Marianne Schmid Mast
Interpersonal Sensitivity in Hierarchical Relationships
Authors
Marianne Schmid Mast (University of Neuchâtel)
Interpersonal sensitivity is defined as the extent to which a person is able to correctly assess other’s thoughts and feelings. The emotional intelligence literature suggests that good leaders should have enhanced interpersonal sensitivity in order to be successful. In Study 1, we investigated whether people harbored more pronounced expectations in terms of interpersonal sensitivity towards a leader or towards a subordinate. In the questionnaire study, 141 people participated. Results showed that individuals in the leadership position are expected to be more interpersonally sensitive than individuals in the subordinate position. In Study 2 we tested whether differences in interpersonal sensitivity were related to leadership outcomes such as subordinate satisfaction. Participants (124) interacted with each other in dyads for 8 min and one person was randomly assigned the role of the leader and the other the role of the subordinate. After this interaction, the subordinates indicated their satisfaction with the leader and the leader took a standardized interpersonal sensitivity performance test. Results showed that the more interpersonal sensitive the leader was the more satisfied the subordinate was with him/her. This research shows that interpersonal sensitivity is an important aspect of “good” leadership.
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Claudia Toma
Strategic Use of Information in Group Decision Making: The Impact of Competition and Dissent
Authors
Claudia Toma (University of Grenoble)
Fabrizio Butera (University of Lausanne)
Pressures to compete with others occur in organizational and educational settings where groups are often used to make important decisions. Stasser & Titus (1985, 1987, 2003) have shown that groups may make suboptimal decisions as they pool more shared information (known to all members) than unshared information (known to a single member). Using a hidden profile task with dissenting individual preferences we provided evidence that information pooling reflects a strategic behaviour: Group members are motivated to deliberately select the information to be communicated in order to satisfy competitive goals. Pooling of unshared information and dissent mediated these effects with regard to decision quality. Consistent with Greitemeyer & Schulz-Hardt (2003) we also found that group members exhibit a preference-consistent evaluation of subsequent information (confirmation bias). While dissent generally reduces this bias, we found that this is not the case during competition. Our results point to a strategic function of confirmation bias.
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Klaus Jonas
Influence of Fair and Supportive Leadership Behaviour on Commitment and the Willingness to Engage in Organizational Citizenship Behaviour
Authors
Klaus Jonas (University of Zurich)
Brigitte Rietmann (University of Zurich)
Diana Meierhans (University of Zurich)
This study examines the influence of fair and supportive leadership behaviour on the willingness of employees to engage in organizational citizenship behaviour (OCB). The model tested suggests that (affective and normative) commitment to the organization as well as commitment to the supervisor act as mediators, with commitment to the supervisor expected to have the stronger effect. Moreover, due to his or her role as a representative of the organization, it is hypothesised that a fair and supportive supervisor attains the employees’ commitment, which in turn enhances their commitment to the organization. 260 bank employees completed a questionnaire in which they rated their supervisor’s behaviour, the two commitment foci (organization and supervisor) and their own willingness to engage in OCB. As a whole, results of structural equation modelling provide support for the hypotheses and indicate that fostering fair and supportive leadership can be worthwhile for organizations.
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Tobias Heilmann
Core Self-Evaluations and Transformational Leadership
Authors
Tobias Heilmann (University of Zurich)
This study examines the relationship between managers’ core self-evaluations (Judge, Locke, & Durham, 1997) and transformational leadership (Bass, 1985) as well as the criteria success, effectiveness, and job satisfaction. Data were collected from 299 employees and managers of a glass-processing company in Germany. Managers’ core self-evaluations are highly significant positive related to transformational leadership, particularly with the two transformational behaviors individualized influence and individual consideration. Furthermore, core self-evaluations of both, employees and managers, adds to the prediction of job satisfaction over and above transactional and transformational leadership.
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Stéphanie Facchin
The reflective group: Group reflexivity enhances team performance – sometimes.
Authors
Stéphanie Facchin (University of Pittsburgh (USA))
Franziska Tschan (University of Neuchâtel)
In analogon to the "reflective practitioner" on the individual level (Schön, 1983), West (1996) suggested that performance and innovation will be higher in teams that regularly reflect on their goals, strategies and cooperation. Empirical support for the relationship between reflexivity and innovation is solid, but research investigating the relationship between team reflexivity and team performance has yielded mixed results.
In two empirical studies we assessed boundary conditions of the relationship between reflexivity and performance, based on the assumption that reflexivity enhances performance if the reflection process is useful for the actual task or cooperation requirements – in contrast to the contention that a 'reflective style' leads to high team performance.
Results of study 1 show a main effect of reflexivity on performance, and furthermore show that task variety moderates the relationship between reflexivity and performance in the sense that reflection is related to higher performance only if task variety is high. Study 2 tested the relationship between a good transactive memory system, reflexivity, and performance. It is interesting to note that team reflexivity and transactive memory do not correlate substantively (r=.06). Moderated regressions show that reflexivity only enhances performance in teams with a less well developed transactive memory system. Implications for implementing reflexivity procedures as methods for fostering team performance are discussed.
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