Samenvatting Performance Enhancement
Lecture 1 and 2
Lecture 1: Abusive leadership
About 75% of all hostile acts come from hierarchical superior agents.
Abusive leadership = hostile actions perpetrated by a hierarchically powerful person/supervisor against
a less powerful target. The actions are behavioral manifestations to hurt the other party. It is a pattern
instead of just being abusive once and a while.
3 reasons/strategies for hostile behavior:
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Elimination: for example iemand niet uitnodigen. It is to get rid of the threat.
Control: for example eisen dat iemand snel iets af heeft. It is to bribe/threaten subordinate to
coerce.
Derogation: for example iemand belachelijk maken. It is to prevent others to take the person
serious.
Causes for hostile behavior (not a lot of research):
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Personality  excessive self-confidence, let people follow you and then stab in the back,
narcissism, wanting success and see people failing together.
Interactional and procedural injustice
Feelings of incompetence  somebody can be a threat for the ego of the boss; the boss wants
this person gone.
Prevention of hostile behavior:
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Organization  limit tenure, share power, encourage zero-tolerance culture.
Leader  don’t take yourself too seriously, be reflective, compensate your weaknesses.
Lecture 2: Leaders and team conflict
Team conflict = perceived or observed incompatibilities among team members. Types: task, relationship
and process conflict.
Task conflict = disagreement between members of team regarding content of task. Vb: verschil in hoe je
iets moet uitrekenen.
Relationship conflict = interpersonal incompatibilities between team members about issues not related
to task/work. E.g. personality clashes.
Process conflict = about the means to accomplish the specific tasks, strategies for approaching the task
(the logistics). E.g. who should do what, not showing up of team member.
Consequences of conflict:
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Individual  satisfaction, well-being, turnover intentions all going down.
Group  performance, corporation and trust going down (most of the times).
Conflict can lower outcome of team performance via:
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Ego-threat: no trust & lower satisfaction for team member.
Distraction: people are distracted from the actual work (information processing perspective).
Conflict can improve outcomes via:
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Increased task understanding
More creativity
Critical evaluation of ideas
Increased clarity of roles and responsibilities
Only improvement when conflict is effectively resolved or managed!
Peterson & Harvey
Challenge for team leaders is to exercise power in a way that promotes a little task conflict but
minimizes relationship conflict.
Differences in type of conflict:
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Task conflict  Informational differences based on experience, background and skills.
Process conflict  interests differences which requires team members to compete for the same
scarce resources (goals are different).
Relationship conflict  value differences.
Managers need to adjust their strategy for handling the conflict to the type of conflict there is.
A little bit of task conflict is good because it exposes new ways of thinking and new perspectives to the
decisions. You resolve it by sharing the information.
Differences between types of conflict:
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How difficult they are to resolve; task conflict is the easiest and relationship conflict most
difficult.
The potential value for the group for better decision making.
The degree of risk that it exposes to the group in terms of damage to its current and future
functioning.
Reasons why direct power may increase the conflict:
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Conflict may shift to the leader; especially in high power teams leaders are action oriented
which gives low trust.
Team members temporarily hide their true opinion which in the long run does not resolve the
issue.
It disrupts team cohesion because it enhances the feeling of power of the leader and you feel
less appreciated.
Reasons why indirect power may reduce conflict:
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There is more chance for resolution because the group members have a psychological safety
between leader and group.
It shapes the group process which leads to better team decision making and higher quality
interaction.
Strategies to leverage potential benefit as leader:
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Structuring the group  structure group such that group members align interests with each
other. This can be done by creating interdependence between group members such that you
achieve goals together. Creating interdependence via dividing the work such that members have
to rely on each other or make a reward structure in which the individual reward is dependent on
the performance of the group. In total it can facilitate the sharing of the information.
Directing inclusive group process  leaders direct the group process instead of dictating the
outcome for the group. They use referent power with encouraging members to discuss all
possible alternatives, listen good and respect each other. Leaders should lead their group to
open conflict points using a consensus decision rule (you can veto group decision).
Managing external boundaries  external environment is a source of information and a setting
in which the group performance is evaluated. The leader should filter the amount of feedback
and tell it in a gentle way such that it promotes a little task conflict but not so much that it
increases relationship conflict.
Nugent
Leaders make errors with conflict intervention:
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Unnecessary intervention
Inappropriate way of intervening
Avoid action
Steps in decision making for intervention:
1.
2.
3.
4.
Is intervention necessary or appropriate?
If so, what type of intervention is most appropriate?
Is leader appropriate person to intervene?
If not, should independent resource intervene? If yes, how can leader make use of this resource
person?
Third party roles
Level of control
Low outcome
High outcome
Low process
Non-intervention:
No intervention at all.
providing impetus:
zetje in de rug geven
om zelf op te lossen.
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High process
Facilitate bargaining:
identify content concerns and bargain to mutually
satisfactory compromise or collaborative problem solving.
collaborative problem solving:
Full involvement of conflicting parties.
Autocratic approach:
When impact is major, resolution urgent and parties can’t
resolve themselves.
Arbitration approach:
When especially time constraint; its looser than autocratic
approach in the way that parties can contribute their ideas.
Other variables that need to be considered:
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Emotional or content issue
content  cognitive approaches
emotional  restructuring perceptions and working trough feelings.
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o Low outcome, low process: no emphasis on both.
o Low outcome, high process: high emphasis on both.
o High outcome, high process: high emphasis on content, low on emotional.
Nature of issues:
o low outcome, low process: conflict not important and resolution not urgent or parties
are capable to resolve themselves and are motivated to do so (otherwise providing
impetus).
o Autocratic: no capability and motivation & urgent and important.
o Arbitration: capability and no motivation & urgent and important.
o Low outcome, high process: important and not urgent.
Degree of trust between leaders and parties.
Degree of trust between conflicting parties.
Leaders characteristics
o Often lack confidence and requisite skills.
Pitfalls
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Disputant expectations and strategies:
o Disputants perceive conflict as win-lose and try to find out if leader is in their side or
not. If leader does not succeed in being impartial, his or her credibility is gone.
o Disputants try to misinterpret the intervention so leader should clarify and explain
clearly what his approach is, otherwise intervention gets more complex.
Related to managerial roles:
o Leader acting as a hierarchical superior (direct power).
Related to managers personal characteristics:
o Leaders own biases;
 Perception of general nature of conflict.
 Preference for a certain way of dealing with all conflicts.
 Prejudiced
o Leaders personal needs;
 Clarity, control, harmony and rationality. If you want to much of one, it often
does not lead to a successful intervention.
Gibson, Cooper & Conger
Leader-team perceptual distance = differences between leader and a team in perceptions of the same
social stimulus.
Leaders influence team effectiveness trough influence on 4 general types of team processes: cognitive,
motivational, affective and coordination. Leader effect team effectiveness trough the effect on group
processes.
Collective cognition = a socially constructed cognitive structure that represents shared knowledge or
beliefs about an environment and its expected behavior. It is distinct from a combination of the
cognitions of individual members.
4 process phases of collective cognition (not always linear):
1. Accumulation  acquisition, perceiving, filtering and structuring information. Becoming aware
of new knowledge.
2. Interaction  retrieving, exchanging, structuring information. Utilizing knowledge you need to
know.
3. Examination  negotiating, interpreting, evaluation. Sharing information and knowledge.
4. Accommodation integrating, deciding and acting on information. Integrate knowledge into
‘team-knowledge’.
Differences in perception:
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are expected to be detrimental to collective cognition, because the misunderstandings distract
the parties and use up valuable resources.
Deters team from utilizing needed catalysts to collective cognition, because of differences the
catalyst a leader proposes can’t be used optimally.
Effect of leader-team perceptual distance on team performance regarding:
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Goal accomplishment:
o The more aligned leader and team are, the better they will perform.
o Team performance highest when perceptions are aligned and perception on goal
accomplishment is high rather than low.
o Performance is lower when perceptions of team are greater than perceptions of leader
and vice versa.
Constructive conflict (=belief that team is able to deal with conflict constructively):
o Same outcome as with goal accomplishment.
Decision-making autonomy:
o No proof.
Proof is not that strong, the incremental variance explained is on average 65%.
Constructive conflict can be beneficial up to a point, but after that it gives diminishing returns.
Conflict refers to tasks conflict.
Lecture 3
TEMPORAL DIVERSITY AND TEAM PERFORMANCE:
THE MODERATING ROLE OF TEAM TEMPORAL LEADERSHIP
We introduce team temporal leadership as a moderator of the relationship between temporal diversity
and team performance. Team temporal leadership represents the degree to which team leaders
schedule deadlines, synchronize team member behaviors, and allocate temporal resources.
Temporal Individual Differences
 Time urgency Time urgent” individuals are concerned that temporal resources are scarce and
must be conserved.(hurried, own time lines, type A behaviour)
 Pacing style
how individuals distribute effort (have shown validity with big five traits)
 Early action
 Steady action
 Deadline action
 U shaped (begin fast, slow down and end fast)
 Time perspective/ temporal focus
 Present time  risk taking, immediate benefits, short term
 Future  goal oriented, long term
 Past time  pessimistic or nostalgic view of the past
Serves as temporal bias
Time urgency = when work is due, time is an enemy and a source of steady pressure
Pacing style = how resources are allocated, members are in their element when deadline approaches
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team members are typically not consciously aware of time based differences
impact on team functioning is unaddressed
Temporal Diversity and Team Performance
 Benefits
o Balanced goals (quality/speed)
o Balanced perspectives (longterm/ shortterm)
o Sequential effort (early/steady)
 Problems
o temporal ambiguity (coordination issues)
o conflicts of interest (tension)
o scaricity of temporal resources (time pressure)
Team Temporal Leadership
3 related activities that could tackle problems arising from differences in temporal individual
 Scheduling of activities  creating a plan to let team members track their progress (remember)
 Synchronization of activities  reduces conflict by regulating flow, improving coordination
 Allocation of temporal differences prioritizing + built in spare time
Aid is structuring, coordinating and managing the pacing of task accomplishment
Results
 team temporal leadership moderated the relationship between temporal diversity and team performance
in such a way that time urgency and pacing style diversity were more positively related to team
performance when team temporal leadership was stronger
 team temporal leadership exerted a positive main effect on team performance.
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team temporal leadership did not moderate the relationship between diversity of future perspective and
team performance.
A significant, negative relationship between a team’s mean future perspective and team performance
temporal diversity and temporal leadership could be important considerations in team leader
assignments aimed at achieving effective leader-team fit.
strong temporal leaders are more likely to improve performance in temporally diverse teams than in
homogeneous teams
Incorporating a temporal component in training could increase leader effectiveness in teams performing
complex and time-pressured tasks.
team temporal leadership predicted incremental variance in willingness to follow the leader beyond that
accounted for by measures of initiation of structure and consideration.
Time pressure and team performance
Attentional focus model 
 time limits and situational factors interact with:
 task
 group variables
 individual differences
 group structure and individual differences influence focus and info of processing interaction
objectives and information processing
 this affects group interaction
 time pressure can enhance performance if it leads to higher focus and motivation
 time pressure can lower performance because less information is consumed
it shows how a range of input variables relates to time pressure to enhance or reduce performance via
interaction processes that are influenced by the individual members.
Time pressure lets you focus on initial preferences, so when that option is correct it improves results
Under time pressure group members may not share all relevant information, because no quick decision
can be made in that case
Under time pressure there is
 a higher rate of performance
 narrowing of attention
o engage in task oriented and less in interpersonal activities
o focus on reduced set of cues
o less thorough information processing
o less search for alternatives
 do not repeat information
 focus on cues that appear highly relevant
 more normative influence
 engage more self-censorship
outcome is determined by:
 group interaction and complexity of the task
model (schematic)
task features (complexity, quality vs quantity) + situational factors (noise, stress) + group structure
(norms, cohesion)+ individual differences (abilities, personality)= attentional focus (task focus way of
information processing)-> group interaction process -> match with quality (high match is good
performance)
task type vs time pressure
low complexity of task  helps focusing and increases efficiency
high complexity of task create resource problem so that group cannot attend all processes
similar: high communicational tasks, conflict management or social influence
solution: shorter time for all subjects or excluding of subjects
additive tasks -> individual input is added
disjunctive tasks -> best member determines performance
conjunctive tasks -> worst member determines performance
Group structural variables vs time pressure
Group structures that direct attention to important, relevant features improve performance
Group structures that focus on non-task cues and unrepresentative information decrease performance
Open groups -> receptive to operations and actions
Open groups under time pressure gets members seeking info from members to rapidly decide
Closed groups -> intolerant in opinions and deviant behavior
Cohesiveness makes members focus on norms and therefore create better performance, members will
be more motivated and the other way around is also true, non cohesive groups have a lower
performance.
The better the communication between the members the quicker good decision can be made and the
better it can be made. But the communication must be linked to the task itself to form the realtion.
Individual differences and personality
Performance is at its best when characteristics of the group are matched with task
Focus narrows with pressure
Group must deploy each member to its best capabilities as fast as possible
It is therefore important to create awareness of other members’ capabilities
Groups may benefit from developing from e.g. communication to create this awareness
 time pressure may be experienced as a threat or challenge
 time pressure may emphasize characteristics of members
 time pressure may strengthen reliance on status rather than expertise
The optimal time pressure depends on team composition, team structure and task features.
Meeting Deadlines in work groups: implicit and explicit mechanisms
Shared temporal cognitions  shared mental representations of things like meeting deadlines, subtask
completion and pacing styles
Team composition = implicit
Temporal reminders = explicit
When group members share cognitions they understand the actions of other members and develop
more compatible work patterns. This will enhance performance
1. similarity in pacing style
when a task is given, individual members have individual perceptions and cognitions regarding the task
(is the deadline important, how much time is needed)
2. Temporal Reminders
When temporal reminder are given, they will lead each member to the same actions and importances of
specific deadlines
3. Shared temporal cognitions are of influence of the meeting of a deadline
When everybody wants to starts late, the deadline will be missed
Shared temporal cognitions may either facilitate or impede meeting deadlines depending on the pacing
styles of the members.
Similarity in pacing style is positively related to group performance in the first assignment not on the
second (everybody knows what should be done the second time)
Temporal reminders have a positive relation to group performance on a second assignment not on the
first ( people now know how important deadlines are)
Early action groups make their deadlines
Deadline action groups miss their deadlines more often
On the long run because of temporal reminders even deadline action groups make their deadlines
Important deadlines -> use reminders to promote cognitions
Pacing style is important when selecting group members
If temporal reminders don’t come from members, manager can promote them
Overall
You need to create clarity on goals, plans and roles
o As team members
o As team leader
But beware of dysfunctional consesus
Lecture 4
“Motivation through conscious goal setting” – Edwin A. Locke
The article describes the relationship between conscious performance goals and performance on work
tasks.
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Historically  motivational psychologist have tried to conform to these strictures (materialist
approach = (1) consciousness is no cause of action; (2) valid inferences about internal evens is
impermissible) by externalizing or materializing their key concepts.
 1960s  positivist paradigm in psychology began to fall apart = begin “cognitive revolution” in
psychology
 1870s – early 1980s  “cognitive revolution” was dominant paradigm
o Rand: consciousness was an axiom (self-evident primary)
o Introspection  one’s mental contents and processes can be directly observed only in
oneself, but each person can observe the same, basic, cognitive processes in themselves as
everyone. People make errors when they introspect, but this does not refute the validity
Goal-setting Theory
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The approach of goal setting theory is consistent with, the cognitive revolution.
o Based on final causality (Aristotle) = action caused by a purpose
o Accepts axiomatic status of consciousness and volition (will)
o Assumes introspective reports, as described above, useful and valid data
 View on human motivation  start with the individual’s immediate intentions, then building from
there to explain the sources of the intentions and so on (Ryan, but used by Locke)
o It is philosophically sound
o It was consistent with introspective evidence that human action as such is normally
purposeful
o The approach worked
 The typical experimental paradigm (many variants are present) in goal setting studies:
o Subjects are given a task to perform
o They are assigned various performance goals to attain within a specified time limit
o They are given feedback showing progress in relation to the goals
Goal attributes
 Goal = object or aim of an action
o Internal aspect: ideas (desires)
o External aspect: object or condition sought
The idea guides action to attain the object
o Two broad attributes of goals
 Content (actual object)
 Intensity (scope, focus)
Qualitatively, the content of a goal is whatever the person is seeking
Quantitatively, two attributes of content: difficulty and specificity have been studied.
Finding #1. The more difficult the goal, the greater the achievement.
 Assume that the individual is committed to the goal and posses the requisite ability and knowledge
to achieve it. Without these, performance does drop at high goal levels
Finding #2. The more specific or explicit the goal, the more precisely performance is regulated.
 Specificity via quantification or enumeration to reduce variance
 Not always desirable (not in creative innovation situations)
Finding #3. Goals that are both specific and difficult lead to the highest performance
 Specific, hard goals vs. “do your best” goals
Finding #4. Commitment to goals is most critical when goals are specific and difficult
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Goal commitment = degree to which the person is genuinely attached to and determined to reach
the goals
 When goals are easy or vague, it is not hard to get commitment
Finding #5. High commitment to goals is attained when:
1. the individual is convinced that the goal is important;
o ask for compliance
o use legitimate authority
o use supportiveness, recognition and rewords (more for continued commitment)
o let the subordinate participate in setting goals
o self-set goals
o leadership (vision, role model, expecting outstanding performance, promoting “good”
employees, delegating responsibility , expressing confidence, enhancing capabilities
(training), ask for commitment)
o Commit themselves (only internal factor) --> people who engage in more intensive cognitive
processing regarding their goals and their plans to attain them are more likely to actually
carry out the relevant actions.
2. The individual is convinced that the goal is attainable (haalbaar), or at least partial attainable.
o adjust the goal to the person’s present capacity
o raise the person’s capacity through training and experience
o change the person’s perspective on their capacity through expression of confidence and role
modeling
Finding #6. In addition to having a direct effect on performance, self-efficacy (task-specific confidence)
influences:
1. the difficulty level of the goal chosen or accepted
2. commitment to goals
3. response to negative feedback or failure
4. the choice of task strategies
 People with high self-efficacy are more likely to do these four points on a higher level (more difficult
goals etc.)
 self-efficacy can be raised by: enactive mastery (training, experience and selection), persuasion
(expressions of confidence and information), and role modeling
Finding #7. Goal setting is most effective when there is feedback showing progress in relation to the
goal.
 When provided with feedback on their own performance or that of others, people often
spontaneously set goals to improve over their previous best or beat the performance of others
Finding #8. Goal setting (along with self-efficacy) mediates the effect of knowledge of past
performance on subsequent performance.
 The effect of performance feedback (knowledge of score) depends on the goals set in response to it
 Who can sustain self-efficacy  maintain or even raises their subsequent goals, commitment etc.
 Those who lose confidence do the opposite
Finding #9. Goals affect performance by affecting the direction of action, the degree of effort exerted,
and the persistence of action over time.
 When there is a conflict between two or more goals, performance to each goal may be undermined
 Persistence refers to directed effort extended over time. Harder goals typically lead to more
persistence than easy goals, because, given commitment, they take longer to reach and may require
overcoming obstacles.
Finding #10.
1. Goals stimulate planning in general. Often planning quality is higher than that which occurs
without goals.
2. When people possess task or goal-relevant plans as a result of experience or training, they
activate them virtually automatically when confronted with a performance goal.
3. Newly learned plans or strategies are most likely to be utilized under the stimulus of a specific,
difficult goal.
 Most goals require task-specific procedures in addition to attention and effort if they are to be
attained.
Finding #11. When people strive for goals on complex tasks, they are at least effective in discovering
suitable task strategies if:
1. They have no prior experience or training on the task;
2. There is high pressure to perform well;
3. There is high time pressure
 The reason that it appears is tunnel vision
Finding #12. Goals (including goal commitment), in combination with self-efficacy, mediate or partly
mediate the effects of several personality traits and incentives on performance.
 Feedback is most effective in motivation improved performance when it is used to set goals, but
people do need to know more than info, they need to know what significance the feedback has.
Finding #13. Goal-setting and goal-related mechanisms can be trained and/or adopted in the absence
of training for the purpose of self-regulation.
 Self-management: people have the choice to manage their own lives by setting their own purposes
and working to achieve them instead of choices imposed or encouraged by environments  training
programs to improve
Finding #14. Goals serve as standards of self-satisfaction, with harder goals demanding higher
accomplishment in order to attain self-satisfaction than easy goals.
 Emotion is a type of automatic, partly subconscious, psychological estimate  the form in which
one experiences automatized value judgments
 Goal achievement leads to satisfaction and goal failure to dissatisfaction
 High goals lead to less performance satisfaction, on the average, than easy goals  since high goals
require high standards of attainment than low goals, so that self-satisfaction is harder to achieve
Goal setting dilemmas:
 If hard or difficult goals lead to higher performance and lower satisfaction than easy goals 
problem
 Key is personal context  what do really want and what are our capabilities
Reward systems:
 If incentives were offered for goals that could not be reached, lower motivation and performance
resulted as compared to hourly payment or piece-rate pay.
 Solutions:
o Goals to motivate but pay for performance, regardless of goal level
o Set multiple goal levels, and pay proportionally
Generality of Goal-setting theory:
 The evidence indicates that goal setting theory involves a motivational principle of fundamental
importance, even though there are many motivational issues (subconscious) it does not deal with.
Relation to Other theories
 Goal setting has been connected to several other motivation theories:
o Social-cognitive theory
o Expectancy theory etc.
o Concept of intrinsic motivation (Deci and Ryan)  people have innate needs for selfdetermination (autonomy) and competence, and that these regulate action most strongly
when people are challenged and yet free from external constraints or pressures and from
“controlling” situations as incentive pay
o Control theory  tried to incorporate goal theory and many other theories into an
overarching framework focused around there negative feedback loop  model is rejected
Dysfunctions of Goals
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Goal-setting is harmful if goals are set for the wrong outcome or if there is goal conflict
Goals that do not change when relevant circumstances change may promote undue rigidity
Goals that are set too high can be demoralizing; fine line between stretching people and
discouraging them.
“Yours, mine, and ours: Facilitating group productivity through integration of individual and group
goals” – Deborah F. Crown and Joseph G. Rosse
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The majority of the research indicates that group goals increase group performance. Yet, the roel
individual goals play in team performance remains elusive, this could be explained by the:
Nature of the tasks
degree of interdependence
degree of task summativity (nonsummativity: requires group product >/≠ individual outputs due to
interdependent relationships
Therefore, if group performance is simply the sum of individual performances, individual goals that
increase individual performance will also increase group performance.
However, if there is an interdependent task  conflicting results
paper: focus of individual goals may be critical to groups’ performance.
Focus on individual output may detract from group performance  therefore change the individual
from one that maximizes individual output (egocentric goal) to one where the individual goal
mazimizes an individual’s contribution to the group (groupcentric goal). Result:
A directional goal effect toward group output
A mechanism for increasing individual efforts that will benefit the group
Reduction in the probability that members will engage in social loafing
Theoretical Framework

We propose that assigned goal structures affect group performance via their effect on performance
orientation; individual and group strategy; and effort expended.
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The model also proposes that certain goal structures (goal conditions) will stimulate member effort
by increasing individuals’ contribution to the group, which will lead to subsequent increases in group
performance. Ability is included in the model as a covariate for all model links that directly affect
performance
Performance orientation
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Performance orientation = the multilevel commitment to maximizing individual and group
performance.
When maximizing individual performance does not directly lead to an increase in group
performance, the individual’s focus on individual versus group performance becomes a relevant
factor
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The point where limited resources exist to maximize performance on both dimensions forces a
choice of direction.
Hypotheses which test the first link in the model:
o H1.a. After subjects are assigned an egocentric individual goal given alone their commitment
to individual performance (IPO) should increase
 supported by the research
o H1.b. After subjects are assigned a group goal given alone their commitment to group
performance (GPO) should increase.
 supported  significant effect
o
H1.c. After subjects are assigned the combination of a groupcentric individual goal and a
group goal their performance dominance (PD) should become stronger in the direction of
group performance dominance
 supported
Strategy development
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The primary cognitive mechanism in goal setting is the stimulation of strategies.
The second link in the model (perf. Orient  ind. Strat. Choices) is based on Deut’s theory of
cooperation and competition. Deutsch contentds that a situation in which the “goals” of individual
members are cooperative will promote cooperative behavior. Whereas a competitive social
situation will promote competitive behavior.
Hypotheses to test the second link:
o H2.a. The greater the commitment to maximizing individual performance (IPO), the more
likely the individual is to choose a competitive strategy.
 supported
o H2.b. The greater the commitment to maximizing group performance (GPO), the more likely
the individual is to choose a cooperative strategy.
 supported
Hypotheses to test the third link (between individual Strategy Choice and group’s strategy):
o H3. The more prevalent an individual cooperative strategy choice is among group members,
the more likely the group is to use a cooperative strategy.
 supported
 in addition, groups reporting more cooperative individual strategies were more than
twice as likely to use cooperative versus competitive group strategies
The next link is the model between the group’s strategy and gropu performance. Deutsch contends
that cooperation within a group leads to greater productivity than intra-group competition.
Hypotheses:
o H4. The strategy of the group will affect the group’s performance
 supported
Effort
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Goal setting is assumed to affect performance by increasing individuals’ task-directed effort. We
propose that this increased effort will be enhanced when group goals are complemented by
groupcentric individual goals. Research on social loafing provides a basis for this proposition.
Therefore, the addition of groupcentric individual goal to a group goal may provide group members
with a sense of accountability, as well as an index by which to evaluate their own individual
performance
The interdependence of groupcentric individual and group goals establishes a situation whereby an
increase in one dimension may facilitate an increase in the other.
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The hypotheses to test the link between (1) goal condition and individual contribution to the group
and (2) goal condition and group performance:
o H5. An assigned groupcentric individual goal and group goal given in combination should
result in an increase in the individual’s contribution to the group over and above the
contribution levels of other goal conditions.
 supported, it produced significantly higher group performance than all other goal
conditions as an agglomarate
o H6. An assigned groupcentric individual goal and group goal given in combination should
result in an increase in group performance over and above the performance of other goal
conditions.
 supported
Discussion
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The combination of groupcentric individual and group goals resulted in group performance 36%
greater than that of the control group and well in excess of any other goal combination
 Perhaps the greatest advantage of combining goals in this way for interdependent tasks was found
in their effect on effort  there was not only a summative increase in effort expended, there was
also a multiplative effect  this increae in effort expended toward group performance facilitated an
increase in effort expended toward individual contribution, followed by a subsequent increase in
effort expended toward group performance, and so on.
Effects of alternate goal conditions

The gain in individual performance by using a egocentric individual goal lead to a reduction in group
performance
 Adding a group goal to an egocentric individual goal made individual performance increase, while
group performance decreased  the beneficial effects from the group goal were not powerful
enough to counterbalance the negative effects of the egocentric individual goal.
 A group goal alone, did increase group performance but were not as substantial as when group and
groupcentric goals were combined.
 No significant difference in group performance occurred between controls and subjects given only
groupcentric individual goals  the latter failed to stimulate cooperative strategies.
The role of performance orientation in explaining group performance





Performance orientation was introduced in this study as an intervening variable between goal
condition and strategy choice.
As an individual becomes more committed to maximizing the performance of the group, there is a
synchronous increase in the group’s performance .
The highest levels of group performance wre found among individuals who had high levels of
commitemnet to both individual ang group performance as well as a slightly stronger commitment
to group performance.
These result suggest that is more important that people are strongly committed to both dimensions
of performance, rather than just more committed to the performance of the group.
Fig 3: performance orentiation: the area of maximum benefit.
Limitations and Further research



Problem: generalizing findings from the laboratory to an organizational setting:
o External validity, increased via using more cognitively complex task and the use of preexisting groups
o Internal validity
There may be cultural limitation of the model
The domain of this model extends only to group production tasks (not problem-solving or
discussion-oriented)
“Goals, Strategies, and Group performance: Some limits of goal setting in groups” – Heleen van Mierlo
and Ad Kleingeld

Goal setting for groups differs from individual goal setting in at least two important ways:
1. Interdependence among members needs to be taken into account
2. Groups offer the potential for setting goals at multiple levels of performance
 Goal setting enhances individual and grop performance through two different mechanisms:
motivation and task-specific strategies
o Task strategies refer to choices members make about how they will go about performing a
given group task.
 Cooperative: working together to attain a common goal
 Competitive strategies: involve attempt to outperform other members
 Different Goal types:
o GG = group goals
o IG = individual goals (represents egocentric IG)
o IG + GG = individual + group goals
o NSG = no specific goals = “do your best”
Study 1: the effects of goal type on task strategy (cooperation and competition) and group
performance


Mitchell and Silver found that an interdependent group task prompts cooperative strategies that
enhance performance, as long as an IG is not set by itself  this study reexamines their propositions
taking into account recent insights into goal setting for groups
Research findings suggest:
o
On group level: that specific and difficult goals also promote performance on highly taskinterdependent group tasks
o On individual-level: that the effectiveness of individual goals depends on the amount and
nature of goal interdependence among group members and on the definition of the
individual goals.
o Nonspecific goals: simultaneous effects of the goal=setting mechanisms of strategy use and
motivation (effort).
Hypothesis 1a: strategic group behavior in terms of cooperation and competition will be most
favorable in GG and NSG, somewhat less favorable in IG + GG, and least favorable in IG ([GG=NSG] >
IG+GG > IG)

The means across the specific goal conditions display the expected hierarchy, but most differences
between conditions were not statistically significant. Unexpectedly, results tentatively suggest
higher cooperation and lower competition in NSG compared with GG, although this difference was
only (marginally) significant for cooperation.
Hypothesis 1b: GG, IG+GG, and IG will yield higher effort compared with NSG ([IG, IG+GG, GG} > NSG).

Contrary to the hypothesis, groups with no specific goal did not spend less effort than groups in the
specific goal conditions.
Hypothesis 1c: Performance will be highest in GG, followed by NSG, IG + GG, and IG, respectively
(GG>NSG> IG + GG >IG)

The results provide limited support for the hypotheses. Although the mean scores across the specific
goal conditions showed the expected pattern, the specific comparisons showed no significant
differences. Moreover, NSG unexpectedly outperformed all specific goal conditions
 Method  hypotheses were frame at group level, cooperation, competition, and effort were
measured at the individual level. Group-level analyses required aggregating these measures at the
group level  primary cause seemed to be lack of variance in effort between groups rather than a
lack of agreement within groups.
Discussion:



Consistent with the result reported by Mitchell and Silver, groups with IG ranked highest on
competition and lowest on cooperation and performance. However, unlike Mitchell and Silver, we
found that NSG were associated with significantly higher performance and more cooperation
compared with other goal types.
To explain this last finding  further research  towers fell only half as often as the other
conditions, suggesting more cautious building by NSG participants = speed/accuracy trade-off
We tentatively propose that, for an independent task that requires speed and accuracy, two
simultaneous strategic processes together determine group performance: cooperation/competition
and speed/accuracy. *
o Last part could be tested post hoc, however not in this study, therefore study 2
Study 2: differentiating between effects of goal referent and goal specificity on task strategies and
group performance



Goal referent: the performance level targeted (group/individual)
Goal specificity: the extent to which goals are specific and difficult
Next to the positive sites of specific difficult goals, these goals might actually harm performance:
o when task are complex and performance is primarily a function of strategy rather than
effort
o when there is little opportunity to experiment
o when subjects have no prior experience or training
o when there is a pressure to perform well immediately
o when the goal emphasizes certain task dimensions at the expenses of others.
 We therefore propose that, for a time-constrained and highly interdependent group task that
requires speed and accuracy specific difficult goals promote risky behavior that favors speed over
accuracy and thereby obstruct goal attainment.
o This process would result in two simultaneous mechanisms:
 Cooperation/competition is triggered by the goal referent and Speed/accuracy is
triggered by the goal’s specificity and difficulty
 This implies a mediating role of cooperation/competition and speed/accuracy:
cooperation/ competition mediates the performance effect of goal referent,
whereas speed/accuracy mediates the effect of goal specificity.
 Task and procedure for Study 2 were identical to Study 1
 Hypotheses were based on 2 assumptions (supported by the results):
1. Individual goal in this study = egocentric
2. In the absence of a specific goal, the task will be perceived as a group task
Hypothesis 2a: Strategic group behavior in terms of cooperation/competition will be most favorable
in GG and NSG and least favorable in IG ([GG=NSG] > IG = GG > IG)

The means across conditions are in line with the proposed hierarchy: Cooperation was highest in GG
and NSG, and lowest in IG, whereas competition was lowest in GG and NSG and highest in IG.
Hypothesis 2b: NSG will yield lower speed compared with the specific goal conditions (NSG < [IG, IG +
GG, GG]).
Hypothesis 2c: NSG will yield higher accuracy compared with the specific goal conditions (NSG > [IG, IG
+ GG, GG])



Results largely support hypotheses 2b and 2c.
NSG indeed ranked highest in accuracy and lowest in speed
Unexpectedly, the mean score for falls in IG Was considerably higher compared with the other
conditions, suggesting relatively low accuracy in IG  post hoc exploration  significant difference
between IG And each of the other conditions on both accuracy and speed.
Hypothesis 2d: Performance will be highest in NSG, followed by GG, IG +GG, and IG, respectively
(NSG>GG>IG+GG>IG)

Some support for the hypothesis: groups in NSG performed significantly better than groups in the
other conditions, but the performance differences among these other conditions were not
significant.
The mediating role of cooperation/competition and speed/accuracy


Goal referent and goal specificity were represented by dichotomous variables.
Together, these results support our proposition that cooperation and competition mediate the
relationship between goal referent (individual vs. group) and group performance, whereas speed
and accuracy (partially) mediate the relationship between goal specificity (difficult and specific vs.
nonspecific) and group performance.
General Discussion and Conclusion

Cooperation and competition mediated the relationship between goal referent and group
performance, explaining the relatively low group performance in the conditions including an
individual goal. Speed and accuracy mediated the relationship between goal specificity and group
performance, explaining the relatively high group performance in the nonspecific goal condition,
although the mediating role of speed was only marginally significant.
 Results of the current study are clearly limited to goals directed at outcome quantity and future
research might explore alternative, more comprehensive goal systems, designed to encourage
specific behaviors that are essential to effective task performance.
 Furthermore, future research might, among other things, consider different time limits, allow
communication, and explicitly incorporate time for strategy development.
 In goal-setting research, the motivational effects are commonly represented by the amount of effort
expended by participants. Interestingly, while highlighting the importance of task strategies, our
findings do not seem to reflect the role of motivational goal-setting mechanisms: specific and
difficult goals did not result in more effort and more generally did not result in an increase in group
performance compared with nonspecific goals. This finding does seem consistent with Mitchell and
Silver, who also did not find a general relationship between specific difficult goals and group
performance.
 A more conceptual explanation for the absence of motivational effects in our study may be that a
task context that forces group members to work together and coordinate their efforts emphasizes
the role of task strategies to such an extent that potential simultaneous motivational cues are
overshadowed.
Limitations (specific)
1. Some participants listed a goal that differed from their assigned goal, most notably in the IG + GG
conditions. Some caution may thus be due when interpreting the IG + GG results.
2. In addition to its effects on effort and strategies, goal setting has been suggested to affect
performance through enhanced attention or persistence. However there is no evidence of attention
or persistence effects in our study.
3. The separate mediation analyses we conducted for speed/accuracy and cooperation/competition
might not capture the full complexity of any possible relations between these variables.
4. Sample is mostly male, would be interesting to check the role of demographic and cultural
characteristics
5. The measures of cooperation and competitions that were obtained from self-report scales
administered at the end of the experiment. Alternative measures might be considered in the future.
Despite these limitations, the present study extends our knowledge on goal setting for highly
interdependent groups, indicating that such a context it may be advisable to avoid individual goals that
direct attention toward maximizing individual performance and suggesting that caution maybe
warranted when setting quantity goals for groups under time pressure that need to work both fast and
accurately.
Lecture 5
Lecture 5: The relationship between work characteristics, work engagement and performance
The ‘happy productive worker thesis’ shows that people who are happy are more productive. It depends
on the kind of happiness, only when it is happiness with the job/assignment, it increases job satisfaction
and productivity (in the long run).
Emotions and happy work:
-
-
-
Negative emotions lead to specific action-tendencies, for example anxiety leads to flight and
anger leads to fight. This happens because you want to avoid the stress. This specific actions
make emotions evolutionary adaptive.
Broaden-and-build theory = positive emotions lead to openness of new experiences and a
broadening of the behavioral repertoire. People who frequently experience positive emotions
continuously build their personal resources. These resources function as reserves which can be
drawn when needed.
This cumulating effect can have a positive effect or a negative effect (neerwaartse spiraal) but in
any case it explains why there is a correlation between happiness and job performance. The
positive effect is more important/has more influence than the negative effect.
Crossover or emotional contagion = the transfer of positive or negative experiences from one
person to the other. For example, if colleagues influence each other with work engagement, the
team may better perform. There is evidence in the literature found by Barsade,
Bakker&Xanthopoulou.
Self-regulation is based on the performance episodes model and states that:
-
Individuals perform better when fully concentrated on the task at hand (concentrated = allocate
resources).
Tasks that are interesting to employees make it easier for them to effectively regulate their
attention toward the task.
Work engagement leads to better task performance because employees will be more willing to
direct their attention and other personal resources towards the task.
This model is similar to the conservations of resources model (COR) but it takes a within-persons
approach instead of a between-persons approach of COR.
Work engagement = a positive, affective-motivational state of fulfillment that is characterized by vigor,
dedication and absorption.
vigor = high levels of energy and mental resilience while working; able to perform.
dedication = feelings of significance, enthusiasm, inspiration, pride and challenge; willing to perform.
absorption = being fully immersed in one’s work so that time flies and one has difficulty detaching
oneself from one’s work; performing.
The opposite of work engagement is burn-out with the following antecedents: exhaustion, cynicism and
reduces competence.
exhaustion
cynicism
vigor
dedication
Reduced
competence
Burn-out
Work engagement
Absorption
In prevalence, about 30% of the people faces burn-out while 70% faces work engagement.
Characteristics engaged employees:
-
Take personal initiative.
Generate their own positive feedback.
Are also engaged outside their work.
Are tired in a different way.
Also want to do other things than working.
Engaged employees are not the same as workaholics (= people who work excessively hard and
compulsively). Work engagement is positively related with in-role performance, extra-role
performance and innovativeness, but workaholics exhibit greater extra-role performance.
Why persons are engaged in their work or face burn-out depends on the way they perceive the job
demands and job resources. A burn out results when the job resources are insufficient to cope with the
demands.
Job demands = those physical, psychological, social or organizational aspects of a job that require
cognitive and emotional effort or skills and is therefore associated with certain physiological and/or
psychological costs. Examples are physical demands, mental demands, emotional demands and
workload.
Job resources = those physical, psychological, social or organizational aspects of the job that are either
functional in achieving work goals, reduce job demands and the associated costs, stimulate personal
growth, learning and development. Examples are feedback, coaching, social support, and autonomy.
The job demands-resources model is build on the demand-control model and the effort-reward
imbalance model. The strength of these models is the simplicity, but on the contrary the models are
static and it is unclear why work pressure or effort should always be the most important job demand.
The job-demands-resources model is better in the sense that it is dynamic so that you can use it in every
setting you like.
The total job demands-resources model:
Assumptions of the model:
-
It is about a unique work environment for every occupational group.
2 categories: job demands and job resources.
2 processes: health/energy and motivation.
Resources may buffer the impact of job demands.
Job resources become salient/have a bigger influence in the context of high job demands.
There are 2 models; the main model is the direct influence of job demands on diminished health/energy
and the direct influence of job resources on motivation.
There is also the indirect influence of job demands and job resources on motivation and diminished
energy.
In-role performance = meeting organizational objectives and effective functioning; those officially
required outcomes and behaviors that directly serve the goals of the organization.
Extra-role performance = contextual performance = discretionary behaviors that are believed to directly
promote the effective functioning of an organization without necessarily directly influencing a person’s
target productivity.
The indirect influence is also shown by the interactions in the model which eventually revise the
predictions of the job demands-resources model into:
high
Resources
low
Boredom
Low strain
High motivation
Apathy
Low strain
Average motivation
low
Work engagement
Average strain
High motivation
Burnout
High strain
Low motivation
high
Demands
The consequences of work engagement are:
-
Better performance.
Reduced absence.
Reduced personnel turnover.
Higher productivity.
Client satisfaction.
Engaged colleagues.
Even excellent workers have an off-day because the daily fluctuations. The difference between excellent
workers and minimum level workers is also caused by individual differences. The role of the individual is
given by personal resources.
Personal resources = aspects of the self that refer to individuals sense of their ability to control and
impact upon their environment successfully. They are important, because they protect you against
negative stress, may promote health and can be used to cope with stressful situations.
Pars of personal resources are:
-
Self-efficacy (being efficient yourself).
Stress resilience.
Optimism.
self-esteem.
sense of coherence.
For example the influence of self-efficacy on the relationship between emotional dissonance and work
engagement is that with low self-efficacy the work engagement faster declines when you go from low to
high emotional dissonance than when you have high self-efficacy.
Job crafting is a new trend in organization practice and science orientation toward proactive
perspectives in work design theories. These theories should complement classic approaches to work
design and show what to do when resources which are important for work engagement are absent.
Job crafting = a creative and improvised process that captures how individuals locally adapt their jobs in
ways that create and sustain a viable definition of the work they do and who they are at work. It has 3
parts:
-
task crafting = how work is conceptualized and carries out.
Relational crafting = how and with whom one interacts.
Cognitive crafting = how one ascribes meaning and significance to ones work.
Or in other division:
-
Resources seeking: e.g. I discuss problems with people from my work.
Challenges seeking: e.g. I ask for more responsibilities.
Demands reducing: e.g. I make sure I have less emotional strenuous work to perform.
The conditions and outcomes of job crafting:
Lecture 6
Summary Performance Enhancement, Class 6, Dr. Le Blanc.
Measurement and Methodological Issues in the Study of Job Stress and Performance
Article 1: Measurement and Methodological Issues in the Study of Job Stress and Performance (De
Jonge et. Al.)
About testing the Job Demand Control Model, using both group and individual level assessments of job
characteristics.
The past decade, several models have shown that the absence or presence of job-characteristics (e.g.
job demands, job autonomy) may lead to attitudinal and behavioural reactions, such as job satisfaction,
exhaustion, health complaints, illness or disability.
 Situation centered models: focus on explanatory factors or events outside the particular worker.
 Person centered models: seeks explanation in the person, whose actions are being studied (e.g.
cognition, habits, feelings and needs).
 Job control: the working individual’s potential control over his tasks and his conduct during the
working day.
 Job demands and job control generally have been measured by means of self-report
questionnaires. The main problem with this: it measures job characteristics as perceived by the
individual worker and may therefore not reflect the objective task accurately.
 The job characteristics of the JD-C Model have been measured in two different ways:
o Objective: Job characteristics which are assessed independently of the job incumbent
(physical and social characteristics of the work environment or expert ratings).
o Subjective: Job characteristics are dependent on employee’s cognitive and emotional
processing (like appraisals), and their ability in coping.
Hypothesis:
Job demands and job autonomy have an interaction effect with respect to employee health. And, if the
JD-C Model is correct, the use of aggregated data should reveal stronger interaction effects.
Method en measures:
Not that important I guess. They used demographic variables as controllers, job demands and job
autonomy as predictor variables. The four outcome variables are emotional exhaustion, job-related
anxiety, work motivation, and job satisfaction.
Discussion and conclusions:
 De Jonge et al say that the aggregated data correspond to the more objective work conditions,
while the individual data correspond to stressor perceptions or results of appraisal processes.
 Work motivation and job satisfaction are more dependent on the group (i.e. the average
worker), while emotional exhaustion and, to a lesser extent anxiety, are more dependent on the
individual.
 Both group and individual assessments of job characteristics are important in predicting
employee health.
 Researchers may need to focus on work conditions (i.e. the concept of the ideal typical worker)
and the individual employee simultaneously.
Article 2: Measurement and Methodological Issues in Work Stress Research (Dollard and De Jonge)
Work Stress Research: Attempts to draw links between taxing aspects of work environment (demands,
stressors), perceptions and appraisals of these, and observational strains. Strains could be physiological,
psychological of behavioral changes.
A strain results from the joint effects of the demands of the work situation (stressors) and
environmental moderators of stress, like job control. Example, a strain can be understood to result for
those with objective high demand and objective low control.
There are two different paradigms of thinking in the field of work stress:
1. Psychological paradigm, where stress is described as a relationship between the person and the
environment that is appraised as taxing or exceeding resources, and endangers well-being. It’s a
more person-centered model, and is presented as follows:
Objective stressor  Cognitive appraisal (Perceived stress)  Strain
2. The second paradigm consists of so-called situation-centered theoretical models, where stress is
particularly linked to factors or events outside a particular worker (like work characteristics). It’s
presented as follows:
Objective stressor  Stress
So it’s more situation-centered. However, such a model inevitably contain some personcentered assumptions for reason of ‘fine tuning’ (Le Blanc et al.). Do not forget the importance
of personal factors.
Stress in these models refers to the intermediate state of arousal (opwinding) between the
objective stressor and strain.
Self-report vs objective measures.
 Self-report can provide a rich source of patters of thoughts and emotion, and allow us to learn
more about coping and adaptational outcomes.
 Problems with self-reporting (Self-report bedoelen ze dus mee dat je bijvoorbeeld mbv een
vragenlijst (of met een zelf in te vullen questionairre) aan werknemers gaat vragen hoe ze zich
voelen mbt hun werk, in plaats van objectieve waarnemingen doen zoals ‘aantal dagen ziek’):
o Problems of memory
o Language ambiguity (verschillende interpretatie van woorden)
o Social desirability
o Demand characteristics
o Questionnaire method has problems like central tendency bias and response
acquiescence (alleen maar instemmen met de vraag).
Frese and Zapf define:
 Subjective as tied to one's cognitive and emotional processing (e.g. perceptions and appraisals);
 Objective as means that a particular individual's cognitive and emotional processing does not
influence the reporting of social and physical facts.
And they argue that self-report can vary in level of objectivity depending on the level of cognitive and
emotional processing required by question instructions. For example `How much do you feel stressed by
the burden of this job?' is high on cognitive and emotional functioning in comparison to `How many
overtime hours do you work?' which is much less so.
Alternative approach: group assessments
 With group assessments, the scores of job incumbents with the same job and working in nearly
identical workplaces are aggregated into one general score.
 Frese and Zapf: Group assessments:
o Are more objective measures in the sense that the influence of individual perceptions
and maybe wrong answers are reduced;
o Reduces unsystematic error variance;
o Are therefore likely to be more reliable than individual assessments.
Multilevel analysis: In this type of research, the date structure in the population is hierarchical and
contextual. For example: An individual worker can be viewed as nested in the context of a job, an
organization, an industry and a nation, and all of these could have an (hierarchical) effect.
Measures of strain
Another problem for stress research is the extent to which questionnaire measurement can be used to
assess strain, in particular affective states. Frese and Zapf (hebbie die twee weer) argued that the level
of affective and cognitive processing involved in self-report could be influenced by questionnaire
instructions. For example, `How stressed are you about the amount of work you need to do?' would
arouse more affective processing than `How many tasks do you perform in a day?' Dit lijkt op wat er
eerder in deze samenvatting staat, maar dit gaat duidelijker over het meten van strain, het vorige ging
over objective of subjective vraagstelling.
In general and for good practice, measures need to be:
 Supported by evidence of reliability and validity
 Appropriate and fair in the situation.
The influence of negative affectivity (NA) on the work-stress process
 There need to be more research on this topic, as things are still not very clear.
 It has been asserted that there is a tendency for high negative affected individuals to perceive
higher levels of job stress because they focus more on the negative aspects of other people and
the world in general.
 Even when different studies controlled for the effects of negative affectivity, work stressors
remained significant predictors of strain.
 Despite evidence that negative affectivity affects perceptions of health there is little evidence
that NA is predictive of long-term health status, or objective indices of health status, such as
number of visits to the doctor during the past year, or number of days missed due to illness
(Watson et al).
Common method effects are generally interpreted in:
- Concrete terms such as single method, similar formats or similar situation effects, or in
- Abstract terms such as affirmative response halo and central tendency effects.


Method variance would be greater in psychological models because the psychological processes
will influence measurement of job stress.
In work environment models more objective methods of measuring job stressors is used, so
there is expected to be less method variance.
A major limitation of work stress research is that it is based on a cross-sectional design, so observations
at only one point in time are made. Different approaches may be a solution to this problem:
1. Participative approach, dus mee doen tijdens het onderzoek;
2. Triangulation. This approach uses multiple theoretical frameworks and sources of data to
strengthen the trustworthiness of research findings. It will overcome the limitations of monomethod or mono-theoretical research. Different types of triangulation are possible:
 Data triangulation (uses multiple sources of data);
 Methodological triangulation (uses two or more methodologies to study a single
phenomenon;
 Theory triangulation (uses two or more theoretical frameworks);
 Analysis triangulation (uses different methods of analysis, such as multivariate statistics
or content analysis).
3. Comprehensive measurement: economic indicators of health and well-being.
Lecture 7
Personal need for structure (PNS) and creative performance: the moderating influence of fear of
invalidity (PFI)
F. Rietzschel 2007
Introduction:
- Creativity= the generation of ideas, insights, or problem solution that are new and meant to be
useful (Ambile 1983, Paulus&Nijstad 2003, Sternberg&Lubart 1999).
- Call for creativity: well know schemas do not apply, and it is not all clear what strategy or
behaviour will yield an acceptable outcome. This is often experienced as stressful. The reason
for this lies in the fact that lack of uncertainty and ambiguity is needed to respond adequately
when decisive action, control, and precise predication are needed.
- The stress associated with encountering new and ill-defined situations is likely occur among
individuals with high PNS.
- Hight PNS seems to lead to heuristic approaches to decision-making task and quick ‘freezing’ 
may impede flexibility.
Creativity can be decomposed into:
1) Flexibility:
a. Divergent thought = different ideas in one specific category.
b. Convergent thought = attack a problem from different perspectives or breadth, or
inclusiveness, of the cognitive categories accessed.
2) Fluency: generating as many ideas, options or solutions as possible in all categories combined.
3) Originality: the ability to approach a problem or situation in a new manner, without relying on
routine or habitual thoughts. (It is possible to be creative, without being flexible or fluent, that
is generating just one creative idea).
PNS & creative performance:
- Creativity is to a large extent dependent on the instinct motivation of a individual, that is the
motivation to engage in an activity for its own sake.
- PNS has been found to be negatively related to openness to experience, which in turn has been
found to be positively related to creative performance.
- Decomposing a problem in subcategories and deal with them separately will result in generating
more ideas and also more original ones (Rietzschel, Nijstad & Stroebe - 2006)
This study:
- Personal fear for Invalidity (PFI) is the strong tendency that individuals may have to worry, and
to keep worrying about the possibility that they make (or made) a wrong decision. PFI has a
negative relation with creativity.
- The combination of high PFI and high PNS have a strong negative effect, while PNS will cause
tendency to structure and simplification, whereas PFI can be stated to cause complexification
(i.e. multiple perspectives).
- In theory PFI shouldn’t be negative related to creativity, while tendency to postpone decision
and approaching a problem from different directions, can actually contribute to creative
performance.
Result /discussion 1:
- PNS and PFI are independent constructs.
Conclusion and general discussion:
- PNS is not necessarily negatively related to creativity.
- High levers of PNS will lead people to spontaneously structure the creative task, and this can be
(but not always) beneficial for creativity.
- Through perseverance, many ideas will be generated and eventually these ideas will be original.
However, if one is too self-critical during idea generation, as many people with high PFI, the
ideation process is hampered by anxiety and worries and creativity plummets. Perseverance
within idea categories mediated between the interaction term (PNS by PFI) and originality of
ideas.
- High PNS and low PFI people spontaneously persevere in subcategories and eventually are
original. So it is possible to be creative without being flexible but rather by being relatively
systematic.
Conclusive sentence:
There are different roads to creativity. One road, taken by high-PNS people, is to take a structured
approach and systematically persevere within conceptual categories. Although this is not associated
with flexibility of thinking, it can be associated with other demensions of creativity, such as fluency and
originality. However, when high levels of PNS are coupled with high levels of PFI, creativity is bound to
suffer.
Towards a theory of organizational creativity
Woodman 1993
Introduction:
- Organizational creativity = the creation of a valuable, useful new product, service, idea,
procedure, or process by individuals working together in a complex social system.
- Organizational creativity is a subset of innovation. Innovation is a subset of organization change.
Notice that organizational changes doesn’t automatically mean innovation.
-
Organizational creativity exists of:
o The creative process;
o The creative product;
o The creative person;
o The creative situation;
o The way in which each of these components interacts with the others.
An interactive perspective on creativity
Woodman and Schoenfeldt (1989,1990) proposed an interactionist model of creative behavior at the
individual level. They suggest that creativity is the complex product of a person’s behavior in a given
situation. The model provides an integrating framework that combines important elements of
personality, cognitive, and social psychology explanations of creativity.
Both cognitive (knowledge, cognitive skills/style/preferences) and non-cognitive (personality) are
related to creative behavior. In sum, creativity is a function of antecedent conditions, cognitive styles
and ability, personality factors, relevant knowledge, motivation, social influences, and contextual
influences.
Individual creativity
Antecedent conditions:
Antecedent conditions influence the personality and cognitive characteristics of the individual, and to
some extent they probably determine the current situation in which the individual finds himself or
herself (Woodman & Schoenfeldt, 1989).
Personality factors:
Researchers agree that personality is related to creativity, although defining the ‘ideal personality’
seems to be impossible. Because of this researchers should retain an appreciation for the creative
person as a partial explanation for creativity in complex social settings.
Cognitive factors:
Researchers have found a number of cognitive abilities that relate to creativity:
- Carrol (1985) eight first-order factors: associative fluency, fluency of expression, figural fluency,
ideational fluency, speech fluency, word fluency, practical ideational fluency, and originality.
Also field independency: people with high field independency are able to analyze the relevant aspects,
without being distracted by the irrelevant aspects, whereas field-dependent people have difficulties
separating less important aspects.
- Guilfors (1983) the role of transformation abilities. He suggests that a person’s disposition
toward the application of intellectual abilities to look for transformations was a general
cognitive style dimension.
- Basadur, Graen, and Green (1982): for a creative person to produce socially useful products
divergent and convergent thinking is necessary.
Instinct motivation:
- Intrinsic motivation has been postulated by many researchers as a key element in creativity,
while it results in control of attention and self-regulation. Research has shown that motivational
interventions such as evaluations and reward systems seems to have an adverse impact on
creativity.
- Knowledge, which is related to age, is also an important factor.
Knowledge:
- Knowledge and expertise fulfill also an important role in creativity.
- Memory & creativity - Stein (1989) identified both a positive and a negative effect that previous
experience and learning had on creativity.
Creativity in groups
Individual creativity can be influenced by social processes, unfortunately there has not been many
research done on this subject.
Conditions for group creativity:
- Factors that are important: group composition (COMP), group characteristics (CHAR), and group
process factors (PROC) that are related to creative outcomes in work groups and research teams
(see model).
- Payne (1990) examined the effectiveness of research teams, he identified resource availability
(in model = contextual influences - CI), leadership, group size, cohesiveness, communication
patterns, and group diversity as crucial factors in creative performance.
Group process and problem solving:
- Various aspects of the process and interactions among members of a task group may place
similar restraints on how the task is approached or on group members attention to heuristic
aspects of the task.
-
-
Brainstorming for instance was developed with the belief that ideas being generated would
allow members to build off of others ideas and would result in more ideas. Research has shown
(reviewed by Stein 1974) that individuals produces fewer ideas in such groups.
Hack man and Morris (1975) came up with a framework to analyse the group-interaction
process: group performance is reduced due to process, coordination, or motivational loss.
o Process loss – results form errors in task performance strategies.
o Coordination & motivation losses – results from poor integration of group members
efforts or from error in task performance strategies.
Problem solving groups can be made more effective by training individuals.
Social information:
- An advantage of group work is the ability for one another to augment their own knowledge.
- Role of social information: verbal and non-verbal signals, showing others what factors they value
in their workplace and how they evaluate those factors.
- There are arguments regarding the potential impact of social information on, and in interaction
with, creative processes in organizations.
Summery
Group creativity is not the simple aggregate of all group members creativity, although group creativity is
clearly a function of the creativity of individuals in the group. In addition, group creativity is influenced
by group composition (e.g., diversity), group characteristics (e.g., cohesiveness, group size), and group
processes (e.g., problem-solving strategies, social information processes), and contextual influences
stemming from the organization (see Equation CG in model).
Creativity in organizations
Creativity training:
- Much of the work on creativity in organizational settings has explored the match between
individual cognitive styles and organizational contexts or the training of creative problem solving
approaches.
- Basadur, Graen, and Scandura (1986) found that found that training of work groups promoted
far superior transfer of training over training of individuals, presumably because of the
establishment of social support for divergent thinking among the work group.
- Link to the model: the availability of creativity training programs could be regarded as part of
the contextual influences that establish or encourage an organizational culture supportive of
creative behaviour.
- The writer is concerned that much writing about creativity in organizations has a relatively
narrow training focus. The field must broaden its focus considerably to understand conditions
that encourage and inhibit creative behaviour by individuals and groups in the work setting.
Research framework and proposition
The second model represents a summarization of the ideas, variables and relationships explored above.
It is a complementation and extension of the first model. It provides another perspective on the same
ideas:
- Figure 1 captures the dynamic, interactive nature of persons and situations across multiple
levels of social organization.
- Figure 2 suggests that individual, group, and organizational characteristics have an impact on
the creative process and situation, resulting in the creative product for the organization.
-
The numerous variables at the individual, group and organizational level can be linked with
creative behaviour.
Individual characteristics interact with social influence processes and environmental influence
processes at both the group and organizational level.
The complex mosaic of individual, group and organizational characteristics creates the context,
that is the creative situation – within which individual and group behaviours are played out.
The creative situation = the total sum of social and environmental (contextual) influences on
creative behaviour.
Last but not least a final model, which represents a prelimanary formulation of a theory of
organizational creativity in a form more directly amenable to emperical investigation.
Three propositions belong too this model:
- Proposition 1: The creative performance of individuals in a complex social setting is a function of
salient individual characteristics, social influences that enhance or constrain individual creativity
(e.g., group norms), and contextual influences that enhance or constrain individual creativity
(e.g., organizational reward structure).
- Proposition 2: The creative performance of groups in a complex social setting is a function of the
creative performance of group members, salient aspects of the group itself that enhance or
constrain creativity (e.g., size), and contextual influences on group functioning (e.g.,
organizational culture).
- Proposition 3: The creative performance of the organization, as a complex social system, is a
function of the creative performance of its constituent groups, and salient aspects of the
organization that enhance or constrain creativity (e.g., resource availability).
Overall concluding comments
- Research on organization creativity will by definition cross multiple levels of analyses, which
automatically imply methodological and conceptual problems inherent in aggregating data
across different levels of analysis.
- Creativity is a complex social setting and must necessarily concern itself with product, process,
person and situation.
- Creativity and innovation have been reviewed from a variety of perspectives. One thing can be
concluded: after decades of theory development and empirical research, little is known about
how the creative process works, especially within the context of complex social systems such as
formal organizations.
Also little is known about how organizations can successfully promote and manage individual
and organizational creativity.
- This shortage of information is, according to Woodman, Swayer and Grifin, due to the failure of
measurement and the fragmented approach of studies instead of an interactionist perspective.
- What is known are the determinants of creativity in organizations, the process by which it
manifests itself, and how it is enhanced or inhibited.
Lecture 8
Individual differences: There are differences between persons  and also in relationship with job
performance.
There are two fields:
1) Ability
a. Cognitive ability/intelligence Can do/maximum performance
b. Physical Abilities
Can do/maximum performance
2) Personality
a. Big five personality traits
 Will do/typical performance
Cognitive ability is a good predictor for job performance. Over 59% indication for performance.
Model of personality:
Trait perspective
 A persistent (enduring) characteristic or dimensions of individual differences.
o Only minor changes
o Reflects predisposition to react in a certain way.
Only model which is sufficient to describe “normal personality”
 FFM (Five Factor Model)
o Stucture found in factor-analysing various personality quistionnaires.
 Big Five
o Building up on lexical approach of verbal characteristics (Goldberg, 1990)
1) The Big Five
a. Neuroticism
b. Extraversion
c. Opennes to experience
d. Agreeableness
e. Conscientousness
Why care about personality?
1) Practice : Managers care about the personality of their personal.
2) Predictive validity
a. Demonstrated in meta analysis on the big five model. Personality is a good predictor for
performance.
3) Meta-analysis:
a. Underestimate effect because combination of traits is important.
i. Complete information and interaction of traits important.
ii. Possibility of compensation
4) Incremental Validity
a. Explains variance in work behavior.
5) Adverse impact.
a. No discrimination of racial or ethnic groups with the use of personality tests.
6) Utility of personality constructs over time.
a. Relation with career success and broader life outcomes.
7) Relationships found to many work related behaviors and outcomes.
a. E.G. counterproductive work behavior.
b. Person  Organization
Person
Motivation
Behavior
Performance
Situation
Performance is a formula Of
{*Declarative knowledge
- Facts
- Principles
- Goals
- Self-Knowledge
Multiplied with
*Procedural, knowledge and skill
- Cognitive
- Psychometric
- Physical
Multiplied with
*Motivation
- Choice to perform
- Level of effort
- Persistence
}
Individual Difference:
 Cognitive ability and personality.
Influence performance individually or in combination through effects in action phases/work
motivation.
 Situational aspects
Influence performance directly and in combination with individual differences.
Linkin Personality to work motivation and performance
-
Specific and difficult goals lead to higher performance.
Easy goals or unspecific goals instructions such as “do your best” results in lower results.


Goals have a directive and energizing function they direct attention to a task influence effort or
persistence and facilitate strategy development.
Personal goals and self efficacy have been shown to mediate the effect of individual difference
factors on task performance. Personality traits affect how or what goals people set for
themselves in achievement settings or their beliefs about their capability to accomplish a certain
task.
The rubican model of action phases divides the course of goal directed action into different consecutive
phases. Based on the separation of motivation versus volition.
By examining the effects of several personality traits at the same time in the goal-directed action
process, the research offered a more better view of the mechanism. Big five and cognitive ability did not
have a direct effect on performance when controlling for motivational variables involved in the phases
of goal setting and goal realization. There was an positive effect of conscientiousness on commitment to
self-set goals while controlling for effects of all big five factors, there was not support fount for the
postulated effect of neuroticism in this phase.
Analysis have demonstrated that the effect of some personality traits varies between phases of the
action process or work conditions. No singe big five factor plays the same role for goal generation and
realization, nor can effects be transferred to different work settings on a one-by-one basis.
Conscientiousness, for example, was not a significant predictor of the level of personal goal in the
present study, but the result of a second study with the same task under different work conditions
revealed even a negative effect on this personality trait in different action phases.
The role of the individual difference factors on motivation under varying work conditions is, at the
moment, less clear. However, to build an integrated theory of personality and work motivation, in
particular the interactional effects of personality with situational factors within real-life work settings
need to be tested in detail.
The importance of situational characteristics for work motivation already raises questions about other
possible factors that can have an impact on these relations of personality factors with work motivation
and work performance. Effects, like culture or values are tested in detail on an postulated explanatory
models. Work values or norms influence the way people approach work.
Barrick and Mount Personality Matters
Until 1980 personality was seen as not a good predictor of performance but last years this view has
been changed. But yet the prediction can be called modes. If this is true, why should we care about
personality?
Discuss: Why care about personality?
1) Managers care about personality
2) Emperical and theoretical understanding of the nature of the relationship through the big five
research:
a. Conscientiousness and emotional stability leads to overall stability.
b. Agreeableness(1), Extraversion(2) and Openness to experience(3) also lead to
performance but only in certain niches.
(1)Important for jobs where performance include working in teams.
(2)Needed for performance in sales.
(3)Related to performance where work is creativity and to influence the ability to adopt
to change.
3) Any analysis done is an underestimated one. Because it reports the validity of an individual
personality trait when used alone.
4) Research shows that personality contributes incremental value in the prediction of job
performance above and beyond that accounted for by other predictors, including general
mental ability and biodata.
5) Most personality traits, certainly the big five, reveal small to non exciting mean score differences
between racial or ethnic groups. Very interesting because companies want a diverse workforce.
6) A study reported that the big five personality traits predict multiple facets of career success,
whether assessed intrinsically (i.e. satisfaction) or extrinsically (e.g. occupational status), using
either subjective reactions.
7) Researcher have found personality to be meaningfully related to many work-related behaviors
and outcomes that managers care about, and that matter to organizations.
3 issues that needs attention as moving to the future:
First issue:
1) The effects of the situation. Strong situations have been shown to results in a decrease between
the observed relations between personality and behavior.
2) Individuals are attracted to join organizations they fit and leave those they do not fit, this
evidence demonstrates the role organizations level variables have on personality at work.
3) Peoples personality reaction group processes and also so react on performance.
What furthers complicates the research is the effect the persons personality has on a certain situation.
Second issue:
The progress at which personality affect performance. Personality is likely to be the critical dispositional
basis for determination how the person interacts or is motivated once an individual has chosen on
environment that is consistent with his or her interests.
Third issue: Measurement problems. How can you do better?
1) Traits will usefully predict behavior only when aggregated, either over a category of behaviors.
2) We must recognize that global traits are best for explanation and theory development.
3) Measures are only based upon self report measures.