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My Job, Your Calling: Work Orientations in Organizational Teams

My Job, Your Calling: Work Orientations in Organizational Teams. Amy Wrzesniewski New York University. General Research Question. What kinds of meanings do people derive from work, both generally and in challenging contexts?. The Meaning of Work: Theoretical Framework.

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My Job, Your Calling: Work Orientations in Organizational Teams

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  1. My Job, Your Calling: Work Orientations in Organizational Teams Amy Wrzesniewski New York University May Meaning Meeting 5/8/04

  2. General Research Question • What kinds of meanings do people derive from work, both generally and in challenging contexts? May Meaning Meeting 5/8/04

  3. The Meaning of Work: Theoretical Framework • Values (Dubin, 1956; Lodahl & Kejner, 1965; Roberson, 1990) • Expectations and motivation (Amabile, Hill, Hennessey, & Tighe, 1994; Ryan & Deci, 2001) • Characteristics of the job (Griffin, 1987; Hackman & Oldham, 1976, 1980) • Organizational influences (Pratt & Ashforth, 2003) May Meaning Meeting 5/8/04

  4. Work Orientation • Origin of concept (Bellah, Madsen, Sullivan, Swidler, & Tipton, 1985) • Ways work fits sense of self • Shapes relationship to work • Goal-oriented May Meaning Meeting 5/8/04

  5. Jobs, Careers, and Callings Jobs: Material benefits from work ‘My primary reason for working is financial – to support my family and lifestyle.’ Careers: Advancement in occupation ‘I expect to be in a higher level job in five years.’ Callings: Fulfillment from work itself ‘My work makes the world a better place.’ May Meaning Meeting 5/8/04

  6. Prior Relevant Results • Unambiguous in seeing work as a Job, Career, or Calling • Associated with different work behaviors and work and life satisfaction • Each orientation found both across and within occupations and organizations • Importance of others in experience of work • “Job crafting” May Meaning Meeting 5/8/04

  7. Work Orientation in Work Groups • Increasing use of teams in organizations (Hackman, 1998) • Challenges of coordination and cooperation (George, 1996) • Work behaviors and moods affect other members (Barsade, et al., 2000; Bartel & Saavedra, 2000) May Meaning Meeting 5/8/04

  8. Research Question • What happens when people with different work orientations are interdependent in a team context? May Meaning Meeting 5/8/04

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  11. Work Groups: Prior Research • Group process and outcomes affected by similarity (Bettenhausen, 1991) • General preference for similar others (Berscheid, 1985) • Similarity on a number of dimensions (e.g., affect, demography) promotes satisfaction, commitment, and trust (Barsade, et al., 2000) • Personality and demographic difference can promote conflict, poor rapport and process (Ancona & Caldwell, 1992; O’Reilly, Snyder, & Boothe, 1993; Pelled, 1996) May Meaning Meeting 5/8/04

  12. Hypotheses • Groups with a higher proportion of members with Calling orientations will have better team functioning • Groups with a higher proportion of members with Career orientations will have poorer team functioning • Diverse mixes of work orientations will be associated with poorer team functioning May Meaning Meeting 5/8/04

  13. Method • Survey study of work teams • N = 266 teams, range in size from 3 to 18, mean size of 4.6 • Drawn from a wide variety of industries and organizations, from accounting teams to emergency room teams to equity arbitrage teams • Mean age = 31.9 • Mean tenure with team = 34.9 months • Met criteria for real groups (Hackman, 1998) May Meaning Meeting 5/8/04

  14. Measures Independent Variables • Work Orientation (Wrzesniewski et al., 1997) • Satisfaction with Work Elements (Andrews & Withey, 1976) Dependent Variables • Team Identification (Bhattacharya, 2001) • Group Process (Taylor & Bowers, 1972) • Faith and Confidence in Management (Cook & Wall, 1980) • Team Commitment (Mowday, Steers, & Porter, 1979) May Meaning Meeting 5/8/04

  15. Data Analysis • Aggregated group measures • Significant F values in one-way ANOVA(Kenny & Judd, 1986) • ICC(2) values greater than .75 (Bliese, 2000) • Ran correlations on aggregated data • Individual level analyses • Stepwise regression, predicting attitudes toward group, controlling for age, gender, tenure, satisfaction May Meaning Meeting 5/8/04

  16. Initial Results: Callings • At the Group Level: • The higher the proportion of members with Callings: • Better group process • Higher commitment to team • Stronger faith and confidence in management (range in rs .37 to .54, all rs significant at .001 level) • On individual level, Calling associated with: • Identification with Team (beta .12**) • Better Group Process (beta .05*) • Commitment to Team (beta .25**) May Meaning Meeting 5/8/04

  17. Initial Results: Careers • At the Group Level: • The higher the proportion of members with Careers: • Poorer group process • Lower commitment to team • Lower faith and confidence in management (range in rs -.34 to -.48, all rs significant at .001 level) • On individual level, Career associated with: • Team Identification (beta .07*) • Faith and Confidence in Management (beta -.05*) • Team Commitment (beta -.07*) May Meaning Meeting 5/8/04

  18. Initial Results: Mix • Larger range in work orientation scores in the group is associated with: • Poorer group process (-.17**) • Lower commitment to team (-.16**) May Meaning Meeting 5/8/04

  19. Potential Contributions • Elaborates research on group composition and its effects • Further develops picture of the role of work meanings in organizational contexts May Meaning Meeting 5/8/04

  20. My Questions • How to frame this? • Can I use the composition argument as a way in? • Other data to collect or use? • Other ways to parse the data? May Meaning Meeting 5/8/04

  21. Team Identification • 6 Items (adapted from Bhattacharya, 2001), 1-5 scale • When someone criticizes my team, it feels like a personal insult. • I am very interested in what others think about my team. • When I talk about my team, I usually say 'we' rather than 'they'. • My team’s successes are my successes. • When someone praises my team, it feels like a personal compliment. • If a story in the media criticized my team, I would feel embarrassed. May Meaning Meeting 5/8/04

  22. Group Process • 8 Items (Taylor & Bowers, 1972), 1-5 scale • Thinking about your work team, to what extent: • does your work group plan together and coordinate its efforts? • does your work group make good decisions and solve problems well? • do people in your work group know what their jobs are and know how to do them well? • does your work group really want to meet its objectives successfully? • do you have confidence and trust in the people in your work group? • is there conflict in your work group? May Meaning Meeting 5/8/04

  23. Faith and Confidence in Management • 6 Items (Cook & Wall, 1980), 1-5 scale • Management at my firm is sincere in its attempt to meet the team’s point of view. • I feel quite confident that the management will always try to treat my team fairly. • Our management would be quite prepared to gain advantage by deceiving the workers. • Our firm has a poor future unless it can attract better managers. • Management can be trusted to make sensible decisions for the firm’s future. • Management at work seems to do a good job. May Meaning Meeting 5/8/04

  24. Team Commitment • 16 items (Porter & Smith, 1970), 1-5 scale • I am willing to put in a great deal of effort beyond that normally expected in order to help this team be successful. • I feel very little loyalty to this team. • I would accept almost any type of job assignment in order to keep working with this team. • I am proud to tell others that I am part of this team. • I could just as well be working with a different team as long as the type of work were similar. • It would take very little change in my present circumstances to cause me to leave this team. • I really care about the fate of this team. May Meaning Meeting 5/8/04

  25. Correlations ** Correlation is significant at the .01 level (2-tailed). * Correlation is significant at the .05 level (2-tailed). May Meaning Meeting 5/8/04

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