Dick de Gilder

Motivating Individuals and Groups at Work: A Social Identity Perspective on Leadership and Group Performance

We argue that additional understanding of work motivation can be gained by incorporating current insights concerning self-categorization and social identity processes and by examining the way in which these processes influence the motivation and behavior of individuals and groups at work. This theoretical perspective that focuses on the conditions determining different self-definitions allows us to show how individual and group processes interact to determine work motivation. To illustrate the added value of this approach, we develop some specific propositions concerning motivational processes underpinning leadership and group performance.

When the Going Gets Tough, the Tough Get Going: Social Identification and Individual Effort in Intergroup Competition

Based on social identity theory, the authors predicted that in ongoing intergroup competition, people’s strength of social identification will have a positive impact on their behavioral efforts on behalf of an ingroup when its current status is low, whereas this will not be the case when its current status is high. In a first experiment, male participants showed the expected pattern of behavior. Female participants, however, tended to display opposite reactions. As a possible explanation, it was argued that the experimental procedure may have inadvertently evoked a gender-based stereotype threat for female participants. In an attempt to obtain more consistent support for their hypothesis, the authors therefore replicated the experiment with modifications to avoid such a threat. These changes proved to be effective in the sense that this time the predicted interaction effect between ingroup identification and current group status was obtained for both male and female participants.

Commitment, trust and work behaviour: the case of contingent workers

In this study differences in trust, commitment and justice perceptions were investigated between contingent and core employees in two hotels, as well as their effects on work behaviour. Contingent workers showed lower commitment to the team and to the organisation, and displayed less favourable work‐related behaviours than core employees. Commitment to the team mediated between job status (contingent vs. core employees) and five work‐related behaviours. Furthermore, depending on job status, trust and commitment were differentially related to work‐related behaviours. The implications of these results are discussed.

The Carrot and the Stick: Affective Commitment and Acceptance Anxiety as Motives for Discretionary Group Efforts by Respected and Disrespected Group Members

Previous research has demonstrated that intragroup respect can strengthen people’s commitment to the group and encourage them to exert themselves on behalf of it. In the present research, the authors argue that similar behavior can ensue from self-focused concerns when group members are disrespected. Experiment 1 (N = 174) confirms that high respect as well as low respect motivates people to increase their actual discretionary efforts on behalf of the group. These findings were replicated and extended in Experiment 2 (N = 138), where it was established that enhanced efforts only emerge when people consider the way they are evaluated by others as diagnostic for their position in the group. In addition, it is demonstrated that whereas the efforts of respected people were primarily motivated by affective commitment to the group (group-focused concerns), the behavior of disrespected people was driven by anxiety about their acceptance into the group (self-focused concerns).

Feeling Included and Valued: How Perceived Respect Affects Positive Team Identity and Willingness to Invest in the Team

Previous research has documented that intra‐group respect fosters individual engagement with work teams or organizations. The authors extend this work by empirically distinguishing between perceived inclusion of the self in the team and perceived value of the self for the team as separate psychological consequences of respect. Based on a social identity analysis, it is predicted that perceived inclusion facilitates the development of a positive team identity (how the individual feels about the team), while perceived value elicits the willingness to invest in the team (what the individual is willing to do for the team). Support for these predictions is obtained with structural equation modelling among two independent samples of professional soldiers working in military teams (n = 495). Reports of individual team members about positive team identity and willingness to invest in the team correlated with supervisor ratings of the teams action readiness.

Group commitment as a moderator of attributional and behavioural responses to power use

This study used 50 Natural Science and English Literature students who held differential behavioural expectations of ingroup and outgroup members to investigate evaluative, attributional and behavioural responses to power use in an experimental research paradigm. It was hypothesized that subordinates interpret frequent power use by a superior differently depending on whether it is consistent or inconsistent with previous expectations. Frequent power use results in decreased satisfaction and negative evaluations of the superior. Attributional ratings indicated that when an outgroup member engaged in frequent power use, this negatively evaluated behaviour was attributed to the superiors group membership, and resulted in decreased cooperation on the part of the subordinate. To the extent that frequent power use of an ingroup member was attributed to external circumstances, subordinates maintained a sense of commitment to the ingroup superior, which resulted in displays of cooperative behaviour.

Expectation States Theory and the Motivational Determinants of Social Influence

In this chapter we give an overview of our research program in which we investigate how status affects the influence behavior of people in co-operative task groups. Based on expectation states theory (Berger, Wagner, & Zelditch, 1985) we investigated in which situations self-oriented or group-oriented motivations underlie influence differentials. The results of four laboratory experiments suggest that participants were only group-oriented when their relative status positions were unlikely to change. As soon as there was a possibility that status relations might change, the participants became self-oriented; they showed a greater reluctance to accept influence and tried to influence others more often. The implications of the results for expectation states theory and the literature on social influence are discussed.

Acceptance of influence in task groups

Acceptance of influence in task groups was investigated by means of an experiment with a 2 (competence : advantage, disadvantage) x 2 (interdependence : competition, cooperation) between-subjects and a 2 (stimulus ambiguity : low, high) x 2 (discrepancy : large, small) within-subjects factorial design. Predictions were based on status generalization research and on theorizing by Festinger and Turner. Competence-advantaged subjects accepted less influence than competence-disadvantaged subjects. Subjects in the competition condition accepted less influence than subjects in the cooperation condition. Acceptance of influence was greater when group members were less confident about their solution of the task and when discrepancies in judgments were larger. Three statistical interaction effects were found and are discussed.

Managerial influence on attitude formation in organizations: how to manage emergence

The emergence of a shared attitude in organizations can be regarded as a self-organizing complex process in which a majority attitude emerges from the ensemble of interactions among individuals. Almost by definition, emerging processes seem beyond the control of management, which is in conflict with the task of management to steer an organization. By modeling the emergence of a shared attitude in organizations, we were able to demonstrate that management had a distinct influence on this process. Furthermore, the first round of interactions was decisive for the outcome. The key to influencing the emergence of a shared attitude is to reduce resistance against the preferred attitude. High levels of group conformity inhibited conversion to the preferred attitude. Although the emergence of a shared attitude can be influenced by management, there remains an intrinsic uncertainty in the outcomes of attitude development processes.

Commentary: Lernout & Hauspie – Chronicle of a Bankruptcy Foretold

Although the downfall of Lernout & Hauspie seems an amazing story, it is not unique. I argue that several characteristics of the case can be found in other dark tales of organisational failure. What makes such cases complicated is that several related destructive processes seem to take place at the same time. Charismatic leadership seems to have played a role, blinding Lernout’s followers – as well as Lernout himself – for the risks associated with the decisions he took. The decision making processes at Lernout & Hauspie themselves were prone to increasing risk taking and escalation of commitment. However, although the internal organisational processes were unsound, the company was dependent on external and – in principle – independent stakeholders such as banks and accountants. But even the external stakeholders failed to sound the alarm bell, probably because they were not as independent as they should have been. With such situational ingredients, it is like waiting for a drama to unfold.