This study applied a social exchange perspective to examine three related aspects of work group behavior: individuals' assessment of the personal costs and rewards of group membership, the overall level of emotional investment in a group, and the external evaluation of group performance. Regression analyses of survey data from 28 ongoing student work groups (134 individuals) indicated that perc...

We introduce interpersonal congruence—the degree to which group members see others in the group as others see themselves—as a moderator of the relationship between diversity and group effectiveness. A longitudinal study of 83 work groups revealed that functional and demographic diversity tended to undermine the functioning of groups with low interpersonal congruence, whereas these detrimental e...

Awareness of others’ interests can lead to fruitful collaborations, friendships and positive social change. Interviews of groups involved in both research and corporate work revealed a lack of awareness of shared interests among workers sharing an organizational affiliation and collocated in the same building or complex but still physically separated (e.g., by walls or floors). Our study showed...

Individuals derive many benefits from being social, one of which is improved accuracy of decision-making, the so-called 'wisdom of the crowds' effect. This advantage arises because larger groups can pool information from more individuals. At present, limited empirical data indicate that larger groups outperform smaller ones during consensus decision-making in human and non-human animals. Inaccu...

The workforce is aging as older workers reenter the workforce or delay retirement. One consequence is that work groups are increasingly becoming intergenerational. Because group work relies on many collaborative tools (e.g., email, shared calendars), it is essential to understand the special requirements that intergenerational groups may have for groupware. Can we design collaborative tools tha...

Teamwork has been at the core of human accomplishment across the millennia, and it was a focus of social psychological inquiry on small group behavior for nearly half a century. However, as organizations world-wide reorganized work around teams over the past two decades, the nature of teamwork and factors influencing it became a central focus of research in organizational psychology and managem...

This paper addresses the knowledge criticality question: what knowledge is critical to the focal task and therefore, needs to be retrieved. It argues that knowledge criticality is not an objective construct and that people’s prior task knowledge which consists of two dimensions: knowledge domain and expertise level, as well as social knowledge has an effect on what knowledge they perceive as cr...

Organizations increasingly rely on group-based organizational structures to manage uncertain environments. However, at the group level there is still a limited understanding of how boundary-spanning activities should be managed to increase group performance. In this paper, we propose “out-grouptie centralization” as a concept that refers to the variation in the group members’ network ties to ot...

PURPOSE The purpose of this study is to evaluate whether dialogue groups for physicians can improve their psychosocial work environment. DESIGN/METHODOLOGY/APPROACH The study assessed the impact of eight dialogue groups, which involved 60 physicians at a children's clinic in one of the main hospitals in Stockholm. Psychosocial work environment measures were collected through a validated instr...