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Yes, we complain … so what?
Journal of Managerial Psychology
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to theorize and test a model concerning the role of complaining behaviors in work teams. Despite the prevalence of workplace complaining, there is no consensus in the literature regarding the consequences of those behaviors and the extent to which they are harmful.
Design/methodology/approach
Using a multisource approach and a team-level design, the authors collected data from 82 teams (i.e. 394 members and their 82 immediate superiors) working in a Canadian public safety organization.
Findings
The results show that complaining behaviors are negatively related to two effectiveness outcomes (i.e. team performance and team process improvement) and that meaningfulness mediates these relationships. The results also reveal that task interdependence moderates the relationship between complaining behaviors and meaningfulness. More specifically, complaining behaviors have a stronger relationship with meaningfulness when the level of task interdependence is high.
Originality/value
The present study contributes to the literature on counterproductive behaviors by deepening the understanding of emergent states and outcomes stemming from workplace complaining, particularly in work teams. The findings of this study highlight the negative consequences that complaining behaviors may have in a team setting, the underlying mechanism involved in these relationships, and the moderating role of task interdependence.
... Prior research highlights negativity as a dysfunctional form of communication. The study of Aubé and Rousseau (2016) showed that complaining behavior within teams are negatively related to team performance and team process improvement. At the same time, dysfunctional communication such as criticizing others or complaining were negatively related to team and organizational success (Aubé & Rousseau, 2016;Kauffeld & Lehmann-Willenbrock, 2012). ...
... The study of Aubé and Rousseau (2016) showed that complaining behavior within teams are negatively related to team performance and team process improvement. At the same time, dysfunctional communication such as criticizing others or complaining were negatively related to team and organizational success (Aubé & Rousseau, 2016;Kauffeld & Lehmann-Willenbrock, 2012). ...
... Our results highlight the direct impact of interruption episodes on content and valence communication within teams. Positive valence communication has been associated with beneficial outcomes for teams (Jouanne et al., 2017;Lehmann-Willenbrock et al., 2013;Soukup et al., 2020), while negative communicative statements carry adverse implications (Aubé & Rousseau, 2016;Kauffeld & Lehmann-Willenbrock, 2012). Consequently, it becomes relevant for practitioners to reflect on how they can tackle the effects of interruptions within teams. ...
... Negative disagreements are statements or actions that express disaffirmation in a harmful way, neglect responsibility, and impede action. However, despite the performancerelevance of negative disagreements at work (Aubé & Rousseau, 2016;Kauffeld & Lehmann-Willenbrock, 2012), we have surprisingly few answers to the question what triggers these behavioral incidents during organizational meetings. This is a relevant shortcoming as it limits the ability of meeting participants to reduce negative statements if they purposefully intend to do so. ...
... So far, scholarly work that has investigated antecedents of negative disagreements followed a deductive approach and utilized rather narrow conceptual frameworks to make a priori assumptions. For example, scholars used social information processing theory (Aubé & Rousseau, 2016), social exchange theory (Colbert, Mount, Harter, Witt, & Barrick, 2004), equity theory (Kish-Gephart, Harrison, & Treviño, 2010), emotional contagion (Barsade, 2002), and personality theories (Kowalski, 1996) to explain negativity at work. By definition, research grounded in these theories only focused on a limited set of antecedents. ...
... An utterance-level approach adds to survey-based insights into static predictors or consequences of expressed negativity, such as verbalizing resistance to change (Oreg, 2006;Turgut, Michel, Rothenhöfer, & Sonntag, 2016), complaining (Aubé & Rousseau, 2016;Kowalski, 1996), or denying responsibility (Gosling, Denizeau, & Oberlé, 2006). At the utterance level, negative disagreements refer to a concrete set of communication behaviors, and as such may surface as part of broader constructs such as counterproductive work or meeting behaviors (Yoerger, Jones, Allen, & Crowe, 2017). ...
... Aube and Rousseau also sought to uncover the moderating effect of task interdependence in task importance and complaining behaviors using a path analytic approach. The moderating model indicated the path estimates were significant in task interdependence as a moderator of task importance and complaining interactions (Aube & Rousseau, 2016). The findings supported an increased recognition of the utmost detrimental complaining behaviors. ...
... Another study on complaining behaviors in work teams appeared in the subsection on task interdependence in the review of the literature. In that study, Aube and Rousseau (2016) collected questionnaire responses from a sample of 394 participants (team members and direct supervisors) from a public safety institution in Canada. The aim was to test a model of complaining in work teams using task interdependence in a moderating role and task meaningfulness in a mediating role in complaining behaviors. ...
... According to this perspective, moderators detect the strength of a relationship, while mediators describe the functioning relationship among variables (Baron & Kenny, 1986). Specifically, Aube and Rousseau (2016) applied path analysis to examine the relationships among task meaningfulness, task interdependence, and complaining behaviors on team performance and team function advancements. According to Aube and Rousseau (2016), a path analysis selection was appropriate, as it examined only the study's measured variables, task interdependence, task meaningfulness, and complaining behaviors, to evaluate interrelationships among variables through their correlational structures. ...
This study bridged a gap in Shared Leadership literature on task interdependent workflow relationships. The aim of this quantitative, nonexperimental, explanatory study was to explain the predictability of Initiated Task Interdependence and Received Task Interdependence workflows on Shared Leadership.
... In fact, social information is defined as a form of public opinion. It is influential and can change people's thinking and attitudes (Aubé & Rousseau, 2016). Today's social environment is flooded with public opinion regarding entrepreneurship failure or risk. ...
... Regarding the moderating effect of the discrimination of social information, according to Aubé and Rousseau (2016), social information is a form of public opinion, which has an influence on changing people's thinking and attitudes. In fact, entrepreneurship has become a popular topic in recent years. ...
This study’s purpose was to investigate the relationships among learning through experience, learning for stress resistance, learning cognition, learning outcomes, the entrepreneurial mindset, and the discrimination of social information. The main research methods adopted in the study were the partial least squares (PLS) and the Sobel test. We adopted PLS to test the relationships between six variables, including mediating and moderating effects. In addition to PLS, this study used the Sobel test to verify the mediating effects. Large samples may cause a mediating effect testing error when PLS is used; however, the Sobel test can resolve this issue. According to our test results, learning through experience and learning for stress resistance can change students’ learning cognition and improve their learning outcomes. In addition, an entrepreneurial mindset has a mediating effect on the relationship between learning through experience, learning for stress resistance, and learning cognition. That is, for the student, having an entrepreneurial mindset strengthens the effect of learning through experience, as well as learning for stress resistance, and improves learning cognition. However, the discrimination of social information has a moderating effect on the relationship between learning cognition and learning outcomes. That is, a lower discrimination capability with respect to social information changes learning cognition and results in poor learning outcomes.
... n the field of consumption, consumer complaint behavior (CCB) is often seen as a negative behavior that is counterproductive to productivity [1]. Especially in the context of the digital economy, overloaded information causes serious homogenization of content, which significantly aggravates the generation of CCB. ...
In recent years, the number of consumer complaints in the live-streaming e-commerce industry has sharply increased, seriously affecting the operation and management of platforms and the sustainable development of the live-streaming economy. However, the key influencing factors, underlying mechanisms, and theoretical models of consumer complaints have not been fully explored. Therefore, we innovatively propose a two-staged SEM-ANN technique to identify key influencing factors and explore their nonlinear relationships. Through experimental analysis of the collected data, we have found several interesting conclusions. The results show that consumer confusion positively influences the venting negative emotional motives and produces negative attitudes, and consumer confusion positively influences altruistic motives. Group complaints positively influence the venting negative emotional motives and altruistic motives. At the same time, it has been confirmed that altruistic motives have significant mediating effects. The findings contribute to the literature and guide to help managers, participants, and policymakers establish effective and innovative operational management measures.
... Next, by highlighting meaningfulness as a core intervening mechanism in teams' goal orientation (in)congruence-performance linkage, we heed calls for more HRM research on meaningfulness (e.g., Bailey et al., 2019;Soane et al., 2013). Specifically, we not only broaden the construct's nomological net toward the interplay of different goal orientations but also expand the literature's traditional individual-level focus by exploring the emergence of arguably the most essential attitude toward work in the context of teams (Aubé & Rousseau, 2016;Lisak et al., 2022;Yang et al., 2019). Combined, these contributions are expected to further the understanding of team performance management by offering a generalized account of how goal orientations at the heart of today's performance management systems may jointly affect team performance. ...
Organizations must excel at what they do well while also learning new ways of operating to achieve long‐term success. Work teams may thus find themselves pursuing contradictory objectives to support the organization's strategy. We investigated teams' goal orientation (in)congruence and its impact on task meaningfulness and, ultimately, performance, hypothesizing the potential pitfalls of teams simultaneously pursuing both learning‐ and performance‐goal orientations. Three‐wave, multisource data were collected from 109 teams at a large North American mortgage company. In a polynomial regression and response surface analytical framework, team task meaningfulness—and subsequent team performance—was enhanced when teams had greater divergence between their learning‐ and performance‐goal orientations but suffered when both goal orientations were more aligned. Our investigation thus revealed the potential pitfalls of teams simultaneously pursuing both learning‐ and performance‐goal orientations. We discuss the theoretical contributions of the team goal orientation incongruence effect substantiated in this study, as well as implications for practice and future research.
... We focus on team creative performance as our focal outcome because of the existing conversation in the literature on the cheating-creativity relationship, but future research may consider how team cheating configurations impact other forms of team performance. For instance, on tasks with lesser complexity and interdependence (e.g., number of product sales a team logs), cheating may have less of a negative impact on a team's social climate and performance, as members are required to interact less and are less influenced by each other (Aubé, & Rousseau, 2016). ...
Unethical behavior is a persistent problem in teams that can stimulate harmful relationship conflict and undermine collective performance. Yet, when considering its impact, scholars tend to focus on the overall amount of unethical behavior and neglect how it is distributed within the team. We propose that considering the way unethical behavior is patterned within teams provides a new lens by which to uncover when unethical behavior has less of a harmful impact. Integrating typologies of team configurations with social impact theory, we theorize that the impact of cheating on relationship conflict and creative performance depends on the interaction between how it is configured (i.e., the amount and pattern of individual member cheating behavior) and levels of peer‐based rational control. In a diverse sample of almost one hundred teams, we find that relative to teams with a fragmented cheating configuration, teams with a bad apple cheating configuration experience less relationship conflict in contexts with high peer‐based rational control; an effect that subsequently impacts team creative performance. Our research demonstrates the value added by considering how cheating emerges as different team configurations and offers implications for interventions intended to suppress its harmful effects.
... The 5-item scale developed by Aubé et al. [80] was used to measure task interdependence (e.g., "I have to work closely with my colleagues to do my work properly"). Previous studies have indicated that this scale is reliable (α = 0.91) [81]. ...
Are psychologically healthy employees more proactive at work? Surprisingly, responses to this question are lacking as empirical research has overlooked the wellbeing–proactive performance relationship. Drawing insights from the conservation of resources theory and the motivational fit perspective, this study proposes that leader-member exchange and team-member exchange act as social resources that convey the benefits of psychological wellbeing to subsequent proactive performance. Moreover, job complexity and task interdependence—two job characteristics that enhance the motivational potential of social resources—are expected to amplify these positive indirect relationships. Data from a three-wave, time-lagged study conducted among employees (N = 318) from French-Canadian organizations were used to test our hypothesized model. The results indicated that leader-member exchange mediated a positive relationship between wellbeing and proactive performance and that the contribution of wellbeing to proactive performance via leader-member exchange was increased when job complexity was higher. We also found a negative indirect relationship between wellbeing and proactive performance via team-member exchange when team interdependence was lower. Theoretical and practical implications of this research are discussed.
... Because it was outside the scope of our proposal, we did not discuss studies that investigated the outcomes of workplace deviance by and within units in detail. However, we would like to briefly point out that several studies demonstrated the detrimental direct consequences on strategic organizational outcomes (e.g., lower objective unit performance, financial losses; Aubé & Rousseau, , 2016Cole et al., 2008;Detert et al., 2007;Dunlop & Lee, 2004;Lin et al., 2016) as well as indirect consequences of workplace deviance in terms of a suboptimal functioning of units (e.g., lower team viability, lower quality of group experience; . This highlights the almost complete absence of research looking at potentially constructive effects of workplace deviance (for a notable exception, see Criscuolo et al., 2014). ...
Within the constellation of employee misconduct, workplace deviance possesses the somewhat distinctive feature of violating organizational norms. Yet, the burgeoning research examining the social context surrounding workplace deviance typically fails to properly account for it. Interdisciplinary research has demonstrated that within organizations (a) multiple reference groups provide descriptive and injunctive norms about (in)appropriate behavior; (b) even when embedded within the organizational hierarchy, norms are not necessarily consistent across these groups; and (c) the immediate reference group often exerts a crucial influence. Against this background, we discuss prevalent conceptualizations of workplace deviance and systematically review the literature from 1995 to 2017. We present our findings according to external and organizational, leadership, and intraunit antecedents of workplace deviance by and within units, distinguishing, in particular, unit composition, processes and emergent states, climates, and norms. We conclude with a discussion of theoretical and methodological avenues for future research.
Workflow interruptions are skyrocketing in the contemporary workplace, especially in collaborative team environments. The reliance on (communication) technologies and accessibility through email and phone creates increasing avenues for frequent teamwork interruptions. In this study, we investigate in fourteen multidisciplinary team meetings in hybrid healthcare settings (1) which workflow interruptions naturally emerge and (2) how these interruptions influence the communicative processes within the team. We find evidence for an interruptive meeting environment, characterized by videoconferencing issues, disruptive beepers/phones that go off, and people leaving and entering the meeting room during patient discussions. Contrary to what was expected, team members initially respond to the interruption with positive statements (i.e., humor) as a coping mechanism, which decreases significantly in the minutes after the interruptive event. After the interruptive episode, significantly more negative statements, as well as conversational repetitiveness occurs. This research contributes to understanding naturally occurring workflow interruptions in actual organizational healthcare teams, by providing objective and fine-grained empirical insights into how workflow interruptions affect changes in the teams’ communication.
Although team deviance is known to detract from team functioning, extant literature largely focuses on deviance that is independently enacted and directed internally toward other members. This relatively narrow focus poses limitations to the practical application of strategies to reduce the incidence and negative impact of team deviance. We offer a four-dimensional typology that takes into account features of team deviance that are important yet undertheorized: level of coordination and target membership. We use this typology to summarize current research, highlight the narratives on team deviance that underlie each dimension, and discuss how to advance the research domain.
Meaningfulness of work has been heralded as one of the most important drivers of individual and organizational outcomes. However, the extent to which this critical psychological state manifests itself in the workplace and contributes to positive job performance is not yet fully understood. In this article, we draw from broaden‐and‐build theory to suggest that meaningfulness enhances employees' promotive voice behaviors, which in turn are positively related to job performance ratings by their leaders. We also suggest that leader–member relationships strengthen this mediational process. An analysis of survey data of 249 employees with matched lagged performance appraisal data supported our hypotheses. This study is important because it demonstrates that meaningfulness is not only associated with positive attitudinal responses and individual well‐being, but also holds value for organizations in that it fosters desirable workplace behaviors such as job performance.
Purpose
The purpose of this study was to take an inductive approach in examining the extent to which organizational contexts represent significant sources of variance in supervisor performance ratings, and to explore various factors that may explain contextual rating variability.
Design/Methodology/Approach
Using archival field performance rating data from a large state law enforcement organization, we used a multilevel modeling approach to partition the variance in ratings due to ratees, raters, as well as rating contexts.
Findings
Results suggest that much of what may often be interpreted as idiosyncratic rater variance, may actually reflect systematic rating variability across contexts. In addition, performance-related and non-performance factors including contextual rating tendencies accounted for significant rating variability.
Implications
Supervisor ratings represent the most common approach for measuring job performance, and understanding the nature and sources of rating variability is important for research and practice. Given the many uses of performance rating data, our findings suggest that continuing to identify contextual sources of variability is particularly important for addressing criterion problems, and improving ratings as a form of performance measurement.
Originality/Value
Numerous performance appraisal models suggest the importance of context; however, previous research had not partitioned the variance in supervisor ratings due to omnibus context effects in organizational settings. The use of a multilevel modeling approach allowed the examination of contextual influences, while controlling for ratee and rater characteristics.
We conducted an experiment to examine the effect of how subordinates present ideas (constructive vs. complaining form) on supervisor (receiver) responses (perceptions of subordinate intrusiveness and of overall performance). We demonstrated a joint effect of subordinate idea presentation (manipulated) and supervisor dogmatism (measured) such that supervisors with high levels of dogmatism rated subordinates who presented voice constructively as more intrusive and lower in performance than those with low dogmatism. Supervisor perspective taking mediated these relationships. Our findings highlight the importance of presenting ideas in a constructive form to receivers with low levels of dogmatism.
This article investigates trust and organisational justice as antecedents of works council (WC) effectiveness perceptions and the moderating role of industrial relations climate on this relationship. A 2-year longitudinal study of WC participants in two UK organisations (a housing association and a professional services firm) was undertaken. Results show positive significant relationships between both trust and organisational justice, and WC outcomes of WC performance, WC usefulness and outcome satisfaction. Industrial relations climate is found to moderate the relationship between justice and WC performance, WC usefulness, and outcome satisfaction.
Researchers have used various concepts to understand the conditions and dynamics by which conflict can be managed constructively. This review proposes that the variety of terms obscures consistent findings that open-minded discussions in which protagonists freely express their own views, listen and understand opposing ones, and then integrate them promote constructive conflict. Studies from several traditions also suggest that mutual benefit relationships are critical antecedents for open-minded discussion. This integration of research findings identifies the skills and relationships that can help managers and employees deal with their increasingly complex conflicts. Research is needed to deepen our understanding of the dynamics of open-minded discussion and the conditions that promote it as well as when open-mindedness is inappropriate. Training studies can test and show how the model of open-minded discussion supported by mutual benefit relationships can be applied in cross-cultural and other challenging settings.
This study follows the idea that the key to understanding team meeting effectiveness lies in uncovering the microlevel interaction processes throughout the meeting. Ninety-two regular team meetings were videotaped. Interaction data were coded and evaluated with the act4teams coding scheme and INTERACT software. Team and organizational success variables were gathered via questionnaires and telephone interviews. The results support the central function of interaction processes as posited in the traditional input-process-output model. Teams that showed more functional interaction, such as problem-solving interaction and action planning, were significantly more satisfied with their meetings. Better meetings were associated with higher team productivity. Moreover, constructive meeting interaction processes were related to organizational success 2.5 years after the meeting. Dysfunctional communication, such as criticizing others or complaining, showed significant negative relationships with these outcomes. These negative effects were even more pronounced than the positive effects of functional team meeting interaction. The results suggest that team meeting processes shape both team and organizational outcomes. The critical meeting behaviors identified here provide hints for group researchers and practitioners alike who aim to improve meeting success.
Complaining is a pervasive and important form of social communication but one whose social communicative functions have yet to be subject to empirical investigation. The present study was the first to examine the role of complaining in everyday social interactions. College students kept diaries of the complaints they made to other people for 3 consecutive days, twice during the semester. Students recorded the complaint, the reason for expressing it, and the response it elicited. Over 75% of all complaints registered were non instrumental in nature, in that they were not directed at changing an existing state of affairs but, rather, were expressed for reasons such as to vent frustration or to solicit sympathy. The most frequent complaints involved specific behaviors of another person. The most frequent response to a complaint was to agree with the complainer's statement. The importance of complaining as a form of social communication is discussed, and a number of hypotheses are generated for future research.
This article examines the key themes surrounding gossip including its contexts, the various outcomes (positive and negative) of gossip, as well as a selection of challenges and controversies. The challenges that are highlighted revolve around definitional issues, methodological approaches, and ethical considerations. The authors’ analysis suggests that the characteristics and features of gossip lend itself to a process-oriented approach whereby the beginning and, particularly, end points of gossip are not always easily identified. Gossip about a subject or person can temporarily disappear only for it to resurface at some later stage. In addition, questions pertaining to the effects of gossip and ethical-based arguments depend on the nature of the relationships within the gossip triad (gossiper, listener/respondent, and target).
This article explores the effects of team voice and worker representative voice, as well as their interaction, on labor productivity. We examine team voice in terms of team influence on key work-related issues and representative voice via the degree of worker representatives’ influence on multiple collective voice issues. We thus build on the European tradition of examining both direct and indirect voice and their implications for valued organizational outcomes. We find that neither type of voice bears a significant relationship to labor productivity when examined solely but that team voice significantly contributes to enhanced worker efficiency when considered in conjunction with representative voice. In examining the interaction of the two types of voice, we find that a combination of low team and low representative voice leads to inferior labor efficiency compared to other conditions. We also find a negative interaction between team voice and worker representative voice, supporting an interpretation that these types of voice do not complement each other with respect to worker productivity. The positive impact of each type of voice is significantly stronger at low levels of the other type of voice.
Purpose
This study seeks to identify the relationship between leader behaviour and the effectiveness of the members of a self‐managing team (SMT) in terms of perceived individual performance and emotional exhaustion. In particular, it aims to examine the moderating role of individual team tenure.
Design/methodology/approach
A questionnaire study was conducted involving 154 team members of 21 SMTs. Two leadership dimensions were measured, plus team tenure and effectiveness (in terms of perceived individual performance and emotional exhaustion) of the individuals involved.
Findings
Team members with a short team tenure reported higher levels of individual performance when their team leader demonstrated directive behaviour. Conversely, these relatively new team members reported lower levels of individual performance and experienced greater emotional exhaustion when their team leader adopted coaching behaviour. For team members with longer team tenure, however, individual performance was greater and emotional exhaustion less when their team leader exhibited a coaching style of behaviour.
Research limitations/implications
The data were self‐reported and the cross‐sectional design of the study precludes conclusions about the direction of causality.
Practical implications
Leaders of SMTs can benefit from insights into how the team tenure of the individual team members affects their responses to their leadership behaviours. By adapting their leadership styles to suit the characteristics of individual team members, leaders may be able to increase the effectiveness of the individual team members.
Originality/value
This study has examined the effectiveness of different leadership styles within real‐life SMTs and shown the importance of attending to the moderating effect of individual team members' team tenure.
This study investigates the role of team members’ self-managing behaviors in regard to three dimensions of team effectiveness. Furthermore, this study examines the moderating effect of task routineness on these relationships. The sample consists of 97 work teams (341 members and 97 immediate supervisors) drawn from a public safety organization. Results show that team self-managing behaviors are positively related to team performance, team viability, and team process improvement. Results also indicate that task routineness moderates the relationships that team self-managing behaviors have with team performance and team viability such that these relationships are stronger when the level of task routineness is low. However, this moderating effect is not significant in regard to the relationship between team self-managing behaviors and team process improvement. Taken together, these findings suggest that emphasis on team self-managing behaviors may enhance team effectiveness, but this enhancement effect is contingent on task routineness.
Organizational researchers have become increasingly interested in multi-level constructs – that is, constructs that are meaningful at multiple levels of analysis. However, despite the plethora of theoretical and empirical work on multi-level topics, explicit frameworks for validation of multi-level constructs have yet to be fully developed. Moreover, available principles for conducting construct validation assume that the construct resides at a single level of analysis. We propose a five-step framework for conceptualizing and testing multi-level constructs by integrating principles of construct validation with recent advancements in multi-level theory, research, and methodology. The utility of the framework is illustrated using theoretical and empirical examples.
Time serves as a medium for collaboration in teams, allowing members to exchange personal and task-related information. We propose that stronger team reward contingencies stimulate collaboration. As time passes, increasing collaboration weakens the effects of surface-level (demographic) diversity on team outcomes but strengthens those of deep-level (psychological) diversity. Also, perceived diversity transmits the impact (if actual diversity on team social integration, which in turn affects task performance. Results from four waves of data on 144 student project teams support these propositions and the strong relevance of time to research on work team diversity.
Team design characteristics are important antecedents in Input-Process-Outcome models. The aim of this study was to explore the relationships among traditional task characteristics (task meaningfulness, autonomy, and feedback), team performance, and team member satisfaction within the same framework. We collected data from 382 members and 100 managers of 100 teams. The results of structural equation analysis partly supported our theoretical framework. Team member satisfaction mediated the effects of task autonomy and feedback on the team performance. Task meaningfulness had a directly positive effect on team performance. These results draw attention to the different effects of the aspects of traditional task characteristics and the satisfaction-performance relationship in a team context.
F. L. Schmidt and J. E. Hunter (1989) critiqued the within-group interrater reliability statistic (
rwg) described by L. R. James et al (1984). S. W. Kozlowski and K. Hattrup (1992) responded to the Schmidt and Hunter critique and argued that
rwg is a suitable index of interrater agreement. This article focuses on the interpretation of
rwg as a measure of agreement among judges' ratings of a single target. A new derivation of
rwg is given that underscores this interpretation. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
Building from an attraction-selection-attrition framework by B. Schneider (see record
1988-09366-001) and the socialization literature, this study views personality, affect, and behavior as group-level phenomena. Among a sample of 26 work groups, it was found that individual affect was consistent within groups, suggesting that the affective tone of a group is a meaningful construct. Characteristic levels of the personality traits positive affectivity and negative affectivity within groups were positively associated with the positive and negative affective tones of the groups, respectively. In addition, the affective tone of a group was related to group behaviors. More specifically, the negative affective tone of a group was found to be negatively related to the extent to which the group engaged in prosocial behavior. Absenteeism by group members was negatively correlated with the positive affective tone. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
Tested a model hypothesizing that task interdependence affects supervisor-reported extrarole behavior indirectly through employee felt responsibility. The model was supported by path analysis in a sample of 290 health-care and administrative employees in 2 hospitals. The results (1) demonstrate the importance of asymmetric felt responsibility to extrarole behavior and (2) show the need to include mediating psychological states when testing the effects of workplace structures on extrarole behaviors. New scales for measured employee-perceived task interdependence are introduced. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
Purpose
The purpose of this study was to investigate the relationship between counterproductive behaviors (CPBs) and psychological well-being in a teamwork setting. Moreover, we examined the moderating effect of task interdependence. CPBs are considered in light of four dimensions, namely parasitism, interpersonal aggression, boastfulness, and misuse of resources.
Design/Methodology/Approach
Data were collected from a sample of 249 individuals working in a Canadian prison. The study was based on two measurement times.
Findings
The results reveal that the four dimensions of CPBs are negatively related to psychological well-being and that relationships involving interpersonal aggression and boastfulness are moderated by task interdependence.
Implications
This study highlights the importance for managers to identify the presence of CPBs in their team as soon as possible so as to be able to remedy them before they affect team members’ psychological well-being. Moreover, interpersonal aggression and boastfulness may be particularly detrimental in a context of high interdependence.
Originality/Value
This study further extends the nomological network of CPBs. Indeed, the results indicate that the presence of CPBs may harm employees’ mental health. Furthermore, this study shows that a contextual characteristic (i.e., task interdependence) may amplify the detrimental effect of some CPBs.
The authors review team research that has been conducted over the past 10 years. They discuss the nature of work teams in context and note the substantive differences underlying different types of teams. They then review representative studies that have appeared in the past decade in the context of an enhanced input-process-outcome framework that has evolved into an inputs-mediators-outcome time-sensitive approach. They note what has been learned along the way and identify fruitful directions for future research. They close with a reconsideration of the typical team research investigation and call for scholars to embrace the complexity that surrounds modern team-based organizational designs as we move forward.
Drawing from Marks, Mathieu, and Zaccaro (2001) , we proposed that narrowly focused teamwork processes load onto 3 higher-order teamwork process dimensions, which in turn load onto a general teamwork process factor. Results of model testing using meta-analyses of relationships among narrow teamwork processes provided support for the structure of this multidimensional theory of teamwork process. Meta-analytic results also indicated that teamwork processes have positive relationships with team performance and member satisfaction, and that the relationships are similar across the teamwork dimensions and levels of process specificity. Supplemental analyses revealed that the 3 intermediate-level teamwork processes are positively and strongly related to cohesion and potency. Results of moderator analyses suggested that relationships among teamwork processes and team performance are somewhat dependent on task interdependence and team size. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR] Copyright of Personnel Psychology is the property of Wiley-Blackwell and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)
This research effort leveraged the science of training to guide a taxonomic integration and a series of meta-analyses to gauge the effectiveness and boundary conditions of team training interventions for enhancing team outcomes.
Disparate effect sizes across primary studies have made it difficult to determine the true strength of the relationships between team training techniques and team outcomes.
Several meta-analytic integrations were conducted to examine the relationships between team training interventions and team functioning. Specifically, we assessed the relative effectiveness of these interventions on team cognitive, affective, process, and performance outcomes. Training content, team membership stability, and team size were investigated as potential moderators of the relationship between team training and outcomes. In total, the database consisted of 93 effect sizes representing 2650 teams.
The results suggested that moderate, positive relationships exist between team training interventions and each of the outcome types. The findings of moderator analyses indicated that training content, team membership stability, and team size moderate the effectiveness of these interventions.
Our findings suggest that team training interventions are a viable approach organizations can take in order to enhance team outcomes. They are useful for improving cognitive outcomes, affective outcomes, teamwork processes, and performance outcomes. Moreover, results suggest that training content, team membership stability, and team size moderate the effectiveness of team training interventions.
Applications of the results from this research are numerous. Those who design and administer training can benefit from these findings in order to improve the effectiveness of their team training interventions.
The present study examines the association between dysfunctional team behavior and team performance. Data included measures of teams' dysfunctional behavior and negative affective tone as well as supervisors' ratings of teams' (nonverbal) negative emotional expressivity and performance. Utilizing a field sample of 61 work teams, the authors tested the proposed relationships with robust data analytic techniques. Results were consistent with the hypothesized conceptual scheme, in that negative team affective tone mediated the relationship between dysfunctional team behavior and performance when teams' nonverbal negative expressivity was high but not when nonverbal expressivity was low. On the basis of the findings, the authors conclude that the connection between dysfunctional behavior and performance in team situations is more complex than was previously believed--thereby yielding a pattern of moderated mediation. In sum, the findings demonstrated that team members' collective emotions and emotional processing represent key mechanisms in determining how dysfunctional team behavior is associated with team performance.
Although everyone complains at least occasionally, surprisingly little research attention has been devoted to the topic of complaining. In this review, complaints are defined as expressions of dissatisfaction, whether subjectively experienced or not, for the purpose of venting emotions or achieving intrapsychic goals, interpersonal goals, or both. A theoretical model of complaining is presented that examines the relationship between self-focus, the perceived utility of complaining, and complaining. In addition, this article examines variables related to people's dissatisfaction and complaining thresholds (i.e., negative affect, locus of control, self-presentational concerns, age, and gender), functions of complaining, and intrapersonal and interpersonal consequences of complaining.
Interest in the problem of method biases has a long history in the behavioral sciences. Despite this, a comprehensive summary of the potential sources of method biases and how to control for them does not exist. Therefore, the purpose of this article is to examine the extent to which method biases influence behavioral research results, identify potential sources of method biases, discuss the cognitive processes through which method biases influence responses to measures, evaluate the many different procedural and statistical techniques that can be used to control method biases, and provide recommendations for how to select appropriate procedural and statistical remedies for different types of research settings.
Organizational citizenship behavior (OCB) refers to discretionary, nonrequired contributions by members to the organizations that employ them. Evidence indicates that job satisfaction is more closely related to such contributions than to productivity in core job tasks. Other data suggest that personality also is more likely to predict such discretionary behaviors rather than task productivity. Various typologies and dimensions of OCB have been posited, but the most parsimonious structure consists of two major dimensions, roughly analogous to discretionary help and support to particular persons and discretionary levels of conformity to organizational rules. Compelling findings support the hypothesis that unit level OCB indeed predicts various criteria of organizational effectiveness. Cross-cultural research in OCB has begun and is proceeding at an accelerating pace, with indications that the structure of what is perceived as OCB varies somewhat across cultures. Moreover, some forms or levels of intended OCB might prove dysfunctional for either the organization or the individual or both.
In this article we introduce the concept of workplace incivility and explain how incivility can potentially spiral into increasingly intense aggressive behaviors. To gain an understanding of the mechanisms that underlie an "incivility spiral," we examine what happens at key points: the starting and tipping points. Furthermore, we describe several factors that can facilitate the occurrence and escalation of an incivility spiral and the secondary spirals that can result. We offer research propositions and discuss implications of workplace incivility for researchers and practitioners.
The rapid growth of research on organizational citizenship behaviors (OCBs) has resulted in some conceptual confusion about the nature of the construct, and made it difficult for all but the most avid readers to keep up with developments in this domain. This paper critically examines the literature on organizational citizenship behavior and other, related constructs. More specifically, it: (a) explores the conceptual similarities and differences between the various forms of "citizenship" behavior constructs identified in the literature; (b) summarizes the empirical findings of both the antecedents and consequences of OCBs; and (c) identifies several interesting directions for future research.
Interest in the problem of method biases has a long history in the behavioral sciences. Despite this, a comprehensive summary of the potential sources of method biases and how to control for them does not exist. Therefore, the purpose of this article is to examine the extent to which method biases influence behavioral research results, identify potential sources of method biases, discuss the cognitive processes through which method biases influence responses to measures, evaluate the many different procedural and statistical techniques that can be used to control method biases, and provide recommendations for how to select appropriate procedural and statistical remedies for different types of research settings.
A model hypothesizing that task interdependence affects supervisor-reported extrarole behavior indirectly through employee felt responsibility was tested in this study. The model was supported by path analysis in a sample of 290 health-care and administrative employees in two hospitals. The results (a) demonstrate the importance of asymmetric felt responsibility to extrarole behavior and (b) show the need to include mediating psychological states when testing the effects of workplace structures on extrarole behaviors. New scales for measured employee-perceived task interdependence are introduced.
Organizational and psychological climate research has been plagued by cross-level inference problems. This paper advocates treating the organization as the unit of theory for organizational climate while preserving the individual as the unit of theory for psychological climate. It examines multilevel conceptual problems in climate research and discusses strategies for improving the validity and assessing the reliability of measurement. Additional multilevel research on climate and other areas of organizational science, particularly organizational culture, is encouraged.
We examined the antecedents, consequences, and mediational role of team empowerment using 111 work teams in four organizations. The results indicated that the actions of external leaders, the production/service responsibilities given to teams, team-based human resources policies, and the social structure of teams all worked to enhance employee team empowerment experiences. More empowered teams were also more productive and proactive than less empowered teams and had higher levels of customer service, job satisfaction, and organizational and team commitment.[ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to increase understanding of the ways workers can actively make their own work experiences more meaningful.
Design/methodology/approach
The data consist of 29 interviews with people from three professions. The authors analyzed the interviews by coding the statements into first‐ and second‐order categories, and then aggregating them into theoretical constructs; and by recognizing relations between the constructs.
Findings
Workers try to increase the proportion of positive cues extracted from work to make their work more meaningful. The three main tactics for increasing the proportion of positive cues are cognitively emphasizing the positive qualities of work, developing competencies to be better able to produce positive outcomes and positive reactions from others, and influencing the work content.
Research limitations/implications
This model provides a preliminary understanding of meaningfulness‐making, based on cross‐sectional interview data. Future research should use alternative methods, and verify and elaborate the findings.
Practical implications
Managers can promote workers’ sense of meaningfulness by coaching and enabling meaningfulness‐making tactics identified in this paper.
Originality/value
This paper presents alternative ways to achieve work meaningfulness that complement the previously recognized job crafting and sensemaking routes.
The current chapter presents a qualitative analysis of the emotional and substantive content of 300 vents found on public job-related venting web sites. We leverage the related yet distinct literatures on venting, complaining, expressive writing, and computer-mediated communication to gain insight into how employees understand, communicate, and try to manage emotional experiences at work through these types of outlets. We found that employees vent about mistreatment by others, others’ incompetence or laziness, inequity, under-stimulation, and broader economic trends. In doing so, they often express anger in extreme forms involving profanity, personal attacks, and desires for retribution.
The rapid growth of research on organizational citizenship behaviors (OCBs) has resulted in some conceptual confusion about the nature of the construct, and made it difficult for all but the most avid readers to keep up with developments in this domain. This paper critically examines the literature on organizational citizenship behavior and other, related constructs. More specifically, it: (a) explores the conceptual similarities and differences between the various forms of “citizenship” behavior constructs identified in the literature; (b) summarizes the empirical findings of both the antecedents and consequences of OCBs; and (c) identifies several interesting directions for future research.
To examine whether working under stressful circumstances restricts or enhances team effectiveness, a structural contingency model for team effectiveness was tested by focusing on job structuring (mechanistic/organic structuring) as a key factor, which interacts with qualitative and quantitative stress on team attitude (team commitment) and outcomes (team effectiveness). Findings from 73 primary care teams indicated that mechanistic structuring for teams working under quantitative stress was positively associated with team commitment, which in turn fostered team effectiveness, whereas organic structuring for working under qualitative stress improved team effectiveness. Furthermore, team commitment mediated the relationships between stress and structuring and team effectiveness. These findings support a structural contingency model for improving team effectiveness under stress. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
This study draws from social information processing theory and the climate literature to examine an antecedent to and the consequences of voice climate, defined as shared group member perceptions of the extent to which they are encouraged to engage in voice behaviors. The authors test their hypotheses using data collected from a sample of 374 full-time employees nested in 54 work groups. Their results indicate that group perceptions of supervisor undermining have a negative effect on group perceptions of voice climate. In addition, voice climate predicts group voice behavior and also has a significant influence on group performance beyond the influence through group voice behavior. These findings provide additional evidence for the predictive validity of the voice climate construct and provide future research opportunities for researchers.
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 of work in large organizations that developed in the late 19th and early 20th centuries is largely a tale of work as a collection of individual jobs. A variety of global forces unfolding over the last two decades, however, has pushed organizations worldwide to restructure work around teams, to enable more rapid, flexible, and adaptive responses to the unexpected. This shift in the structure of work has made team effectiveness a salient organizational concern.
Teams touch our lives everyday and their effectiveness is important to well-being across a wide range of societal functions. There is over 50 years of psychological research—literally thousands of studies—focused on understanding and influencing the processes that underlie team effectiveness. Our goal in this monograph is to sift through this voluminous literature to identify what we know, what we think we know, and what we need to know to improve the effectiveness of work groups and teams.
We begin by defining team effectiveness and establishing the conceptual underpinnings of our approach to understanding it. We then turn to our review, which concentrates primarily on topics that have well-developed theoretical and empirical foundations, to ensure that our conclusions and recommendations are on firm footing. Our review begins by focusing on cognitive, motivational/affective, and behavioral team processes—processes that enable team members to combine their resources to resolve task demands and, in so doing, be effective. We then turn our attention to identifying interventions, or “levers,” that can shape or align team processes and thereby provide tools and applications that can improve team effectiveness. Topic-specific conclusions and recommendations are given throughout the review. There is a solid foundation for concluding that there is an emerging science of team effectiveness and that findings from this research foundation provide several means to improve team effectiveness. In the concluding section, we summarize our primary findings to highlight specific research, application, and policy recommendations for enhancing the effectiveness of work groups and teams.
This study examines the detrimental effect that interpersonal aggressive behaviours may have on two dimensions of team effectiveness, namely team performance and team viability. Moreover, this study investigates the mediating role of team goal commitment in these relationships. Data were collected from 97 work teams (341 members and 97 immediate supervisors) working in a public safety organization. The results indicate that interpersonal aggression is negatively related to team performance and team viability. The results also show that team goal commitment exercises a complete mediating role with regard to these relationships. Overall, this study highlights potential negative consequences of interpersonal aggression at the team level.
The study investigates interaction patterns in work group discussions, focusing specifically on complaining and solution-oriented statements. Thirty-three work group discussions in three German industrial enterprises were coded with the Cassel Competence Grid (CCG). Lag sequential analysis results showed that complaining begets further complaining statements, while simultaneously inhibiting the expression of solution-oriented statements. Likewise, when solutions are proposed they are followed by further discussion of solutions. If support is expressed for either complaint or solution statements, circles of these two types of interaction arise. To inhibit complaining, the results point to the importance of structuring statements.
Schmidt and Hunter (1989) critiqued the within-group interrater reliability statistic (r(wg)) described by James, Demaree, and Wolf(1984). Kozlowski and Hattrup (1992) responded to the Schmidt and Hunter critique and argued that r(wg) is a suitable index of interrater agreement. This article focuses on the interpretation of r(wg) as a measure of agreement among judges' ratings of a single target. A new derivation of r(wg) is given that underscores this interpretation.
Purpose
This paper aims to identify longitudinal associations between job demands, job resources and experience of meaning at work.
Design/methodolgy/approach
Using data from a longitudinal survey study among 6,299 employees in Danish eldercare who were divided into 301 work‐groups, experience of meaning at work was predicted from a series of job demands and job resources measured at individual level and group level.
Findings
A combination of individual‐level and group‐level measures of job demands and job resources contributed to predicting meaning at work. Meaning at work at follow‐up was predicted by meaning at work at baseline, role ambiguity, quality of leadership, and influence at work at individual level and emotional demands at group level. Individual‐level measures of job demands and job resources proved stronger predictors of meaning at work than group‐level measures.
Research limitations/implications
Psychosocial job demands and job resources predict experience of meaning at work.
Practical implications
Experience of meaning at work constitutes an important organizational resource by contributing to the capacities of employees to deal with work‐related stresses and strains, while maintaining their health and well‐being.
Social implications
Experience of meaning at work is positively associated with well‐being and reduces risk for long‐term sickness absence and turnover. Attention towards enhancing employee experiences of meaning at work may contribute towards the ability of western societies to recruit the necessary supply of labour over the coming decades.
Originality/value
This is the first study to provide longitudinal, multi‐level evidence on the association between job demands, job resources and experience of meaning at work.
We investigated the relationship between team empowerment and virtual team performance and the moderating role of the extent of face-to-face interaction using 35 sales and service virtual teams in a high-technology organization. Team empowerment was positively related to two independent assessments of virtual team performance - process improvement and customer satisfaction. Further, the number of face-to-face meetings moderated the relationship between team empowerment and process improvement: team empowerment was a stronger predictor for teams that met face-to-face less, rather than more, frequently.
Differentiates among indices of agreement, reliability, and non-independence in organizational multilevel research and provides an overview of what each measure reveals about the group-level properties of one's data. Particular attention is devoted to the concept of non-independence and to the relationship between one form of the intraclass correlation coefficient and eta-squared. The 2nd purpose of this chapter is to extend the discussion of agreement, reliability, and non-independence from an exclusive focus on validating one's measurement model to a broader focus that includes testing substantive models and detecting emergent phenomena. In the discussion of bottom-up processes, particular attention is paid to a category that the author defines as "fuzzy" composition processes. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
This study explores the possibility that the effects of various work-related antecedents on complaining behavior are transmitted through the beliefs that employees hold about themselves. Data obtained from 317 schoolteachers and their principals provide strong support for the proposition that organization-based self-esteem (OBSE) is an intervening mechanism between the antecedents of job satisfaction, affective commitment, procedural justice, distributive justice, and leader-member exchange quality and workplace complaining. The relationships that emerged were fully mediated, suggesting that OBSE is a central feature in how employees think, feel, and interact with others in the workplace. Avenues for future research and study limitations are discussed.
Most studies of counterproductive work behavior (CWB) assess it as one or two overall dimensions that might obscure relationships of potential antecedents with more specific forms of behavior. A finer-grained analysis of the relationship between counterproductive work behavior and antecedents was conducted with the five-subscales (abuse toward others, production deviance, sabotage, theft, and withdrawal) taken from the 45-item Counterproductive Work Behavior Checklist, a measure that has been used in a number of prior studies. Described is the rationale for each of the five dimensions, which have been discussed individually in the literature. Data from three combined studies provide evidence for differential relationships with potential antecedents that suggest the use of more specific subscales to assess CWB. Most notably, abuse and sabotage were most strongly related to anger and stress, theft was unrelated to emotion, and withdrawal was associated with boredom and being upset. Finally, the distinct forms of CWB may suggest distinct underlying dynamics, that vary in their balance of hostile and instrumental motivational systems.
This article outlines a social information processing approach to explain job attitudes. In comparison with need-satisfaction and expectancy models to job attitudes and motivation, the social information processing perspective emphasizes the effects of context and the consequences of past choices, rather than individual predispositions and rational decision-making processes. When an individual develops statements about attitude or needs, he or she uses social information--information about past behavior and about what others think. The process of attributing attitudes or needs from behavior is itself affected by commitment processes, by the saliency and relevance of information, and by the need to develop socially acceptable and legitimate rationalizations for actions. Both attitudes and need statements, as well as characterizations of jobs, are affected by informational social influence. The implications of the social information processing perspective for organization development efforts and programs of job redesign are discussed.
- Kiggundu M.N.