Daniel R Ilgen

Michigan State University | MSU · Department of Psychology

Work groups are a vital link between individuals and organizations. Systematic psychological research on the nature and effects of work groups dates back at least to the Hawthorne studies of the 1920s and 1930s. Yet little to none of this work appeared in the Journal of Applied Psychology until the 1950s when groups were treated primarily as foils...

Recent conceptual work draws meaningful distinctions between experiential and declarative well-being (Shmotkin, 2005), but little has been done to apply such distinctions in organisational psychology. We use this framework to integrate self-determination theory (Deci & Ryan, 1985) and flow theory (Csikszentmihalyi, 1975), leading to hypotheses prop...

Multiteam systems are increasingly used by organizations, but are difficult to coordinate effectively. Building from theory on representational gaps, we explain why coordination between teams in multiteam systems can be hindered by inconsistencies that exist between them regarding the definition of shared problems. We argue that frame-ofreference t...

As a result, the researchers may falsely attribute the observed effects on behavior to the variables manipulated rather than the attention. The effect gets its name from the research studies in which it was identified and labeled.

Trust and liking are attitudes with important implications for automation reliance in single-advisor settings; however, the extent to which their relationships with reliance generalise to settings in which the user receives conflicting advice from a human and automation is unknown. Participants completed an X-ray screening task and received simulta...

In line with recent work which suggests that multiteam systems benefit from more centralized planning functions relative to stand-alone teams, we examine the importance of centralizing strategic execution (i.e., integrative) functions in multiteam systems. Building from representational gaps theory, we studied the effects of frame-of- reference tra...

Going beyond previous studies on satisfaction in pursuing approach versus avoidance goals, the current study is the first to examine individual satisfaction in pursuing approach and avoidance goals as determined by regulatory fit between type of goal and type of strategy. Specifically, the present study shows that people with approach goals have gr...

This study examined the impact of three alternative types of goals (specific learning, general “do your best” learning, and specific performance) on team performance. Eighty-four-person teams engaged in an interdependent command and control simulation in which the team goal and task complexity were manipulated. Contrary to research at the individua...

The major premise of this article is that increased exposure to-and increased application of-theories, methods, and findings from the judgment and decision-making (JDM) field will aid industrial-organizational psychology and organizational behavior (IOOB) researchers and practitioners in studying workplace decisions. To this end, we first provide e...

The literature on small stand-alone teams has suggested that decentralization has predominantly positive features. However, in multiteam systems, the presence of other highly interdependent teams adds a level of complexity that may preclude generalizing from teams to multiteam systems. We studied the effects of decentralized planning in 210 multite...

Objective: To gain a better understanding of the role of interpersonal trust in veterinarian-client interactions during routine health-care visits, develop a measure of trust uniquely suited to the context of veterinary medicine, and interpret the actions, beliefs, and perceptions that capture client trust toward veterinarians. Design: Correlati...

This study investigated coordinated action in multiteam systems employing 233 correspondent systems, comprising 3 highly specialized 6-person teams, that were engaged in an exercise that was simultaneously "laboratory-like" and "field-like." It enriches multiteam system theory through the combination of theoretical perspectives from the team and th...

This chapter prepares the groundwork for this book by discussing computational modeling nontechnically and generally, as it might be applied to questions in the area of organizational behavior. The chapter develops the case that computational modeling could profitably be used more extensively in organizational research than it currently is being us...

In this study, we examined the impact of seeding teams to create maximal and minimal levels of extroversion and conscientiousness variance. Using the theories of complementary and supplementary fit, we make predictions regarding the main and interactive effects of extroversion and conscientiousness variance on performance. Testing our hypotheses in...

This study tested predictions derived from Structural Adaptation Theory (SAT) on the longitudinal effects of centralizing and decentralizing decision-making structures in teams. Results from 93 four-person teams working on a command and control simulation generally supported SAT, documenting that it was more difficult for teams to adapt to a centra...

We are gratified by the large number of commentaries to our focal article (Dalal, Bonaccio, et al., 2010) that advocated greater integration of industrial-organizational psychology and organizational behavior (IOOB) with the field of judgment and decision making (JDM). The commentaries were uniformly constructive and civil. Our disagreements with t...

We challenge the assumption that within-team variability in team efficacy is simply a methodological concern and statistical prerequisite. We do so by developing a theoretical model and research agenda for the study of dispersion in team efficacy. We construct a taxonomy that distinguishes 4 distinct forms of dispersion in team efficacy, discuss th...

Structural Adaptation Theory proposes that it is more difficult for teams to change from competitive to cooperative reward conditions than it is for them to change in the opposite direction, and this has been labeled the cutthroat cooperation effect [Johnson, M. D., Hollenbeck, J. R., Ilgen, D. R., Humphrey, S. E., Meyer, C. J., & Jundt, D. K. (200...

This study examined how the performance of diverse teams is affected by member openness to experience and the extent to which team reward structure emphasizes intragroup differences. Fifty-eight heterogeneous four-person teams engaged in an interactive task. Teams in which reward structure converged with diversity (i.e., “faultline” teams) performe...

Bien que les travailleurs s'adonnent à la fois à nombre de tâches formelles et informelles, les recherches centrées sur le comportement organisationnel s'intéressent préférentiellement aux conduites formelles et à leur produit. Quand l'attention se porte sur les comportements informels, c'est généralement pour les atténuer ou les éliminer. On souti...

We provide an empirical demonstration of the importance of attending to human user individual differences in examinations of trust and automation use. Past research has generally supported the notions that machine reliability predicts trust in automation, and trust in turn predicts automation use. However, links between user personality and percept...

This study examined the relative effectiveness of three structural approaches to re- ducing team size. Seventy-one five-person teams engaged in a simulated interactive task in which the approach to downsizing was manipulated. Results suggest that the structural approaches to reducing team size differentially impact team performance, and this relati...

This article presents a longitudinal examination of antecedents and outcomes of work-to-family conflict. A total of 106 employees participating in an experience-sampling study were asked to respond to daily surveys both at work and at home, and their spouses were interviewed daily via telephone for a period of 2 weeks. Intraindividual analyses reve...

The title of this forum's keynote article by Judge, Cable, Colbert, and Rynes focuses attention on fac- tors that influence the extent to which articles in the field of management are cited. Although the title beats the causation drum a little too loudly and implies a little too strongly a winner-take-all reso- lution to the question of what articl...

A growing body of research shows that groups can systematically enhance their performance

In this article, the authors argue that there is no one best way to make placement decisions on self-managed teams. Drawing from theories of supplementary and complementary fit, they develop a conceptual model that suggests that (a) maximization principles should be applied to extroversion variance (i.e., complementary fit), (b) minimization princi...

Teams of people working together for a common purpose have been a centerpiece of human social organization ever since our ancient ancestors first banded together to hunt game, raise families, and defend their communities. Human history is largely a story of people working together in groups to explore, achieve, and conquer. Yet, the modern concept...

Team personality has received much attention as organizations increasingly organize work around teams. Yet the concept of team personality in the current literature has not been well developed; typically it is considered as an extrapolation of individual personality traits to team. In the present paper, we address team personality by considering re...

Social cognition theory asserts that perceivers (raters) assign stimulus persons (ratees) to social categories. These categories help the raters encode, store, and recall information. In a longitudinal design that represented a performance appraisal situation, this study examined the effects of information about a ratee's category membership on the...

Using attribution theory, this study examined the effects of team leader race on subordinate performance evaluations. The authors found that the team leader’s performance was a major determinant of subordinate performance ratings. However, the team leader’s performance, in combination with race, also affected performance attributions. In high perfo...

Although there is a growing literature on organizational identification, relatively little research has investigated other possible targets of identification. In a sample of veterinarians working in a wide range of organizations, the authors compared their identification with the veterinary profession, their organization, and their workgroup. The a...

To examine social interdependence theory dynamically, we develop a theory of structural adaptation based on "asymmetric adaptability." We suggest that it is more difficult for teams to shift from competitive to cooperative reward structures than from cooperative to competitive structures. We show that teams that switch from competitive to cooperati...

Teams are an integral feature of the American workplace; indeed, more than 80% of the Fortune 500 companies make extensive use of work teams. Action teams, pulled together to carry out a particular time-limited function that requires the specialized expertise of its members, are becoming increasingly common. Researchers have noted that the success...

This study evaluated the utility of generic teamwork skills training for enhancing the effectiveness of action teams. Results from 65 4-person action teams working on an interdependent command and control simulator revealed that generic teamwork skills training had a significant and positive impact on both cognitive and skill-based outcomes. Traine...

This review examines research and theory relevant to work groups and teams typically embedded in organizations and existing over time, although many studies reviewed were conducted in other settings, including the laboratory. Research was organized around a two-dimensional system based on time and the nature of explanatory mechanisms that mediated...

This study tested whether teams working on a command and control simulation adapted to structural change in the manner implied by contingency theories. Teams shifting from a functional to a divisional structure showed better performance than teams making a divisional-to-functional shift. Team levels of coordination mediated this difference, and tea...

Building on the idea of asymmetric adaptability, this study focused on structural and compositional ways to arrange teams in order to maximize both initial performance and structural adaptability. Based on 64 teams that completed a command and control simulation, our results suggest that hybrid teams (teams structured using non-redundant, complimen...

This article tests the degree to which personal and situational variables impact the acquisition of knowledge and skill within interactive project teams. On the basis of the literature regarding attentional capacity, constructive controversy, and truth-supported wins, the authors examined the effects of cognitive ability, workload distribution, Agr...

In this article, the authors developed several hypotheses regarding both the main and interactive effects of 2 types of team inputs on backing up behaviors in teams: (a) team composition characteristics in terms of the personality of the members of the team and (b) team task characteristics in terms of the extent to which the nature of the task is...

As single volume nested within a handbook for all of psychology, our purpose was to provide the depth and breadth that would capture the domain of industrial and organizational psychology in a way valuable for scholars and students in that field. We also hoped to create a volume to which those outside the field could turn in order to gain an apprec...

The work described in this report is part of an ongoing research program looking at the effects of team structure on the effectiveness of decision making teams. Team structures are investigated with respect to their fit to situational demands and to the characteristics of team members. Fit is considered both statically and dynamically. In the latte...

In this paper, we review the literature on hierarchical team decision making — teams in which a formal leader makes decisions based upon the input from a staff or subordinates or other informed parties. We structure our review around the Multilevel Theory of team decision making (Hollenbeck et al., 1995), integrating the disparate works within this...

This article poses the question which reward structure (cooperative or competitive) has the best effects on team performance under which circumstances. Specifically, a cooperative reward structure is predicted to increase performance on means-interdependent tasks, while a competitive reward structure is predicted to increase performance on means-in...

This article develops and tests a structurally based, integrated theory of person-team fit. The theory developed is an extension of structural contingency theory and considers issues of external fit simultaneously with its examination of internal fit at the team level. Results from 80 teams working on an interdependent team task indicate that divis...

This study examined the effects of computer-assisted communication on team decision-making performance as a function of the team's openness to experience. Seventy-nine teams performing a multiple-cue probability learning task were randomly assigned to 1 of 2 experimental conditions: (a) verbal communication or (b) computer-assisted communication (w...

This study reexamines conclusions regarding the superiority of all male teams on traditionally masculine tasks. By decomposing the criterion of decision-making accuracy, we illustrate how male-dominated teams may, in some contexts, constitute the worst gender composition. Specifically, as the percentage of males on a team increased, there was an ex...

A contingency model of reward structures is developed, stating that the relationship between reward structure and team performance is contingent upon the performance dimension specified (speed vs. accuracy), team composition (team members' interpersonal orientation in terms of extroversion and agreeableness), and the relative performance level of i...

Recent studies of veterinary practices and services have suggested that more attention must be focused on business practices and on the skills, knowledge, and abilities (SKAs) of veterinarians related to veterinary practice management (VPM). Responses to these concerns have been directed at the selection and education of veterinarians in veterinary...

The ethical treatment of human participants in psychological research is regulated by both federal guidelines and the ethical standards of the American Psychological Association (APA). Under certain circumstances, however, both APA standards and federal regulations allow for exceptions for informed consent. In spite of the possibility of exception,...

Knowledge of results plays a major role in almost all learning and motivational theories of task performance. Central to all these is the belief that it is necessary to feed back to employees information about the degree to which they have or have not met performance standards. In particular, information about performance that falls short of the st...

The ethical treatment of human participants in psychological research is regulated by both federal guidelines and the ethical standards of the American Psychological Association (APA). Under certain circumstances, however, both APA standards and federal regulations allow for exceptions for informed consent. In spite of the possibility of exception,...

Although informed consent is a primary mechanism for ensuring the ethical treatment of human participants in research, both federal guidelines and American Psychological Association ethical standards recognize that exceptions to it are reasonable under certain conditions. However, agreement about what constitutes a reasonable exception to informed...

Introduction to Computational Modelling in Organizations - the Good Modelling Does, Charles L. Hulin and Daniel R. Ilgen Virtual Organizations, Steven T. Seitz The Impact of Organizational Interventions on Behaviours - an Examination of Different Models of Withdrawal, Kathleen A. Hanisch Comparing Different Models of Withdrawal Using a Computationa...

The research reported here is part of a larger project designed to develop, assess and understand adaptive structures for command and control teams. Much of that project, the A2C2 project, uses a simulated command and control exercise (the Distributed Dynamic Decision-making Simulation (DDD)) and naval personnel who perform experimental exercises p...

The authors propose that all team based change is not the same. It is offered that change is generally more difficult from divisional to functional structures than it is from functional to divisional structures. We offer that successful change from divisional to functional structures is contingent upon individual differences. Additionally, we argue...

From the early 1980s to the present, organizations have increased their reliance on teams. Over the same time period, the amount of traditional small group team research has decreased. The void has been filled by research that is focused on issues facing task-performing teams embedded in organizations. It is argued here that the organizational pers...

The purpose of this study was to examine the implications of accuracy decomposition (D. Gigone & R. Hastie, 1997) for team decision making. Specifically, the authors tested the generalizability of the multilevel theory of team decision making (J. R. Hollenbeck et al., 1995), across various components of accuracy. The authors also tested the general...

This study extends previous research on the multilevel theory of team decision making and shows that team-level decision-making accuracy is affected by factors originating at lower levels of analysis. The results from 380 individuals arrayed into 95 four-person teams working on a simulated naval command and control task indicated that the construct...

Changes in the way organizations are structured and advances in communication technologies are two factors that have altered the conditions under which group decisions are made. Decisions are increasingly made by teams that have a hierarchical structure and whose members have different areas of expertise. In addition, many decisions are no longer m...

The authors propose (a) that team members' general cognitive ability ( g) and conscientiousness are key resources for hierarchical decision-making teams with distributed expertise; (b) that a conjunctive model is most appropriate for capturing staff members' standing on these attributes; and (c) that in addition to main effects, staff attributes i...

The purpose of this chapter is to stimulate research on issues associated with teams of experts in the business, medicine, and military sectors making decisions under stressful conditions. A newly developed computer simulation task that was designed to assist empirical inquiry in this area is described. The authors address how it can be used to stu...

In the early 199Os, the authors began a series of research on decision making in hierarchical teams with distributed expertise. A simulation was developed and a model of decision making in these kinds of teams was proposed. The current research effort continued that work in two ways. First, work was done on the decision making model itself to repli...

The conflicting perspectives of control theory (CT) and self-efficacy theory (SET) concerning positive discrepancy creation (PDC) were tested and are discussed. According to CT, discrepancies between past performance and future goals are continually reduced. This is contrary to SET's focus on setting future goals higher than past performance levels...

The conflicting perspectives of control theory (CT) and self-efficacy theory (SET) concerning positive discrepancy creation (PDC) were tested and are discussed. According to CT, discrepancies between past performance and future goals are continually reduced, This is contrary to SET's focus on setting future goals higher than past performance levels...

The purpose of this study was to examine individual and team performance in situations requiring sustained attention. Eighty research participants arrayed in 20 four-person teams worked for 2 separate 3-hr sessions on a naval-command-and-control simulation. The results of the study replicated the past literature on the vigilance decrement and exten...

The purpose of this research was to develop and test a theory of decision-making performance for hierarchical teams with distributed expertise. This theory identifies 3 core team-level constructs (team informity, staff validity, and hierarchical sensitivity) and 3 constructs below the team level that are central to decision-making accuracy in hiera...

Developed and tested a dynamic model of decision risk that integrates the economic literature on the "house money effect" with the psychological literature on image theory. 135 participants made 35 decisions during the course of a longitudinal, randomized experiment. These decisions were made by high and low past performers under 1 of 4 different c...

Repeated measures regression is described and advocated for team contexts in which mediational tests are appropriate. We propose that this paradigm serves as an excellent design and data-analytic strategy for research on teams and team leadership, because studies in this area are often characterized by a small number of teams and leaders, relative...

The report describes a program of research addressing decision making in hierarchical teams with distributed expertise. A theory of such decision making is presented along with empirical research related to the theory. Then a team simulation exercise was developed to address team decision for four person teams. This exercise presents teams with pro...

In the early 1980s, Landy and Farr (1980) and Feldman (1981) redirected performance appraisal research from issues related to the development of psychometrically sound rating scales to those involving the cognitive processes of raters. Since that time, several reviews have attempted to translate principles from social cognition and cognitive psycho...

This research investigated cognitive processes affecting the accuracy of performance evaluation. One hundred and twenty-five nurses from three hospitals completed questionnaires measuring their cognitive categorization processes and then rated a videotaped nurse's performance. Results focusing on the match between raters' cognitive categories and r...

Lower back disability (LBD) is a widespread phenomenon that has dramatic impacts on individuals' lives, as well as employers' costs. Despite this fact, specialists in the area of human resources have paid little attention to this critical, work-related outcome. The need for human resource professionals to learn more about LBD has become even more u...