Thomson South Western Wagner & Hollenbeck 5e

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Chapter EightChapter Eight

Interdependence and

Role Relationships

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Chapter Overview This chapter examines the following topics:

– Patterns of Interdependence and Organizational Roles• Types of Interdependence• Implications of Interdependence• Role Taking and Role Making• Norms and Role Episodes

– Communication Processes in Interdependent Relationships• Communication Messages and Media• Barriers to Effective Communication

– Socialization to New Roles• Socialization Goals and Tactics• Designing Socialization Programs

– Quality of Interpersonal Role Relationships• Equity and Social Comparison• Distributive, Procedural, and Interactive Justice• Responses to Inequity• Managing Inequitable Situations

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Introduction

Managers need to know about various factors that affect people as they work together:– Interdependence– Specific roles– Communication– Socialization– Equity theory

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Patterns of Interdependence and Organizational Roles

People in organizations share a rich variety of connections

Such connections make interpersonal relations a very important aspect of organizational life

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Types of Interdependence In the workplace, interdependence typically takes one of four

forms:– Pooled interdependence

• Occurs when people draw resources from a shared source but have little else in common

• Metropolitan Life Insurance example– Sequential interdependence

• Comprises a chain of one-way interactions in which people depend on those individuals who precede them in the chain

• Steelcase example– Reciprocal interdependence

• A network of two-way relationships ties a collection of people together

• Sales force and clerical staff example– Comprehensive interdependence

• Develops in a tight network of interdependence• The most complex form of interdependence because everyone

involved is reciprocally interdependent with one another • Colgate-Palmolive and Proctor & Gamble examples

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Implications of Interdependence The type of interdependence that connects people

together in interpersonal relationships has several important managerial implications:– A greater potential for conflicts arise as the complexity

of the interdependence grows in moving from pooled to comprehensive interdependence

– The loss of individuals due to turnover becomes more important as the intensity of the interdependence increases

– Comprehensive interdependence can stimulate greater flexibility and enable groups of people to adapt more quickly to changing environments than groups unified by less complex forms of interdependence

– The type of interdependence has implications for the design of motivational systems

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Role Taking and Role Making Expectations and the behaviors

they presuppose form the roles that individuals occupy in interpersonal relations

The behavioral expectations that make up roles can include:– Formal established task

elements: parts of a role that arise because the role occupant is expected to perform a particular job

• Job descriptions: written statements of the tasks a job entails

– Informal emergent task elements: added on tasks

Established and emergent task elements can be combined in different ways– Bureaucratic

prototype: the role occupant performs few duties other than those written in the job description

– Loose-cannon prototype: emergent elements greatly outnumber the few established elements

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Norms and Role Episodes The expectations that make up

roles and give shape to interpersonal relations are called norms and develop over time through repeated interaction

Norms exist for both the job’s formal requirements and the job’s generally agreed-upon informal rules

Either type may evolve from a variety of sources: Precedents, Carryovers, Explicit statements from others, and Critical historical events

Pivotal norms: adherence is a requirement if interpersonal relations are to persist and work is to be performed without major interruption

Peripheral norms: adherence is more discretionary

Individual adjustment to norms leads to four basic behavior patterns:

– Conformity: a tendency to try to fit in with others in a loyal but uncreative way

– Subversive rebellion: people conceal their rejection of norms that are critical to the survival of existing interpersonal relations by acting in accordance with less important ones

– Open revolution: breaks out if role occupants reject both norms

– Creative individualism: individuals accept pivotal norms but reject peripheral ones

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Norms and Role Episodes Norms develop through a series of role episodes A role set comprises a collection of people who interact

with a role occupant and serve as the source of the norms that influence that person’s behaviors

Members of the role set communicate norms to the role occupant via role-sending messages

Although the members of an organization communicate the do’s and don’ts associated with a role through the sent role, the received role actually has the most immediate influence on the behavior of the role occupant

Several types of role conflict can prevent a role receiver from meeting the expectations of a sender– Intersender role conflict: places competing, mutually

exclusive demands on the role occupant– Person-role conflict: some ideas about how the role should

be performed conflict with the role sender’s demands– Interrole conflict: occupying two roles at once

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Communication Processes in Interdependent Relationships

A detailed representation of the process of communication breaks it into three general stages:– Encoding information into

a message– Transmitting the message

via a medium– Decoding information

from the received message

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Communication Messages and Media

Encoding is the process by which a communicator’s abstract idea is translated into the symbols of language and thus a message can be transmitted to someone else

The medium is the carrier of the message Oral communication relies predominantly on the sense of

hearing Written communication is sometimes preferred over oral

communication To complete the process, the message sent must be decoded,

which is a process in which the message is translated in the mind of the receiver

Unfortunately, many things can go wrong and render communication ineffective– Noise: refers to the factors that can distort a message

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Barriers to Effective Communication

A variety of organizational, interpersonal, and individual factors can hinder communication within groups or organizations– The nature of the physical

space – Credibility of the source– Power imbalance

• Upward communications

• “Shooting the messenger” or surrounding oneself with “yes” people

– Jargon: informal language shared by long-tenured, central members of units

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Socialization to New Roles Socialization is the procedure through which people

acquire the social knowledge and skills necessary to correctly assume new roles in a group or an organization

Socialization is an ongoing process and occurs whenever an individual moves into a new role within the group or organization

Roles are considered new so long as they differ from the previous one on any one of three dimensions:– Functional dimension: reflects differences in the tasks

performed by members– Hierarchical dimension: concerns the distribution of

rank and authority– Inclusionary dimension: reflects the degree to which an

employee finds himself or herself at the center or on the periphery of things

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Socialization to New Roles

Socialization occurs whenever an individual crosses boundaries in any of the three dimensions

Socialization is likely to be particularly intense when a person crosses all three boundaries at once

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Socialization Goals and Tactics Some organizations

may pursue a role custodianship where recipients of socialization may take a caretaker’s stance toward their roles

When an organization hopes that recipients of socialization will change, it may have role innovation as a goal

Firms can use any of several tactics in socializing new members, each of which has different effects:– Collective-individual– Sequential-random– Serial-disjunctive– Divestiture-

investiture

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Socialization Goals and Tactics In collective socialization, recipients are put in groups and go

through socialization experiences together In individual socialization, members are put through unique

experiences one at a time Sequential socialization takes new members through a set

sequence of discrete, identifiable steps leading to the target role Random socialization processes are those in which learning

experiences have no apparent logic or structure Serial socialization has experienced members of the organization

teach individuals about the roles they will assume Disjunctive socialization is where new members must learn for

themselves how to handle a new role Divestiture socialization ignores or denies the value of an

individual's personal identity Investiture socialization affirms the value to the organization of

the recruit’s personal characteristics

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Designing Socialization Programs The strategy employed in designing a

socialization program depends on the goals of that program– French Foreign Legion example

A good program will teach new role occupants much about the group or organization to which membership is sought

If conducted properly, it will enhance the understanding of the person’s role and increase commitment to the organization’s goals

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Quality of Interpersonal Relationships

Given the importance of role relationships within organizations, it is critical to have a framework whereby the quality of these relationships can be judged and enhanced

Equity theory is a theory of social exchange that focuses on the “give and take” of various relationships

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Equity and Social Comparisons

Equity theory holds that people make judgments about relational fairness by forming a ratio of their perceived investments and perceived rewards

It does not require that outcomes or inputs be equal for equity to exist

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Distributive, Procedural, and Interactive Justice

Equity theory provides a simple framework for understanding how people decide whether they are being treated fairly in their relationships

It can prove difficult to achieve widespread perceptions of justice in organizations for several reasons:

– Based on individual perception– Difficult to predict who will be

chosen as the reference person– People are sensitive to the

procedures through which allocation decisions are made and the manner in which these decisions are communicated

Three kinds of justice perceptions can be distinguished:

– Distributional justice: refers to the judgments that people make with respect to input/outcome ratios experienced relative to the experiences of others

– Procedural justice: procedures used to make decisions are consistent, unbiased, accurate, correctable, representative, and ethical

– Interactional justice: focuses on the interpersonal nature of the implementation of the outcomes

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Responses to Inequity Perceptions of inequity create

unpleasant emotions The tension associated with

inequity may motivate the person to take any of several actions in response:– Alter personal inputs– Alter personal outcomes– Cognitive distortion– Change the behavior of the

reference person– Leaving an inequitable situation

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Managing Inequitable Situations

There will inevitably be situations in which mangers are faced with employees who feel they have been treated unfairly

In these circumstances, mangers can:– Try to change the actual source

of the inequity– Change the aggrieved person’s

perceptions of the situation– Provide excuses and apologies