Claus W. Langfred

Too Much of a Good Thing? Negative Effects of High Trust and Individual Autonomy in Self-Managing Teams

A high level of trust can make the members of self-managing work teams reluctant to monitor one another. If low monitoring combines with high individual autonomy, team performance can suffer. Data from 71 self-managing teams of MBA students demonstrated this effect. High trust was associated with higher team performance when individual autonomy was low but with lower performance when individual autonomy was high. Additional analysis showed a moderated mediating role of monitoring and autonomy in the relationship between trust and performance.

Effects of task autonomy on performance: an extended model considering motivational, informational, and structural mechanisms.

A model explaining the relationship between task autonomy and performance is proposed that incorporates 3 different causal mechanisms. The performance benefits of task autonomy may be realized by increased motivation (motivational mechanisms), by capitalization of information asymmetries (informational mechanisms), or by better alignment with task and organizational structures (structural mechanisms). Further, it is proposed that these performance benefits are moderated by a variety of variables ranging from individual traits to organizational design. This model may provide a means for accounting for the sometimes inconsistent findings in the empirical literature exploring the relationship between autonomy and performance. The model also offers guidance in the search for additional boundary conditions as well as prescriptive guidelines for the allocation of autonomy in practice.

The paradox of self‐management: individual and group autonomy in work groups

This study explores how autonomy at the individual and the group levels directly affect group cohesiveness, and how they indirectly influence group effectiveness. Hypotheses suggesting that individual and group autonomy will be oppositely related to cohesiveness are supported in data collected from a large sample of work groups in two separate organizations. Also supported are hypotheses suggesting a group cohesiveness/group performance orientation interaction as a mediator of the relationships between autonomy at both levels and group effectiveness. The findings highlight the importance of considering autonomy at both individual and group levels simultaneously when designing work groups that incorporate autonomy. Copyright

Autonomy and Performance in Teams: The Multilevel Moderating Effect of Task Interdependence

The author predicts that the interaction between individual- and team-level autonomy influences team performance and that their combined effects are contingent on the level of task interdependence. Multiple regression analysis of data from 89 teams in a manufacturing setting confirm these expectations, demonstrating that team performance depends on the combination of individual and team autonomy. These findings suggest that the optimal combination of individual and team autonomy depends on the level of task interdependence in a team. Implications for future research, particularly in the areas of cross-level analyses and contingency theory, are discussed as well.

Is Group Cohesiveness a Double-Edged Sword? An Investigation of the Effects of Cohesiveness on Performance

The study investigates the relationship between cohesiveness and group effectiveness. The link between the two constructs is predicted to be moderated by the orientation (whether task or nontask) and strength of work group norms. Datafrom a 1995 survey of army units in the Danish military were used. Multiple regression was used to test hypotheses, and the results indicated strong supportfor the existence of a moderator

Work-Group Design and Autonomy A Field Study of the Interaction Between Task Interdependence and Group Autonomy

Survey results of employees and managers from 25 work groups in a large technology firm demonstrate the moderating effect of within-group task interdependence on the relationship between group autonomy and effectiveness. As hypothesized, autonomy has a positive influence on work group effectiveness when task interdependence is high and a negative effect when task interdependence is low.

The Push and Pull of Autonomy The Tension Between Individual Autonomy and Organizational Control in Knowledge Work

Organizations characterized by knowledge work will experience pressures from a variety of sources to provide increasing levels of autonomy to employees. Furthermore, as the nature of work has changed, the manifestations of employee autonomy have become more complex and varied. Although a great deal of literature exists on the effects of various types and facets of autonomy, these literatures focus almost exclusively on individual-level effects. On the organizational side however, we suggest that the increasing trend toward various forms of employee autonomy presents a tension for organizations as they struggle to reconcile this relinquishing of control with organizational leaders’ inherent desire for more control. We explore how managers and supervisors of knowledge work manage the inherent conflict between employee demands for autonomy and organizational needs for control, especially as it relates to the management of complexity and fairness issues. Furthermore, we discuss how this tension has important implications for research and practice.

The Influence of Conflict on Creativity-Relevant Intragroup Processes Over Time

In this extended abstract, we review the preliminary findings from a study examining the relationship between conflict and creativity-relevant intragroup processes over time. More specifically, we examine whether task and relationship conflict have lingering effects on team creative processes and information sharing. We examine these relationships with two-wave longitudinal data collected from 141 individuals across 32 project teams in an academic setting. Our preliminary analysis suggests that, beyond the effect of information sharing at time 1, task conflict and trust interact to influence subsequent information sharing at time 2. The results for relationship conflict suggest that it is trust that has lingering effects on both of these creativity-relevant processes, not relationship conflict. Additional analysis is underway to further explore how conflict and creativity-relevant processes unfold over time.