = 1,163) and hospital workers (N = 494), self-esteem was investigated as an antecedent, moderator, or consequence of employee burnout. Self-esteem was clearly related to burnout, probably as both cause and consequence. However, we did not find that self-esteem acts as a "buffer" to protect individuals from becoming burned out or from experiencing health disorders once they have become burned out. These results indicate that self-esteem may be an important factor in predicting who will be more likely to develop burnout, and they also suggest the importance of rebuilding self-esteem as part of the rehabilitation of burned-out employees.
A prescriptive model for announcing organization-wide change is presented within speech act theory framework. The model considers the nature of change and organizational dynamics that influence the communication strategy. The communication strategy includes the message, channel, and timing Semistructured interviews in 43 organizations determined that what most differentiated between effective and ineffective strategies were (a) a large number of inaccurate rumors about the change and (b) employees learning about the change from a source other than management. Timing of the announcement most differentiated between effective and ineffective strategies. Employees reacted negatively to euphemisms and overly positive announcements.
Rabinowitz and Hall (1977) suggested that the relationships between job involvement and personal situational characteristics and work outcomes are approximately equal in size. This study explored the portions of common variance shared with job involvement by combinations of personal and situational characteristics and outcome variables. Correlation and regression generally supported Rabinowitz and Hall's profile of the job-involved employee. Situational characteristics and outcome variables are each found to display comparable amounts of common variance with job involvement and considerably more than do personal characteristics.
This study examined expectations of cognitive conflict, social conflict, decision confidence, and postdecision group affect in the dialectical inquiry, devil's advocacy, and consensus decision-making techniques. Expectations show some congruence with the affective, but not objective, outcomes found in prior empirical studies. Expectations were found to discriminate among dialectical inquiry, devil's advocacy, and consensus.
This study examined the relationship between three structural variables (size, vertical complexity, and administrative intensity) and the operating efficiency of all 234 metropolitan branches of a financial services company. As hypothesized, negative relationships were found between (a) size and productivity and (b) vertical complexity and productivity; however, the predicted negative relationship between (c) administrative intensity and productivity was not found — instead a curvilinear relationship emerged. On average, the smallest branches were approximately 31% more efficient than the largest ones; those with the least vertical complexity (one hierarchical level) were roughly 44% more productive than those with the greatest complexity (five levels).
Gainsharing plans often provide highly structured suggestion systems that allow employees to participate in work-related decisions. However, individuals differ in their willingness to become involved in this suggestion-making process. To better understand the reasons for this, interviews were conducted with 149 supervisors and nonmanagement employees in five gainsharing companies. Nonmanagement suggestion contributors as well as their supervisors said that the desire to improve performance, make the work easier, and become involved in work decisions were important determinants ot an employee's decision to contribute suggestions. Both groups viewed the desire for influence as being more influential than the desire for bonuses. Nonmanagement noncontributors and their supervisors indicated that apathy and negative attitudes toward the plan, management, and the company were important determinants of an employee's decision not to contribute suggestions. The discussion includes implications for practice and a tentative model describing the multiple determinants of behavior under gainsharing.
Data from 503 subordinates and the corresponding bosses of a group of 94 first-level managers were used to test the hypotheses that different managerial behaviors are related to subordinate satisfaction and bosses' rating of performance. The results indicate that a manager's consideration and structuring behavior are related to subordinate satisfaction, whereas structuring was the only behavior related to higher performance ratings from bosses.
This article compares the views of men and women employed in hourly production jobs regarding the effects of an innovation on their working conditions, their organization, and the rewards they receive. Gender differences are found on an array of expectations likely to influence the innovation process, including knowledge of and general attitude toward new technology, job security, safety, learning opportunities, training and technical assistance, and rewards. Gender differences persist when education, age, seniority, and relevant characteristics of an employee's current job are controlled.
Leaders frequently attempt to implement changes when they enter an ongoing organization. Subordinates react to these attempts, either by facilitating implementation or by resisting it. This research examined both implementation tactics and resistance tactics. The first of two studies found that the implementation tactics used by Army leaders are highly similar to those that have been reported previously for civilian leaders, except that training is used as an implementation tactic in the Army but not in civilian organizations. Army subordinates' tactics are similar to, but more limited than, those previously described for civilian subordinates. The second study found that Army leaders' ratings of the various implementation tactics differed as a function of leadership experience and the presence or absence of subordinate resistance to the proposed change. Army subordinates' ratings of tactics for dealing with proposed changes differed as a function of the subordinates' acceptance of or resistance to the proposed change.
What should a consultant have managers do between intervention sessions to help further the process of change? This case study suggests that the concept of organizational tasking can provide one answer to this question. Two kinds of organizational task assignments, drawn from the literature on family therapy, are discussed: prescription task assignments and formula task assignments. Their use in helping to resolve a troubled situation in a transit property is described. Time series data are presented that offer evidence on the possible effectiveness of the use of organizational tasking.
This study extends previous work that has shown that perceived threats to the security of employees' jobs can have deleterious effects on their health. The study examined (a) whether intrinsic work characteristics are better predictors of perceived job security than extrinsic work characteristics and (b) whether job security contributes to the prediction of employee health independent of intrinsic and extrinsic characteristics of their jobs. Participants in the study were 104 employees from the central personnel office of a large state agency. Job security was found to be related to both intri nsic and extrinsic work factors, although more closely related to intrinsic factors. Perceptions of job security contributed unique (and significant) variance to the prediction of employee health, suggesting that job security is central to the physical and psychological well-being of employees. Implications for understanding the impact of job security on workers' lives are discussed.
Using a quasi-experimental design, the effects of purpose (evaluative vs. developmental) on both peer-rating quality and user acceptance were examined. Subjects were 65 undergraduates divided into 11 project groups. Six groups conducted peer ratings for evaluative (i.e., grading) purposes, whereas the remaining 5 did so for the purpose of providing developmental feedback. Peer ratings conducted for evaluative purposes tended to contain greater halo and to be more lenient, less differentiating, less reliable, and less valid than those performed for developmental purposes. User acceptance as measured by recommendation for future use was more favorable under the developmental than the evaluative conditions. These results suggest that the quality of peer ratings and user acceptance are highly susceptible to the influence of rating contexts and that peer ratings are more useful for developmental than for evaluative purposes. Implications of these results for future peer-appraisal practices and research are discussed.
This article reports the results of a study of a self-designed gainsharing plan adopted by a Fortune Service 500 firm in the priority package delivery industry. The study focused on changes in work group communication behaviors following installation of a gainsharing plan. The significant results indicate that during the early stages (first 6 months) of a successful gainsharing program, the occurrence of positive, job-related communication and idea communication increased among gainsharing participants. This is the first reported gainshanng study to use control groups and pre- and posttests in a quasi-experimental field study. A major conclusion of the study is that a fruitful approach to gainsharing research is to focus on the intervening effects of gainsharing as the process operates to produce economic outcomes for employers and employees.
The competitive global marketplace and the need for technological leadership in achieving competitive advantage have made it necessary to understand the factors that influence the performance and work attitudes of research and development (R&D) professionals. Data obtained from 165 industrial R&D professionals in Singapore were used to examine the relationship between career orientations and selected work outcomes. Factor analysis revealed two factors that underlie career orientations—professional/scientific and managerial. Both career orientations showed a significant and negative relationship with turnover intentions. Zero-order and partial correlation analyses indicated managerial career orientation to be related to organization-based performance and professional/scientific career orientation to be related to scientific performance. Implications of the findings and directions for future research are discussed.
The dynamics and consequences of power may depend upon whether high- and low-power people believe they have largely cooperative or competitive goals. Managers and their employees from 47 groups within a large company rated each other's power and the extent to which they had developed cooperation, competition, and independence. Cooperation and power were both related to perceived effectiveness of manager and employee. The positive correlations between cooperation and power contradict the common, implicit assumption that power occurs in competition. Results suggest that experimental findings generalize to ongoing relationships in organizations and indicate that cooperative goals are critical for constructive power management.
