Leave Them to Their Own Devices: When Employee Informal Power in Strategically Core Roles Enhances Organizational Performance

PurposeThe current case study investigated how intentional, systematic planning can help organizations harness the energy of these willing allies who may be motivated to support change. The focus of the study is the development of a peer-to-peer approach, involving “Equity Leaders (ELs),” that was part of a larger, multi-level organization change initiative that addressed personal, interpersonal and structural considerations at a mid-sized public university in northeastern USA.Design/methodology/approachThe authors used multiple methods to collect data for the current study, including observations and interviews. Over the course of four years, the authors attended more than 50 EL meetings. In these meetings, the authors took notes regarding ELs' discussions on workshop development and planning, debates on workshop substances and ELs' personal reflections on these workshops. Following the fourth year of the program, the first two authors invited all current ELs to participate in semi-structured, open-ended interviews about their experience.FindingsThe case study shows that through careful planning, peer change can play multiple roles in pushing organizational changes. By embracing their formal responsibilities and yielding their informal power, change agents are able to cause radiating impact across as organizations. Organizations can also capitalize on the fact that employees are more likely to be engaged in the change effort when it is promoted by peers. Finally, the support and resources from the organizational leaders is important because these inputs not only legitimize change agents' roles but they also signify the importance of the actions.Research limitations/implicationsThis study has limitations. First, the authors recognize that this was a qualitative study grounded in a single context. Although the study explored a novel context for understanding change agents—a deliberately planned initiative targeting social norms through addressing subtle biases like microaggressions—the authors recognize that additional examination would be necessary to understand how implementation may work in different contexts or organization types. Second, the authors also acknowledge that the authors’ positionality, as females studying a change initiative targeting gendered and intersectional microaggressions, may have shaped the role as researchers.Originality/valueThe findings underscore the notion that allies can serve as organized peer change agents to affect organizational culture. In alignment with the principles in the social ecological framework, the approach involved selecting change agents who are internal to the organization, have informal influence or power and can broaden the impact to other parts of the organization. Moreover, the results underscore the need for organizations to provide essential support and resources that can assist change agents to bridge organizational goals and individual actions.

In the new post COVID-19 work order, we propose a multi-level model of how individual level social distancing interacts with workgroup level socio-structural support to influence employee exhaustion and performance. Drawing upon job demands-resources (JD-R) theory, we assert that workplace social distancing presents new job demands that emotionally exhaust employees and hinder their task and change-oriented performance. We further assert that job resources in the form of workgroup task interdependence and support for innovation mitigate these negative effects of social distancing. Per our expectations, multi-level modeling using time-lagged multi-source data from 231 employees and 34 managers revealed a significant relationship between social distancing and employee performance via emotional exhaustion. Further, the positive relationship between social distancing and emotional exhaustion was attenuated by workgroup task interdependence and support for innovation. Finally, moderated mediation path analyses showed that the indirect negative effect of social distancing on employee performance was weaker in workgroups with high task interdependence and high support for innovation.

Research has advanced two perspectives on the fundamental issue of the relationship between member creativity and team creativity: the additive model (predicting with average member creativity) and the disjunctive model (predicting with highest member creativity). Inconsistent evidence raises the question of possible moderators. We address this question by developing moderating roles of task characteristics – task interdependence and task creativity requirement. In a meta‐analytic review of team creativity (and innovation) research, we hypothesized and supported that the additive model is more predictive in tasks with high interdependence and with low creativity requirements, and that the disjunctive model is more predictive for less interdependent tasks. The effectiveness of the disjunctive model, however, did not differ as a function of task creativity requirements. Further, our supplementary analysis showed that the additive model is more effective in tasks requiring only generating creative ideas than in tasks involving both generation and implementation of creative ideas. Practitioner points Because creative employees are in high demand, it is important to effectively select and assign creative individuals to teams for managing creativity. Managing team creativity by selecting creative individuals for the team can be done following two strategies: an additive strategy prioritizing high levels of average member creativity or a disjunctive strategy prioritizing one particularly creative member. Whether the additive or the disjunctive strategy is more effective is contingent on task characteristics: with high task interdependence, it is better to prioritize mean member creativity; with low task interdependence and with higher creativity requirements, it is better to prioritize one particularly creative team member.

This study contributes to the debate about a female leadership advantage by evaluating differences in team states (i.e., cohesion, collective efficacy, and a shared mental model) among teams led by women and those led by men. Drawing on the burgeoning work on relational leadership practices, the study contextualizes the female leadership advantage argument by proposing that under conditions of high situational ambiguity (i.e., high functional diversity and task interdependence), female leaders will bring about more favorable team states than male leaders because such team conditions elicit and require the relational skills that women appear more likely to possess. I aggregated survey responses from the members of 82 cross-functional innovation teams in 29 organizations at the team-level. The findings from hierarchical linear modeling analyses suggest that, as team leaders, women are more likely than men are to facilitate cohesion on teams with more functional diversity and to facilitate collective efficacy and shared mental models on teams with high task interdependence. These results contextualize the existence of a female leadership advantage. They also underscore the potential value of leaders’ relational adaptability for the performance of functionally diverse and interdependent teams.

In this questionnaire study, the relations between the affective reactions of 114 technical consultants and both intragroup interdependence and job complexity were examined. Individual-level task interdependence and job complexity were found to be positively related to individual job satisfaction, team satisfaction, job commitment, and team commitment. Cross-level interactions showed the positive relations between task interdependence and the affective outcomes to be stronger in high outcome interdependent teams than in low outcome interdependent teams. Specifically, a proper match between high task interdependence and high group-level outcome interdependence was found to produce more positive affective responses than “low-high” and “high-low” mismatches. The unfavorable effects of mismatched task and outcome interdependence on job satisfaction and job commitment were found to be mitigated by high levels of job complexity.

Team members’ affective responses to patterns of intragroup interdependence and job complexity

Subsidiary Managerss Power and Capital Expenditure

The effects of task and reward interdependence on perceived effort, helping behavior, and group performance were investigated in a laboratory setting. Fifty-seven groups with 3 undergraduate students in each group completed two consecutive copyediting activities. Helping behavior was highest in groups with high task interdependence. However, no support was found for the interactive effects of task and reward interdependence. Differences across time were found for perceived effort, helping behavior, and performance. The implications of these findings suggest that the increased task complexity, introduced through the presence of high levels of task interdependence, can mitigate the positive performance effects of high levels of helping behavior and effort.

AimsNursing students in Taiwan often study in interdisciplinary teams that must create healthcare products. Creativity is imperative for the students’ success, but studies have not explored the relational precursors to team creativity in nursing education. Therefore, the relationship was examined between task interdependence, interaction behaviours (constructive controversy, helping behaviours and spontaneous communication) and creativity for nursing students on interdisciplinary teams in Taiwan to investigate whether high task interdependence moderates the correlations between interaction behaviours and creativity.DesignDescriptive, cross‐sectional, quantitative study.MethodsParticipants were nursing students (N = 99) attending interdisciplinary capstone courses in 2‐ or 4‐year nursing programmes at a university for science and technology in Taiwan. Self‐report questionnaires were used to collect the students’ demographics and perceptions of their teams’ task interdependence, interaction behaviours and creativity between January 2018 and January 2019. Pearson's correlation coefficient revealed variable associations. SPSS PROCESS macro displayed moderating effects.ResultsTask interdependence had significant positive correlations with all three interaction behaviours and team creativity. Each interaction behaviour also had significant positive correlations with team creativity. High task interdependence negatively moderated the relationships between team creativity and (a) constructive controversy, and (b) spontaneous communication, but not (c) helping behaviours.ConclusionThe empirically validated moderation model and study results suggest that nursing educators can foster creativity in their students by encouraging task interdependence and helping behaviours, and teaching students to build constructive controversy and spontaneous communication into their collaborative plans.ImpactIn Taiwan, nursing students must demonstrate creativity in interdisciplinary capstone courses. Their ability to do so requires them to cooperate with students in other disciplines who have unique skills or knowledge. This study provides insights into the relational factors that may improve creativity for nursing students on interdisciplinary teams.

This research investigates the moderating role of task interdependence on factors influencing information security effectiveness in organizations. Drawing on the literature, the authors develop a theoretical model depicting top management support and awareness & training support as predictors of information security program effectiveness. Further, the model shows security culture as a partial mediator between the predictor and criterion variables. The authors then apply task interdependence as a moderator to the model. Results from a survey given to a sample of 371 certified information security professionals find support for the model while showing certain paths to be significant only under high task interdependence while others only under low task interdependence. In high task interdependence environments, security culture did not mediate the relationships between the predictor and criterion variables suggesting that managers focus on providing greater structural support to maximize security effectiveness. However, in low task interdependence, security culture fully mediated the relationships between the predictor and criterion variables suggesting that the role of culture is amplified and central in those environments.

This research investigates the moderating role of task interdependence on factors influencing information security effectiveness in organizations. Drawing on the literature, the authors develop a theoretical model depicting top management support and awareness & training support as predictors of information security program effectiveness. Further, the model shows security culture as a partial mediator between the predictor and criterion variables. The authors then apply task interdependence as a moderator to the model. Results from a survey given to a sample of 371 certified information security professionals find support for the model while showing certain paths to be significant only under high task interdependence while others only under low task interdependence. In high task interdependence environments, security culture did not mediate the relationships between the predictor and criterion variables suggesting that managers focus on providing greater structural support to maximize security effectiveness. However, in low task interdependence, security culture fully mediated the relationships between the predictor and criterion variables suggesting that the role of culture is amplified and central in those environments.

We investigate how employees’ deviant responses to experiencing workplace aggression are shaped by the social context in which the aggressive acts occur. Drawing on the group value model and theories of belongingness, we investigated three moderators of the relationship between workplace aggression and employee deviant behaviour: (1) perpetrator formal power (relating to their position within the organization), (2) perpetrator referent power (derived from their social position at work), and (3) task interdependence between the perpetrator and victim. Participants (N=299) consisted of North American employees in a variety of industries. Power and task interdependence interacted with workplace aggression to predict the extent and the direction of deviant behaviour. Specifically, we found that when the perpetrator had high power (either formal power or referent power) and low task interdependence with the target, victims were most likely to engage in deviance directed towards the perpetrator in response to aggression. These results are consistent with the idea that perpetrator power motivates victims to retaliate, but they are most likely to do so if they are not highly dependent on the perpetrator to complete their work tasks. This study suggests that spirals of workplace aggression depend on the nature of the perpetrator-victim relationship.

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to develop and test theoretical propositions explaining why and under what circumstances highly self-efficacious employees experience victimization at work and how task interdependence leads to the situation that employee victimization emerges.Design/methodology/approachTo test hypotheses, the authors collected the data from four organizations, which are private company, public enterprise, medical institution and government office in Gyungbuk province, South Korea. The final sample for analyses was 209 employees.FindingsContrary to the prediction, high self-efficacy did not show a statistically significant relationship with victimization. However, task interdependence is related to victimization and functions as an important situational contributor to exacerbate highly self-efficacious employees’ victimization.Research limitations/implicationsThe findings have research implications by exploring victimization of the employees with high self-efficacy, which is an underdeveloped area in the victimization literature and showing that task interdependence is the critical factor to trigger and aggravate employee victimization. Despite these implications, this study should be evaluated in light of several limitations such as the data from single source for all variables and the use of cross-sectional data.Practical implicationsManagers need to be aware that highly self-efficacious employees can be vulnerable to victimization at work, where there is high task interdependence. The evidence suggests that managers may take safeguards to deter employee victimization, when tasks are closely related among members.Originality/valueThis paper contributes to expand the understanding of employee victimization by examining the roles of self-efficacy and task interdependence to crystalize antecedents and boundary conditions of victimization at workplace.

Purpose: Although conflict has traditionally been considered destructive, recent studies have indicated that conflict management can contribute to effective teamwork. The present study explores conflict management as a team phenomenon in schools. The author examined how the contextual variables (task interdependence, goal interdependence) are related to team conflict management style (integrating vs. dominating) and school team effectiveness (team performance). Research Design: Data were collected from 149 school teams (including team coordinators and team members) at 149 elementary schools. Results: Hierarchical regression analyses demonstrate, as expected, a positive relation between conflict management of integrating and team performance and a negative relation between dominating and team performance. In addition, there are positive relations between the congruent low-low or high-high combinations of task and goal interdependence and integrating and positive relations between the incongruent low-high or high-low combinations of task and goal interdependence and team conflict management of dominating. Moreover, results indicate that the highest level of integrating is under the condition of high task interdependence and high goal interdependence, whereas the highest level of dominating is under the condition of high task interdependence and low goal interdependence. Finally, a team's conflict management was partially mediated by the combination of task and goal interdependence and team performance. Conclusions: The present results provide additional empirical support for the notion that conflict management can be considered a team phenomenon. The study should serve to encourage educational administration researchers to focus more attention on characteristics of organizational and team context as related to team conflict management and team effectiveness.

Foreign workers seek overseas employment without sponsorship from a firm in their home country and hold temporary work visas in the host country. Despite the rising numbers of foreign workers, there is very little research that examines employment relationships and work behaviors of foreign workers. In this study, we draw on social exchange theory and predict differences in work perceptions, attitudes, and behaviors of foreign versus local employees based on differences in their exchange relationships. We then draw on social comparison theories and propose that these differences in perceptions, attitudes, and behaviors will be accentuated for workers in jobs with high task interdependence. We examined these hypotheses in a field study of 466 ethnic Chinese employees (213 foreign workers from the People's Republic of China and 253 local workers in Singapore with ongoing employment status). Results demonstrate lower distributive justice judgments, performance, and organizational citizenship for foreign versus local employees. Furthermore, results demonstrate that differences in distributive and procedural justice, performance, and organizational citizenship were heightened by task interdependence. We discuss findings and the implications of employing foreign workers. Copyright © 2003 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.