Suchergebnisse

This study suggests that goal interdependence is a useful theoretical framework to understand collaboration as crew members cope with safety hazards. Thirty-five pilots, first officers, second officers, and flight attendants provided critical incidents of safety problems handled effectively and ineffectively. Analyses indicate that cooperative goals and the constructive discussion of opposing views were powerful antecedents to using safe procedures expeditiously. The study introduces the critical incident method to the study of flight crew management. Results identify training to assist crew members to maintain the margin of safety in the skies.

Collaboration between departments is often needed to deliver high quality services to customers. Results of interviewing 27 managers from an engineering consulting firm and 43 employees of a utility company using the critical incident method- indicate that experimental findings on cooperation and competition generalize to organizational settings. Employees who believed their goals were cooperative interacted effectively, made progress on the task, and strengthened their work relationships. Employees also used the organization's tasks, rewards, and values to conclude that their goals were cooperative or competitive. Results identify major dimensions of interaction between departments and specify consequences of effective and ineffective collaboration between departments.

Goal interdependence has been theorized to affect collaboration both within and between groups. Thirty-nine employees of a public health agency were interviewed on specific interactions they had with those either in their own or another work unit. Consistent with previous experiments, employees who concluded that their goals were cooperative had trusting expectations, exchanged information and resources, worked efficiently and productively, and developed confidence for future collaboration. Interactions with competitive goals were characterized by suspicion, little exchange, and low productivity and morale. Results were interpreted as suggesting that independent goals interfere more with interaction between work units than within them.

A model is developed that stipulates that task, roles, and reward distribution of organizational structure, perceived goal interdependence, patterns of behavior, and corporate values and interpersonal attitudes form causal loops, and mutually reinforce and sustain each other. Positive and negative goal interdependencies and independence have been identified and result in much different dynamics and outcomes. Studies overall indicate that positive interdependence promotes coordination and productivity. Research is needed to determine generalizability of these findings and to identify the purposes and. situations when negative interdependence and independence are appropriate.

Research has neglected the dynamics by which participation af fects organizational outcomes. This study argues that the effects of participation depend substantially on how employees interact as they discuss organizational problems. Results indicate that coop erative compared to competitive context facilitates expectations of assistance, exchange of information and ideas, enhanced work re lationships, and high-quality solutions. Findings suggest that re search on the dynamics within participation can help resolve conflicting findings and suggest ways to implement successful participation.

Organizational researchers have largely ignored cooperation theory in their analyses of social interaction in organizations. Considerable experimental and field research by social and educational psychologists indicates the dynamics of cooperatively (positively), competitively (negatively), and individualistically (independently) linked goals and suggests their consequences on relationships and productivity. Results overall indicate that cooperation facilitates social interaction and productivity. However, studies done in organizational contexts with representative tasks are needed to generalize confidently to organizational practice. Organizational researchers can extend cooperation theory to understand the dynamics between superiors and subordinates and the relationships among departments. To make cooperation theory useful, knowledge is needed to identify conditions that affect how organizational members perceive their goal interdependence.