Kenneth H. Price

Beyond Relational Demography: Time and the Effects of Surface- and Deep-Level Diversity on Work Group Cohesion

We examined the impact of surface-level (demographic) and deep-level (attitudinal) diversity on group social integration. As hypothesized, the length of time group members worked together weakened the effects of surface-level diversity and strengthened the effects of deep-level diversity as group members bad the opportunity to engage in meaningful interactions.

Time, Teams, and Task Performance: Changing Effects of Surface- and Deep-Level Diversity on Group Functioning

Time serves as a medium for collaboration in teams, allowing members to exchange personal and task-related information. We propose that stronger team reward contingencies stimulate collaboration. As time passes, increasing collaboration weakens the effects of surface-level (demographic) diversity on team outcomes but strengthens those of deep-level (psychological) diversity. Also, perceived diversity transmits the impact of actual diversity on team social integration, which in turn affects task performance. Results from four waves of data on 144 student project teams support these propositions and the strong relevance of time to research on work team diversity.

Process and Outcome Expectations for the Dialectical Inquiry, Devil's Advocacy, and Consensus Techniques of Strategic Decision Making:

This study examined expectations of cognitive conflict, social conflict, decision confidence, and postdecision group affect in the dialectical inquiry, devils advocacy, and consensus decision-making techniques. Expectations show some congruence with the affective, but not objective, outcomes found in prior empirical studies. Expectations were found to discriminate among dialectical inquiry, devils advocacy, and consensus.

Withholding inputs in team contexts: member composition, interaction processes, evaluation structure, and social loafing.

Social loafing was observed as a naturally occurring process in project teams of students working together for 3-4 months. The authors assessed the contributions that member composition (i.e., relational dissimilarity and knowledge, skills, and abilities; KSAs), perceptions of the teams interaction processes (i.e., dispensability and the fairness of the decision-making procedures), and the teams evaluation structure (i.e., identifiability) make toward understanding loafing behavior. Identifiability moderated the impact of dispensability on loafing but not the impact of fairness on loafing. Perceptions of fairness were negatively related to the extent that participants loafed within their team. Specific aspects of relational dissimilarity were positively associated with perceptions of dispensability and negatively associated with perceptions of fairness, whereas KSAs were negatively associated with perceptions of dispensability.

The value of voice in participative decision making.

Relying on concepts found in prospect theory (D. Kahneman & A. Tversky, 1979), the value function of voice-based participation (i.e., the relationship between the amount of voice received and the value attached to that quantity) was examined. In keeping with tenets of prospect theory, the value function of voice exhibited a nonlinear pattern. Points were identified in which voice displayed significant improvements and diminishing marginal returns on response measures of process fairness, decision control, and outcome satisfaction. Task meaningfulness, a moderator of voice-based participation, did not change the general shape of the value function but did influence the intensity of participant reactions at low and high levels of voice. Voice influence, a second moderator of voice-based participation, had minimal impact on participant responses.

Decision responsibility, task responsibility, identifiability, and social loafing

Abstract Two laboratory experiments were conducted. Results of the first experiment revealed that identifiability had no impact on the degree of cognitive loafing when group members were asked to make a decision. Identifiability did have an impact when group members were asked to express an opinion. The second experiment replicated findings of the first experiment and, in addition, indicated that unidentifiable individuals with sole task responsibility loafed more than unidentifiable individuals who shared task responsibility. Cognitive effort was measured through recall of stimulus material.

Context and consistency in absenteeism: studying social and dispositional influences across multiple settings

Abstract We examine the merits of studying absence and attendance behaviors across multiple settings. In this approach, we connect consistent, between-person variance to dispositional influences and contextual, within-person variance to social influences. Using definitions of absence and lateness that focus on how these behaviors violate social expectations, we found that self-reported absenteeism at 11 different settings yielded a consistency estimate comparable to many measures of work-related constructs (coefficient α=.62). Self-reported lateness yielded even greater consistency (α=.76). Supplementary evidence using archival records of attendance and performance showed that response biases were unlikely sources of all of the apparent absence and lateness “proneness.” Self-monitoring was unrelated to overall levels of absence or lateness, but was weakly related to modulation of absence and lateness rates across settings (rs=.14 and .10, respectively). Perceived social expectations were correlated at the idiographic level with absence and lateness patterns across the 11 settings (median rs=−.30 and −.17, respectively). Findings are discussed in terms of how different research strategies partition and highlight different components of variance in absenteeism behavior.

Distributed cognition in software design: an experimental investigation of the role of design patterns and collaboration

Software design is a knowledge intensive task that constitutes a critical part of the software development process. Using a controlled experiment involving software practitioners, this research examines two potentially useful mechanisms for improving the software design process. Specifically, this study examines the impact of structural distribution of cognition through design patterns and social distribution of cognition through collaborating pairs on design outcomes. The results indicate that the use of design patterns as external cognitive artifacts improves design quality, reduces time taken to solve a design problem, and leads to higher participant satisfaction. Collaborating pairs of software designers were compared to participants working alone but whose efforts were conjointly considered as the best and second-best members of nominal pairs. It was found that paired designers produced higher quality designs compared with the second-best members of nominal pairs, did not differ from the best member of a nominal pair, but took more time to complete a design task than either member of a nominal pair. The results also indicate that the availability of design patterns raises the performance level of the second-best member of a nominal pair, in terms of quality, and reduces task completion time when compared with a pair not using design patterns. Finally, paired designers were found to experience higher levels of task satisfaction when compared with individuals. Implications for research and practice are discussed.

A field experiment examining the effects of membership in voting majority and minority subgroups and the ameliorating effects of postdecisional voice

This field study used 80 employees of a data-processing firm to examine the consequences of membership in voting majority and minority subgroups after implementation of a decision and the ability of postdecisional voice to ameliorate the negative consequences of membership in the voting minority. In the absence of postdecisional voice, employees in the minority subgroup perceived the decision process as less fair, were less satisfied with the decision outcome, reported lower levels of task commitment, and produced 41% less output than employees in the voting majority subgroup. Following postdecisional voice, employees in the voting minority subgroup reported improved perceptions of fairness and task commitment, and their output increased by 34%. Postdecisional voice had no detectable effect on employee satisfaction with the decision outcome.

Collective User Participation in Specifying Requirements of an Information System: Minimizing Differences Between Minority and Majority Voting Subgroups

This article investigates the impact of collective user participation in specifying requirements of an information system. The objectives of this study are to (1) examine the attitudinal and behavioral reactions of group members in the voting minority when a majority‐rule social decision scheme is used to determine decision outcomes, and (2) test the efficacy of two intervention techniques—justification and likelihood of amelioration—designed to minimize differences between voting minority and majority subgroups. In this study, referent cognition theory (RCT) is introduced into the accounting literature and, for the first time, RCT propositions are applied to social decision scheme research. Study findings indicate that, when compared to the voting majority, the minority subgroup recorded lower levels of process fairness, outcome fairness, outcome satisfaction, and actual task performance. Two attempts were made to minimize differences between minority and majority voting subgroups. Although the two inter...