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The Social Construction of Team Commitment: A Bona Fide Group Perspective

The Social Construction of Team Commitment: A Bona Fide Group Perspective. Richard W. Sline Associate Professor of Communication Weber State University Ogden, Utah. Purpose of the Study.

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The Social Construction of Team Commitment: A Bona Fide Group Perspective

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  1. The Social Construction of Team Commitment:A Bona Fide Group Perspective Richard W. Sline Associate Professor of Communication Weber State University Ogden, Utah

  2. Purpose of the Study To learn how members of bona fide, interdependent work teams in a commitment-strategy organization define commitment to team and organization and to determine how these team members interpret teammate commitment

  3. Bona Fide Group Perspective (Putnam & Stohl, 1990) • Study of groups that exist within a wider organizational context • Stable yet permeable boundaries allowing interdependent interaction with their contexts • Members hold multiple, and sometimes competing, memberships in other groups both within and outside the organizational context • Focuses on how a group's and its members’ environments affect the group’s understanding of its boundaries, its identity, and its group processes through communication

  4. Teams Differ from Groups • Teams possess: • Shared goals • Shared work processes • Strong sense of identity, dedication, and involvement with the team . . . a strong sense of commitment(Gmelch & Miskin, 1984; Katzenbach & Smith, 1994; Scheidel & Crowell, 1979; Sundstrom et al., 1990)

  5. Old vs. New Social Contract • Old social contract of mutual employer - employee commitment became obsolete at end of 20th century • New social contract encourages self-sufficiency without commitment (Buzzanell, 2000; Eisenberg & Goodall, 2004) • Developing commitment among all organizational stakeholders is making a comeback against widespread skepticism about organizations (Cole, 2001; Reichheld, 2001) • Commitment is defined differently under the “new social contract”-- greater focus on the quality of a working relationship rather than duration (Cole, 2001)

  6. Importance of Committed Workers • Particularly important for organizations that face uncertain environments—they’re more likely to work diligently even when their outcomes may be uncertain (Reichheld, 2001; Salancik, 1977) • In order for teams to achieve peak performance members must possess a strong sense of commitment to their team (Katzenbach & Smith, 1994; Larson & LaFasto, 1989)

  7. Definitions of Commitment: Conceptual Confusion “As a theoretical construct, commitment has been subjected to almost as many definitions of commitment as there are researchers using the term” (Staw, 1982, p.101)

  8. Attitudinal Commitment (Porter, Steers, Mowday, & Boulian, 1974) The relative strength of an individual’s identification with and involvement in a particular organization characterized by • a strong belief in and acceptance of the organization’s goals and values, • a willingness to exert considerable effort on behalf of the organization, and • a strong desire to maintain membership in the organization.

  9. Behavioral Commitment* A person’s tendency to continue with an organization because the costs of leaving are perceived to be too high (Becker, 1969; Salancik, 1977) *Also referred to as Calculated Commitment (Hrebiniak & Alutto, 1972; Mathieu & Zajac, 1990) and Continuance Commitment (Allen & Meyer, 1990)

  10. “Socially Constructed” Commitment • Commitment is an outcome of concrete communicative interaction (Weick, 1993) • Explicit, spoken promises among members of organizations are communicative acts that signal commitments (Brunsson, 1985; Habermas, 1974; Winograd & Flores, 1986)

  11. Research Questions • Research Question 1:How do members of bona fide interdependent work teams in a high-involvement, commitment-strategy organization define commitment to team, organization, or both? • Research Question 2: How is commitment communicated, verbally and nonverbally, among members of interdependent work teams in a high-involvement organization?

  12. Research Methods • Organization: National (U.S.A.) “locum tenens” health care staffing company that recruits and places physicians in temporary assignments • Teams: 20 self-managing medical specialty teams (e.g., psychiatry, internal medicine, etc.) composed on non-health care providers • Task & outcome interdependent (Ancona & Nadler, 1989) • Researcher standpoint: Part-time teamwork specialist for 3 years; ethnographic research participant-observer on Internal Medicine team for 3 months . . . both prior to the study

  13. Interviews • Judgment sample of 82 employees & 24 former employees with >1 year tenure (n = 106), selected based on multiple criterion measures representing organization’s demographics (Anderson, 1987) • Interview questions: (1) In your own words, how do you define “commitment” to a team and organization? (2) How do you know that people are committed to their team, the organization, or both?

  14. Data Analysis • Responses with multiple conceptual elements were first “unitized” • Research assistant unfamiliar with research site and I each reviewed a subset of the data and independently clustered them into categories (Miles & Huberman, 1984) • Categories compared and collapsed into a single set for each question • After acceptable intercoder reliability established (Scott’s pi procedure [1955]), I coded the remaining interview data

  15. Results-RQ1: Definitions of Commitment to Team and Organization Note. *More than 100% because many respondents had multiple elements of their definitions

  16. Results--RQ2: Perceptions of How Commitment is Communicated Note. *More than 100% because many respondents had multiple elements in their responses to how they knew teammates were committed

  17. Theoretical Implications: The meaning of commitment is a situated construct • These results extend the utility of the theory of attitudinal commitment, however . . . • Team members in this high-involvement, commitment-strategy organization “socially construct” commitment in more specific ways than the Mowday and colleagues’ (1974, 1982) definition:

  18. Definition Comparisons • “Collaborates well”–a context-specific example of “a strong belief in and acceptance of the organization’s goals and values” • “Willingness to do what’s expected” and “willingness to do more than expected,”-- both forms of “a willingness to exert considerable effort on behalf of the organization” • “Loyalty” --closely related to “a strong desire to maintain membership in the organization” • “Fully identifies with team & company”--essentially same as “the relative strength of an individual’s identification with and involvement in a particular organization ” • “Expresses positive attitude,” is a manifestation of one’s attitudinal commitment

  19. Theoretical Implications: Commitment and Communication • Four themes emerged from at least 42% of the interviewees about how commitment is communicated both verbally and nonverbally through: • Effective collaboration • High-involvement communication • Expressing a positive attitude • Demonstrating accountability

  20. Theoretical Implications:Bona Fide Group Perspective • These findings provide empirical support for the bona fide group perspective by suggesting that social constructions of commitment can: • Be specifically situated and heavily influenced by interaction with the structural context of the organization (emphasis on “Collaboration” and “High Involvement Communication”) • Be influenced by other contextual factors outside the organization’s boundary, which may explain one contradiction in how team members in this organization defined commitment (“Does what’s expected” vs. “Does more than what’s expected”)

  21. Implications for Practice • Need to create opportunities for engaged dialogue (Evered & Tannenbaum, 1992; Isaacs, 1999)among team members for the purpose of socially constructing: • A shared definition of team commitment before conflicts emerge within teams over contradictory meanings • A shared meaning for how commitment is communicated in order to maximize team member understanding of commitment attitudes and practices, thus minimizing newcomer surprise and facilitating effective assimilation

  22. Limitations and Future Research • Limitation:The case study nature of this study prohibits wide generalizability of these findings • Future research: • Replication in organizations with different structural contexts • The four-dimension typology of how commitment is communicated should be tested in other organizations with both similar and different work structures

  23. References • Allen, N. J., & Meyer, J. P. (1990). The measurements and antecedents of affective, continuance, and normative commitment to the organization. Journal of Occupational Psychology, 63, 1-18. • Ancona, D., & Nadler, D. (1989, Fall). Top hats and executive tales: Designing the senior team. Sloan Management Review, 19-22. • Anderson, J. A. (1987). Communication research: Issues and methods. New York: McGraw-Hill. • Becker, H. S. (1960). Notes on the concept of organizational commitment. American Journal of Sociology, 66, 32-42. • Brunsson, N. (1985). The irrational organization: Irrationality as a basis for organizational action and change. New York: Wiley. • Buzzanell, P. (2000). The promise and practice of the new career and social contract: Illusions exposed and suggestions for reform. In P. Buzzanell (Ed.), Rethinking organizational & managerial communication from feminist perspectives (pp. 209-235). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. • Cole, W. (2001, December 10). Suddenly loyalty is back in business. Time, 158 (25).

  24. References (cont.) • Eisenberg, E. M., & Goodall, H. L., Jr. (2004). Organizational communication: Balancing creativity and constraint (4th ed.). Boston: Bedford/St. Martin’s. • Evered, R., & Tannenbaum, R. (1992). A dialog on dialog. Journal of Management Inquiry, 1, 43-55. • Gmelch, W. H., & Miskin, V. D. (1984). Productivity teams: Beyond quality circles. New York: Wiley. • Habermas, J. (1979). What is universal pragmatics? In T. McCarthy (Ed. and Trans.), Communication and the evolution of society (pp. 1-68). Boston: Beacon Press. • Hrebiniak, L. G., & Alutto, J. A. (1972). Personal and role-related factors in the development of organizational commitment. Administrative Science Quarterly, 17, 555-572. • Isaacs, W. (1999). Dialogue. New York: Currency Doubleday.

  25. References (cont.) • Katzenbach, J. R., & Smith, D. K. (1994). The wisdom of teams: Creating the high-performance organization. New York: Harper Business. • Larson, C., & LaFasto, F. (1989). Teamwork: What must go right, what could go wrong. Newbury Park, CA: Sage. • Mathieu, J. E., & Zajac, D. M. (1990). A review and meta-analysis of the antecedents, correlates, and consequences of organizational commitment. Psychological Bulletin, 108(2), 171-194. • Miles, M. B., & Huberman, A. M. (1984). Qualitative data analysis. Beverly Hills, CA: Sage. • Mowday, R. T., Porter, L. W., & Steers, R. M. (1982). Employee-organization linkages: The psychology of commitment, absenteeism, and turnover. New York: Academic Press.

  26. References (cont.) • Mowday, R. T., Steers, R. M., & Porter, L. W. (1979). The measurement of organizational commitment. Journal of Vocational Behavior, 14, 224-247. • Porter, L. W., Steers, R. M., Mowday, R. T., & Boulian, P. V. (1974). Organizational commitment, job satisfaction, and turnover among psychiatric technicians. Journal of Applied Psychology, 59, 603-609. • Putnam, L. L., & Stohl, C. (1990). Bona fide groups: A reconceptualization of groups in context. Communication Studies, 41(3), 248-265. • Reichheld, F. F. (2001). Loyalty rules! How today's leaders build lasting relationships. Cambridge, MA: Harvard Business School Publishing Corporation. • Salancik, G. R. (1977). Commitment and control of organizational behavior and belief. In B. M. Staw & G. R. Salancik (Eds.), New directions in organizational behavior (pp. 1-54). Chicago: St. Clair.

  27. References (cont.) • Scheidel, T. M., & Crowell, L. (1979). Discussing and deciding: A desk book for group leaders and members. New York: Macmillan Publishing. • Scott, W. S. (1955). Reliability of content analysis: The case of nominal scale coding. Living Research, 19, 321-325. • Staw, B. M. (1982). Counterforces to change. In P. S. Goodman & Associates (Eds.), Change in organizations: New perspectives on theory, research, and practice (pp. 87-121). San Francisco: Jossey-Bass. • Sundstrom, E., DeMeuse, K. P., & Futrell, D. (1990). Work teams: Applications and effectiveness. American Psychologist, 45(2), 120-133. • Weick, K. E. (1993). Sensemaking in organizations: Small structures with large consequences. In J. K. Murnighan (Ed.), Social psychology in organizations: Advances in theory and research (pp. 10-37). Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall. • Winograd, T., & Flores, F. (1986). Understanding computers and cognition. Norwood, NJ: Ablex Publishing.

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