Steven H. Cady

Team Innovation and Perceptions of Consideration: What Difference Does Diversity Make?

This article presents an authentic field study, which used an entropy-based formula to measure team diversity, of 50 teams. The data were collected in a division of a high-tech, Fortune 500 company. The results revealed that diversity (race, age, sex, and function) had no impact on quality of innovation, whereas sex and race had a negative and positive impact, respectively, on quantity of innovation. It was also found that race and sex negatively influenced perceptions of teaming consideration.

Demystifying Gender Differences in Mentoring:Theoretical Perspectives and Challenges for Future Research on Gender and Mentoring

Issues of gender and mentoring are explored through several theoretical lenses—similarity-attraction paradigm, power dependence, social exchange, biological, and psychological theories—to provide a more comprehensive view of mentoring from a gender-based perspective. Issues related to gender and mentoring presented in past mentoring research and tenets from several theoretical bases are used to develop research propositions. The relevance of studying gender issues in mentoring is emphasized and suggestions for conducting research on gender and mentoring are presented.

The role of conscientiousness and extraversion in affecting the relationship between perceptions of group potency and volunteer group member selling behavior: An interactionist perspective:

We studied 284 volunteers, loosely coupled in groups (i.e. low task interdependence, high outcome interdependence), selling memberships in a non-profit organization. Consistent with economic models of altruism, we found individual perceptions of group potency to be negatively related to individual selling behavior (i.e. making telephone calls and customer visits). Furthermore, individual members’ perceptions of group potency were found to interact with two personality traits (conscientiousness and extraversion) to influence individual selling behavior.

Managing Impressions with Information A Field Study of Organizational Realities

This field study examines how changes in span of managerial control (SOC), the leadership substitute referred to as procedure availability, and self-monitoring (SM) influence impression management tactics used by subordinates in their customer service reports. The findings revealed that a wide SOC and available procedures influenced subordinates to use disassociative and positive tactics. When SOC was wide, subordinates high in SM exhibited positive tactics only. The study also found that those high in SM used associative and disassociative tactics when procedures were available. These results provide implications for the impact that structural changes within the organization can have on subordinates’ use and reporting of information.

The Impact of Reward Interdependency on the Synergogy Model of Cooperative Performance Designing an Effective Team Environment

This study seeks to determine how the synergogy model of group cooperative performance can be most effectively used in the classroom/training environment with respect to task assignments and reward interdependency. Using two principle designs from Mouton and Blakes synergogy model, the findings indicate that when team members are assigned specialized tasks, the most effective reward system is either the group product or groupaveraged (dependent and interdependent, respectively) design. When the tasks among team members are not specialized, the most effective reward system is the group product or a dependent reward designL

Multilevel performance probability: a meta-analytic integration of expectancy and self-efficacy.

A meta-analysis of one approach to measuring expectancy and self-efficacy was conducted. Although used for over 25 years, this measure has yet to be named or integrated across the two theoretical domains. We proposed to label this measure a Multilevel Performance Probability and conducted a meta-analysis. The search for empirical tests of expectancy and self-efficacy using this procedure yielded 16 studies with ratings which could be subjected to meta-analysis. Five studies with 8 tests were taken from expectancy studies and 11 studies with 47 tests from studies of self-efficacy. In total, the analyses involved 7,444 subjects across 55 tests of the Multilevel Performance Probability to performance relationship. Examination of the measure as a predictor of performance gave a mean r of .51 (p < .001) which is in the same direction and larger than values from other meta-analyses conducted within each of the two theoretical domains (rs of .21 and .38).

When a Team is More Like a Group: Improving Individual Motivation by Managing Integrity Through Team Action Processes

An important interdisciplinary opportunity to conduct field research examines how to improve an individual’s contribution on a team that requires little to no interaction in order to accomplish the team’s mission, goals, and objectives. This field study examined 308 volunteers organized into 78 membership recruitment teams. A specific planned team intervention was implemented which blended two approaches: integrity management and team action processes. The results of the intervention showed that even when a team is more like a group, individual effort improves. The intervention had a significant indirect effect on individual performance through individual effort. Results further demonstrate that the intervention is distinct from self-efficacy and team confidence. Identifiability of contributions and visibility of effort are discussed as mechanisms through which team interventions influence effort and performance within teams for which the task itself does not require higher levels of interdependent work.