همکاری آدم کش: اثرات تصمیم گیری های نقش تیم در انطباق با ساختارهای پاداش جایگزین

Structural Adaptation Theory proposes that it is more difficult for teams to change from competitive to cooperative reward conditions than it is for them to change in the opposite direction, and this has been labeled the cutthroat cooperation effect [Johnson, M. D., Hollenbeck, J. R., Ilgen, D. R., Humphrey, S. E., Meyer, C. J., & Jundt, D. K. (2006). Cutthroat cooperation: Asymmetrical adaptation of team reward structures. Academy of Management Journal, 49, 103–120]. The current study investigated whether team role discussion can neutralize this effect and promote successful adaptation from competitive to cooperative reward structures. Consistent with our predictions, in a study that involved 75 four-person teams performing a complex task under cooperative reward conditions, we found that teams with a history of competitive rewards performed worse than teams with a history of cooperative rewards in a control condition. However, this effect was neutralized when teams allocated their roles in a team role discussion. This neutralization effect was driven by behavioral coordination and unmet expectations regarding conflict.

In the last two decades, many organizations have restructured their workforce around work teams (Hackman, 1998 and Ilgen, 1999), defined as “small groups of interdependent individuals who share responsibility for specific outcomes” (Sundstrom, DeMeuse, & Futrell, 1990, p. 120). In the literature on teams, consensus is emerging that teams are not static entities that perform in single-cycle contexts, but instead, are complex, adaptive, and dynamic systems that perform across time (McGrath, Arrow, & Berdahl, 2000). Teams often operate in turbulent environments, where they are confronted with dynamic tasks and work situations, and adaptation is crucial (Burke et al., 2006, LePine, 2003 and LePine, 2005). Structural changes are one example of changes requiring team adaptation. The current trend in organizations is toward using more flexible, team-based structures marked by increased interdependence. For example, companies such as GE, Yahoo, Ford Motor Company, Dow Chemical and Goodyear Tire and Rubber have scaled back or abandoned “rank and yank” evaluation and reward systems that make fine-grained within unit differentiations, and replaced these with systems that focus on broader, team-based outcomes (Bates, 2003, Boyle, 2001, Lowery, 2003, McGregor, 2006 and Meisler, 2003). Indeed, the use of team-based incentives is on the rise, and longitudinal surveys of Fortune 1000 firms indicate that in the year 2000, close to 80% of these firms employed some form of team-based pay, up from 59% in 1990, and less than 20% in 1980 (Garvey, 2002). For example, Unisys, Lockheed Martin, Marriott, General Motors, 3M and Carrier Corporation have moved from individual-based pay raises to team-level bonuses in order to promote coordination of efforts and shared focus on team goals (Gross, 1995). Recent research has started to explore the questions of how teams adapt to changes like those described above over time, and how certain variables affect their performance and adaptability (cf. Ilgen et al., 2005 and Johnson et al., 2006). One theory that has been developed to understand how teams react to changes is Structural Adaptation Theory (SAT, Johnson et al., 2006). SAT suggests that like physical systems, social systems can be differentiated by their degree of complexity and that more energy is required to maintain the structure of complex systems relative to simpler ones. Moreover, in line with the second law of thermodynamics, SAT proposes that there is a natural tendency for complex and organized systems to break down over time into structures that are increasingly simple and chaotic. If this is the case, in the absence of any formal, external intervention, more complex systems that are highly ordered—in the sense of being hierarchical, specialized and collective—may inherently drift toward more disordered and chaotic systems that are decentralized, undifferentiated, and individualistic. This is precisely what Johnson et al. (2006) observed when they examined SAT with respect to how teams react to changes in reward structures. Under stable conditions, they found that teams working under a cooperative reward structure coordinated their efforts better and performed more accurately than teams working under a competitive structure, just as had been demonstrated in earlier research (Beersma et al., 2003). However, Johnson et al. (2006) found that when teams had to adapt to new reward structures, their history affected their interaction patterns and performance. Specifically, whereas teams that changed from a cooperative to a competitive reward structure behaved like they had always been competitive, and thus adapted successfully to the new situation, this was not the case for teams that switched from competitive to cooperative rewards (which Johnson et al. labeled “cutthroat cooperation” teams). These teams failed to act like teams that had always been cooperative, and continued to engage in their habitual interaction patterns, leading to suboptimal coordination and poor performance. The Johnson et al. (2006) study thus showed that static predictions about which processes and outcomes are associated with various reward structures do not generalize to dynamic contexts where reward structures change. Instead, “history matters” and “direction matters” when it comes to predicting team adaptation. This is an important discovery for theories of adaptation because most theories tend to be “direction free” (i.e., teams are adaptable or not adaptable), but these results also have important practical implications. SAT and the results associated with the “cutthroat cooperation effect” demonstrate that organizations may need to do more than just change rewards in contexts where the goal is to change group dynamics. One important question is therefore which organizational procedures can facilitate reward structure changes. In the current paper, we examine whether or not adapting the role allocation procedure that is employed when teams make the transition from a competitive to cooperative reward system can facilitate reward structure change.1 Specifically, we propose that having team members allocate their own roles in their upcoming new tasks in a team discussion (versus being assigned roles by a supervisor) can help reduce conflict and further behavioral coordination and performance in teams with a history of competitive rewards, but that the opposite will be true for teams that have a history of cooperative rewards.

We predicted and found that employing team role discussion as a means to allocate roles can help teams make the change from a competitive to a cooperative reward structure. For teams with a history of working under a competitive reward structure, team role discussion means a de-escalatory process, in which existing tendencies for competition are reduced. Teams with a history of cooperative rewards lack these benefits. For them, team role discussion and reduces coordination and performance. We hope these insights will help managers facing the challenge of guiding their teams through reward structure changes to choose the most optimal role allocation procedure.