Spencer Patrick Cheung (861093142)

Professor Thomas Sy

Psychology 142 Industrial Psychology

December 1st, 2014

Extra Credit Research Paper

The first reading from its introduction is trying to state, “organizations that can effectively

facilitate knowledge-sharing and utilization perform better and are more innovative than those

that do not”. This is beneficial for the organization due to many factors ranging from learning

new ways be more productive, fully using the capital provided to capitalize MPK. Also we

could think communication between co-workers has a higher influence and no one has more

power than the other. Social environment is a key in terms of knowledge sharing. The reading

point out “knowledge management is “not an objective, discrete and independent phenomenon

occurring within organizations”, but rather, depends heavily on social settings”, stating how

communication is important and it could change how knowledge is share to be a more productive

company. Knowledge sharing is by all means giving new advices and tactics in their work

environment. It’s not about the traditional two problematic assumptions of each person must

listen to other advices and be competent in all areas of their work of line, and truthfully not about

the “greatest room of growth is their weakness”. Each position has their duty and knowledge

sharing is not about grinding those who suck at a particular task and giving them advice to make

them do it in the first place. What they are trying to find out is about how engage they are within

a company of a short shape to share their knowledge and also the difference in terms of within

and outside of a subsidiary because within, they are more likely to engage with one another. Just

as the reading describe, within a subsidiary could be working within a company where they have

a meeting to talk about task and goal. They have four hypotheses regarding their research. We

will briefly mention about the first two, “H1a. The greater the extent of within-subsidiary

knowledge sharing by one’s unit managers, the more likely an individual will be to engage in

knowledge sharing within the subsidiary.” This is how one manager is willing to teach and share

their knowledge and in a way that you would also contribute within subsidiary just like how

discussion sections where the lecturer is trying to contribute to the class while in exchange want

students to share and contribute. But not all things go that way anyway. The second one

concludes “H1b. The greater the extent of within-subsidiary knowledge sharing by one’s co-

workers, the more likely an individual will be to engage in knowledge sharing within the

subsidiary.” High knowledge sharing will results in a high contribution doesn’t always guarantee

it would work out that way. These two hypotheses are really similar in terms of the exchange

part of each person’s contribution within their subsidiary but the only difference in terms of

wording is how one uses the manager as a leading point while the other uses high frequency

knowledge sharing but both points out to one goal, higher productivity. Sharing knowledge could

also be considered as motivation because this raises their skill variety and such that they could

satisfy their need theories or just the deficiency needs section. They did their study and their

hypothesis testing within Alpha Inc. on all five subsidiaries. Alpha is an ER service organization

as knowledge sharing plays an important factor in their line of work. From the reading it was

said it’s more common to share knowledge within a unit then outside of their subsidiary zone but

they still share none the less. The company considers knowledge is an important factor and high

up encourages knowledge sharing among all. All companies consider knowledge as a big factor

but different individual might not want to share their knowledge because it will ruin their pay

rise or promotion based on the need for achievement and power. To begin their study, they

conduct 29 interviews and focus groups with a total of 85 employees in the five subsidiaries.

Each took about an hour with notes. They consist of senior managers and senior/junior

personnel as they talk about selective knowledge sharing and its’ significant. First method,

questionnaire targets directors and deputy directors, 157/187 respond rate of 86%. Second

survey examined knowing sharing within each subsidiary. Thirdly, they survey people outside

of subsidiary. Finally, they survey within subsidiary questionnaires on 1135 and 1130 outside

subsidiary questionnaires with a feedback of 93.1 and 93.8 respectively.30 employees are

considered as a unit and they must balance out with seniors and junior personnel. The resulted

are then sorted into three levels, first as employee surveys to provide individual level of analysis,

including the dependent variables, managers’ knowledge sharing behaviors. Data is best by

giving out questionnaire because it’s not biased, and random is another factor is all statistic

matter. This type of questionnaire has the main goal of finding out how data sharing in this

company is important and to figure the difference between in subsidiary VS outside. Upon this

knowledge sharing in Alpha Inc. it talks about how sharing experiences with colleagues

enhances their stock of knowledge of skills. By having this date with three levels of analysis,

they use a multilevel structural equation modeling, cluster sampling. As they find out there is

lack of independence because they are sharing. The conclusion on this study was of how unit

manager and co-workers affect knowledge sharing within and outside of subsidiary. Knowledge

sharing is a learned behavior. Co-workers are more likely to share knowledge within or outside

subsidiary regardless of the stability or risky organization they are partaking. While unit

manager would only contribute when there are high risks involve. As we could about sharing

knowledge and we could lead this to decision making for unit manager because every decision is

critical, they must negotiate with each other for a better outcome which involve risk taking. This

is based on decision making of centralization where decision making power rest at the upper

levels of the organizational hierarchy. When they did the research on Alpha Inc. they must

balance out each other skill sets as an organization must do integration with each other.

Throughout class section where we have talk about different ways to gather data sampling, to

how skills variety plays a big role in organization to how each individual needs are different to

differentiate how knowledge sharing is a key role is any jobs. As a salesperson, you work with

co-workers and your department head sharing knowledge, not just knowledge but information

regarding your job or goal. There are many communication involve which from the reading is

classified as knowledge sharing as long as you are communicating. Doesn’t have to be new, it

could simply be a repeat but each individual listening will learn something new. For position

that is higher up usually wouldn’t share anything with their subordinates because their

experience is valuable and giving it away would risk many different factors that might bring it

down. There are lots of upside by communicating and sharing what you learn including the

respect the employee with give you along with their help and friendship. Connection with your

co-workers is valuable. And I think knowledge sharing is a start. I think one important factor of

knowledge sharing is when we talk about the stages of team development. Communicating is

more productive and more efficient when we are working as group in a unit. By having

experience sharing, the team could begin from a functional team to a problem solving or even a

self-managed team. Because sharing is not just experience, you get to know your co-workers

better; you could end up in the stage of performing or even adjourning ranging from the

experience when they did the research with Alpha Inc. where they are working a group in ER.

There’s no individual work, everything you work as group and an effective group is for members

to communicate freely among themselves and learned to help each other.

The second article is how repetitiveness could lead to higher performance because it their

summary, they talk about how this would be a double edge sword. High performing

organization excludes repetitiveness has a high job satisfaction just because they understand and

love what they are doing. High repetitiveness could be a motivation to over achieve your goal,

or simply your co-workers to make you feel better and stand out. But it can also be a race where

you see yourself failing and never achieving what your co-workers could achieve. From the

article, it mentions how negative psychophysiological could result in stress respond, blood

pressure increase, etc. as this was already mention about stress. The reason for repetitiveness

was to think that it could speed up the “production process, performance and output”, as this is

what they are trying to find out and to some degree, in terms of sales, repetitiveness to out sell

your co-worker to get praise from your manager is competitive and relentless. Though not talk

in class but with personal experience, high repetitiveness becomes war as you take your side and

you are never willing to speak with the ones outside your circle because they are taking your

sales away from you. Repetitiveness does have their affect ranging from irritation,

unpleasantness, high stress to even low motivation. Their research would be using a quasi-

experimental approach. The reason for that is because they said there are two benefits to it, one

being problem of potential confounds of repetitiveness remains. And second, laboratory

workplace simulations allow objective and accurate measures of work performance. As they say

these is one of the important factors about this experiment. This experiment includes two

workplace simulations including experimental manipulation of task repetitiveness and employed

measures of self-reported mental strain as well as objective work performing. The two scenarios

are office work and on an assembly line where one has the effect of repetitiveness and

controversy. These two experiments are looking at mental strain stress and performance. Their

first hypothesis was “Participants in the high repetitiveness conditions report more mental strain

as compared with participants in the low repetitiveness conditions.” This hypothesis might hold

true in reality because repetitiveness means higher stress due to work environment, work load,

your goal and most of all, your current job in the future because if you score the bottom half of

the organization, you are not competitive to stay so you would get fire. But from the reading,

there was phrases where they talk about the more you perform the same job, which would lead to

increased performance. Another hypothesis for experiment one was “Participants in the high

repetitiveness conditions show better performance as compared with participants in the low

repetitiveness conditions.” Better repetitiveness push each individual to achieve and some even

over achieve the standard set by the organization. By producing one more units in the same give

amount of time shows better in their weekly report, a higher chance of surviving in the company

or even a promotion. There are both upside and downside in this repetitiveness business. From

their experiment two where I had already mentioned about their first hypothesis for it were

“Participants in the high repetitiveness conditions show better performance as compared with

participants in the low repetitiveness conditions” and Participants in the self-paced conditions

show better performance as compared with participants in the machine-paced condition.” Let’s

discuss their experimentation method one. Sample contains 160 undergraduate students where

80 are women ranging from different course of studies. They are then randomly assign to two

conditions, low or high repetitiveness and eight time of measurement factorial design as they are

evenly distributed. There was also a participation fee for participating. Each experiment starts

with four people getting into different room, seat before a screen and a set of challenges. They

does four practice trails, fill in a questionnaire on mental strain. This simulation has 22:30, 8

sections, and a five minute break for every two sections. For their task they have to assemble a

set of products together without breaking the limit, as it continues, one has already one of the

hardware while the other also had a voucher. The result was when a person is within the high

repetitiveness; they have a much higher stress level, mental strain compared to low level

repetitiveness. But there was also another discover that supports hypothesis two where high

repetitiveness leads to significantly more customer requests compare to the low. There was a big

different in improvement in between the two. They try to argue high repetitiveness would lead

to lower accuracy but that is also disregarded because high repetitiveness overall did better than

low in this experiment in terms of how fast they are working, the order work, and the overall

accuracy. High repetitiveness would lead to higher performance number but just more stressful.

When we discuss in class, stress could be a motivation, low repetitiveness would mean there’s

almost no stress and they are not working as hard as they should be compared to high

repetitiveness where they are giving just the right amount of stress to be the most efficient.

Stressor and worker stress would do some good in terms of performance. In a high

repetitiveness environment, most people would result in type A behavior pattern where they are

prone to stress or the other where they are hardiness that is resistance to stress. While low

repetitiveness would be of type B behavior pattern where they are laid back thinking there’s

always time, no need to rush. Their first experiment was very intriguing because in class, we

talk about stress as motivation, repetitiveness could distinguish between the ones that could over

achieve and get the job done, prone to stress that giving them more stress would make them have

a happier time in their occupation, and in order to have more stress is by having title raise as

though giving you extra responsibility. Low repetitiveness means those like to do things easily,

they don’t even have to worry about underutilized because they simply don’t have to worry

about them using their full ability or not. The reason for it is there’s simply no need to do so.

It’s never a competition in the first place. For experiment two has a setting of an assembly line.

The two major goals they try to get is find the same results in a different settings and find some

correlation or difference between self-pacing against machine pacing. In this matter, their

method is to have 213 undergraduates with 106 being female from different areas of studies

again, same type of condition with different settings and most importantly, they get paid for

participating. The result of this experiment hits hypothesis 1 again where high repetitiveness

leads to higher stress and low repetitiveness lead to lower stress, as in saying high performance

equals high stress and low performance gets almost no stress. This was also true in terms of

hypothesis 3 as self-pace conditions; people are less stress compare to its counterpart.

Hypothesis 2 score again as we have already stated the higher the repetitiveness, there would

always be an increase in performance. There was another result in self-pace against machine

pace in assembly line where the accuracy in self-pace condition was actually up from the

previous experiment leading to hypothesis 4 to be true, as it states self-pace condition would

show a better performance, better doesn’t include more, quality over quantity. In the end, they

are trying to state that high repetitiveness within working environment increases stress, and

performance. Om class when we discuss about stress, we know stress could be from many

different factors ranging from underutilization where they are not being used with their full

potential and they caused them to feel their role is not important within their company. But in

this situation from their experiment, it might be work task stressor where they are having a work

overload. This is not about job satisfaction but rather wanting to quit because of how

competitive it is to stay in the company. Those who are suspectibility to stress VS hardiness are

immune to stress and those are the one that have an edge against the ones who are not. Just as

their experiment have already discussed as we have discussed within our class, the symptoms of

work stress including heart disease, migraine headaches to high blood pressure. As we talk

about stress with the graph, low repetitiveness might not be ideal in a company because there is

not enough stress to fully utilized production while excessive stress might lead to job burnout.

They also talk about the pacing, self-pace condition; you have control on how rapid your work

load is how fast you should work at it. But machine-pace conditions, you are set with a goal that

you must accomplish at the end of your day. Efficiency depends on how we look at performance

from a different perspective, if you only care about the quantity and quality is never a concern,

machine-pace is more ideal because from their experiment, there was evidence that show us they

work faster in that pace compare to self-pace. But if quality it’s your top priority, then self-pace

condition would be more ideal because you can work slowly and more accurately. Assembly

line is where machine-pace is more ideal and practical because you are doing the same thing over

and over, as it states the more you work one the same objective, the better you are at it, there’s

no new things to learn, you don’t even have to share knowledge with your co-workers because

they are working the same thing as you anyway. To increase job satisfaction in a repetitive

organization might be job rotation but depending on what company you work at. Job rotation

means you are learning all aspects of your jobs which mean they are paying to learn different

skill set/ variety. The main point in my paper in regards to this two topic where I said

communication is the key to success in a company, by sharing your knowledge, you are not only

just sharing what you know but knowing each other better, though tall company might not be

available to share everything but in flat companies, each members’ contribution makes a

difference in their organization. Communication is the start of connections, connections means

they are more organized as a team, and they are more efficient as a team because they don’t have

to worry about saying things wrong. Knowledge sharing will be link to job satisfaction, and also

regarding how to gather data using a questionnaire, and connection. My second article is about

how stress could be motivation or disaster depending on that individual looks at it. We could

also see the different type of person they are. And this links to job satisfaction, stress, and

motivation.

Citation

“Experimental evidence for the effects of task repetitiveness on mental strain and objective

work performance” Journal of Organizational Behavior, J. Organiz. Behav. 35, 705–721 (2014)

“Managers versus co-workers as referents: Comparing social influence

Effects on within- and outside-subsidiary knowledge sharing”

Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes 126 (2015) 1–17