نتیجه وابستگی متقابل ، اثرات پیشگیری از تمرکز بر فرآیندها و عملکرد تیم را شکل می دهد

Although the effects of regulatory focus on individual-level performance have often been studied, relatively little is yet known about team-level effects. Filling this void, we integrate the notion that promotion-focused individuals are concerned with progress and achievement, whereas prevention-focused individuals are concerned with security and vigilance, with the insight that team processes and performance depend on outcome interdependence (individual versus team rewards). The hypothesis that prevention-focused teams react more strongly than promotion-focused teams to differences in outcome interdependence was tested among 50 teams performing an interactive command-and-control simulation. Regulatory focus and outcome interdependence were both manipulated. The results showed that prevention-focused teams working for team rather than individual rewards reported higher work engagement and less error intolerance, coordinated more effectively, and performed better. Promotion-focused teams were not influenced by outcome interdependence. We discuss the implications of our results for theory and effective team management.

Many organizations structure themselves around teams (Guzzo and Dickson, 1996 and Kozlowski and Ilgen, 2006). Because team tasks are usually complex and multifaceted, and can thus be framed in terms of either promotion or prevention goals (cf. Beersma et al., 2003), teams may emphasize the achievement of positive outcomes (promotion) or the prevention of negative outcomes (prevention) while working towards their goals. A manufacturing team, for instance, can focus on producing a large number of products (a promotion goal), or on preventing product defects, which lead to customer dissatisfaction (a prevention goal). Likewise, traffic control teams can focus on quickly clearing an area (a promotion goal), or on maintaining the safety of that area and making sure there will be no casualties (a prevention goal). Regulatory Focus Theory (Higgins, 1997 and Higgins, 1998) proposes that promotion-focused individuals adopt eager task strategies: They aim to maximize positive outcomes and concentrate on activities related to their wishes, ideals, and hopes (Förster and Werth, 2009 and Higgins, 2000). Prevention-focused individuals, in contrast, tend to adopt vigilant task strategies: They aim to minimize negative outcomes and concentrate on responsibilities, duties, and safety (Förster and Werth, 2009 and Higgins, 2000). As a result, promotion-focused individuals tend to be more creative, more risk-tolerant, and less vigilant and accuracy-oriented than prevention-focused individuals (Baas et al., 2011, Friedman and Förster, 2001, Friedman and Förster, 2005, Förster et al., 2003, Liberman et al., 1999 and Liberman et al., 2001). Whether and how these individual-level effects translate to team-level processes and performance is largely unknown (Florack and Hartmann, 2007 and Sassenberg and Woltin, 2008). In line with work on group goals and group efficacy, we expect that teams will develop regulatory mechanisms that are influenced by individual, team-level, and contextual factors (e.g., DeShon et al., 2004 and Gibson, 2001). The question then becomes how regulatory focus affects team functioning and performance, and how organizations can improve the performance of promotion- and prevention-focused teams? We address these questions by examining the effects of regulatory focus on the functioning and performance of dynamic decision-making teams. To develop hypotheses regarding those effects, we examined the literature on team functioning and performance, and distinguished two important aspects of team work that are relevant with regards to regulatory focus. First, working in a team obviously means working with others instead of alone. Teamwork thus implies that individual actions affect the action tendencies of other group members; individual successes and failures influence not only the individual’s subsequent performance, but also the performance of others. In team settings, individual successes and failures are thus subject to scrutiny by others, are evaluated, and applauded or criticized by others (e.g., De Dreu et al., 2008, Homan et al., 2007, Jackson and Williams, 1985, Kramer, 1991 and McGrath et al., 2000). Second, working in a team can provide people with input and support from team members (Beersma et al., 2003 and Edmondson, 1999). In sum, working in teams may entail social evaluation as well as social support (Jackson & Williams, 1985). We propose that the relative salience of these two aspects of the team context depends largely on the degree of outcome interdependence among team members (Beersma and De Dreu, 2005, Beersma et al., 2003, De Dreu et al., 2000, Rusbult and Van Lange, 1996, Stanne et al., 1999, Tjosvold, 1998 and Wageman, 1995). Team members’ outcomes can be determined by their personal performance (individual reward structure) or by their joint performance (collaborative or team reward structure; e.g., Deutsch, 1949, Kelley and Thibaut, 1978 and Tjosvold, 1998). Ample research has shown that whereas individual reward structures foster competition among team members, team rewards foster trust, cohesiveness, and mutually supportive behavior (Beersma et al., 2003, De Dreu, 2007, De Dreu et al., 2000, Deutsch, 1949, Homan et al., 2008, Miller and Hamblin, 1963, Rosenbaum et al., 1980, Stanne et al., 1999, Steinel et al., 2010 and Wageman, 1995). In this paper, we argue that teams in a prevention focus are more sensitive to both aspects of the team context than are teams in a promotion focus. Therefore, prevention-focused teams should react more strongly to differences in reward structure, displaying more effective team processes and better team performance when they work under a team reward structure than when they work under an individual reward structure. We first provide a brief literature review on the effects of regulatory focus on individual and team functioning and performance. Then we discuss the two aspects of working in teams, and how they are made salient by different reward structures. Finally, we formulate specific hypotheses regarding the influence of outcome interdependence on teams with different regulatory foci and present an experiment that tested these hypotheses.

We predicted that differences in outcome interdependence would affect prevention-focused more than promotion-focused teams. Consistent with our theorizing, prevention-focused (but not promotion-focused) teams exhibited lower error intolerance, higher work engagement, more effective coordination, and better performance when working under team rather than individual rewards. Below we discuss the strengths, limitations, and implications of our study and offer a few ideas for future research. Our study contributes to psychological theory on self-regulation and to organizational theory on team functioning and performance. Work on self-regulation in general, and on promotion versus prevention focus in particular, has a tradition of focusing on individual-level functioning and performance (Galinsky et al., 2005 and Sassenberg and Woltin, 2008). Recent studies, however, have begun to address regulatory focus in groups, and our study adds to this emerging literature. It joins other studies on regulatory focus in groups (e.g., Dimotakis et al., 2012, Faddegon et al., 2008, Florack and Hartmann, 2007, Levine et al., 2000 and Rietzschel, 2011), and relates to work in adjacent areas, including work on the role of offense versus defense (Woolley, 2011), and studies concerned with assessment or locomotion (Mauro, Pierro, Mannetti, Higgins, & Kruglanski, 2009). Together, these studies suggest that how teams self-regulate can influence team processes and performance. An important contribution of our study is that it shows that one regulatory focus is not, in itself, superior to the other when it comes to team performance. According to Higgins, Regulatory Focus Theory is a theory beyond pleasure and pain (see Higgins, 1997), and regulatory foci cannot simply be equated with positivity or negativity. Rather, both promotion and prevention can involve negative as well as positive emotions and effects (see Förster et al., 1998 and Liberman et al., 2005). Our study demonstrates this in a team context. In addition to extending basic effects of regulatory focus to the team level, our study provided first-time evidence that especially prevention-focused teams were influenced by the individual versus team reward structure. Whereas individual rewards did not increase performance when group members were prevention-focused, team rewards and concomitant cooperative team processes benefitted prevention-focused teams: Compared to individual rewards, team rewards reduced intolerance of errors, increased work engagement, and facilitated coordination. Outcome interdependence is thus a crucial factor to incorporate in a team-level theory of regulatory focus – when moving self-regulation theory from the individual to the group level, outcome interdependence determines whether a prevention focus helps or hinders team performance. Previous studies had already demonstrated that outcome interdependence influences team processes (Beersma et al., 2003 and Homan et al., 2008), but our study is the first to demonstrate that such effects are especially strong in prevention-focused teams. This qualifies the findings of Wageman (1995), who did not find a positive effect of group rewards on cooperative behavior. Our findings suggest that the effects of group rewards on group processes depend on the regulatory focus of the team. We found no effects of outcome interdependence in promotion-focused teams. Perhaps promotion-focused teams reacted less strongly than prevention-focused teams to variations in reward structure. However, before concluding this, future research should examine other manipulations of reward structure and outcome interdependence to see if our findings can be replicated. Future research should also examine whether there are specific tasks for which the approach and risk-tolerant attitude of promotion-focused teams has dysfunctional effects. This might be the case in group tasks with a competitive element, where performance partly depends on the outcome of intergroup comparisons and competition. Perhaps in such contexts, promotion-focused teams more readily engage in direct derogation of the rival out-group, whereas prevention-focused teams primarily strengthen in-group functioning (also see Nijstad & De Dreu, 2012). Our theoretical reasoning was based on earlier research showing that different reward structures can make different aspects of working in teams salient. Whereas low outcome interdependence (individual rewards) makes intra-team competition and evaluation salient, high outcome interdependence (team rewards) makes cooperation and social support salient (Beersma et al., 2003, De Dreu et al., 2000, Deutsch, 1949, Homan et al., 2008, Miller and Hamblin, 1963, Rosenbaum et al., 1980, Stanne et al., 1999, Steinel et al., 2010 and Wageman, 1995). We argued that both aspects of working in a team would affect prevention-focused teams more strongly than promotion-focused teams. Our results regarding error intolerance, coordination, and work engagement provide evidence for our claim that evaluation considerations become relatively more important for prevention-focused teams under an individual reward structure. Under individual rewards prevention-focused teams are very sensitive to errors, enjoy working on the task less, coordinate poorly and fail to perform well, whereas under team rewards, they become more relaxed (less error intolerant), have more fun while working on the task, coordinate better, and perform well. This suggests that prevention-focused teams were relatively sensitive to the evaluative component of working in groups. An alternative theoretical approach to our findings would be that team rather than individual rewards evoke a prevention focus, and so when prevention-focused teams work under team rewards, they experience more “regulatory fit” than when they work under individual rewards (see also Dimotakis et al., 2012). This reasoning finds its origin, in part, in research on independent and interdependent self-construals, where it has been proposed that stronger interdependence leads people to become more attuned to actual-ought discrepancies (Lee, Aaker, & Gardner, 2000), which often instigate a prevention focus (Higgins & Tykocinski, 1992). In line with this reasoning, Lee et al. (2000) and Aaker and Lee (2001) found that individuals who saw themselves as interdependent with others were more sensitive to prevention-focused information, whereas individuals who saw themselves as independent from others were more sensitive to promotion-focused information (see also Briley & Wyer, 2002). Because such “regulatory fit” (Higgins, 2005) has been found to increase the value attached to objects, task engagement, and performance ( Dimotakis et al., 2012 and Higgins et al., 2003), this would explain the effects we found. However, we believe that this is not a valid alternative explanation for a number of reasons. First, research by Oyserman et al. (2007) and Faddegon et al. (2008) did not support the idea that group membership, or being interdependent with others, unequivocally instigates a prevention focus. Second, if research on interdependent self-construals is examined more closely, it becomes clear that the way in which interdependence was operationalized in this research is different from interdependence in an actual group context. Specifically, the focal person in the interdependent self-construal conditions was individually responsible for a task, and his/her outcomes were connected or not to some group. However, the group was not involved in task execution, and so there was no task interdependence (note that in our study there was task interdependence, but this was kept constant across conditions). Finally, if team rewards indeed evoke a prevention focus, then we should have observed an effect of reward structure on the manipulation checks for regulatory focus. But there was no evidence for such an effect. These considerations speak against a regulatory fit explanation.