Teamworking under the microscope: employee behavior, job design and ideal compensation system
- Autores: Ana-María Godeanu
- Directores de la Tesis: Jaime Ortega Diego (dir. tes.)
- Lectura: En la Universidad Carlos III de Madrid ( España ) en 2012
- Idioma: inglés
- Tribunal Calificador de la Tesis: Margarita Mayo (presid.), Eduardo Melero Martín (secret.), Miriam Sánchez Manzanares (voc.), Laetitia Mulder (voc.), Petru Curseu (voc.)
- Materias:
- Enlaces
- Tesis en acceso abierto en: e-Archivo
- Resumen
Nowadays teams are used in almost any organization as they are able to respond adequately to the changes from the business environment. Thus, the focus of this thesis is to analyse team working thoroughly by looking at individual team members satisfaction, behaviour and career prospects. Only by investigating first the individuals we can get a proper picture of how the team is functioning as the sum of individual efforts, commitment and relationships among group members shape the actual team. Which are the compensation schemes preferred by the employees? Are there any other types of non-monetary rewards that contribute to higher satisfaction or helping behaviour? And does it really payoff to be part of a team in terms of increase cooperation among group members and potential promotions? These are the research questions that I plan to answer in my dissertation. In the specific case of human resource management it is proper for companies to adapt their compensation systems to their team-based structures (Zobal, 1998; Shaw et al., 2001). However, there are few studies about the effect of the new compensation design on employee satisfaction and helping behaviour. In line with equity theory and theory of cooperation it is important to investigate which other variables that managers can control influence team members satisfaction and cooperation. However, most prior research has studied the relationship between perceived fairness with pay and job satisfaction (Donovan, Drasgow & Munson, 1998; Masterson et al. 2000; Haar & Spell, 2009; Casuneanu, 2010) but little is known about the specific effects of different types of compensation applied on team member satisfaction and citizenship behaviour. Another variable considered to influence satisfaction and other positive work-related attitudes (i.e.cooperation), is autonomy, regarded by the literature as a non-monetary reward (Lawler, 1971). Nevertheless, previous research was either theoretical (Predergast, 2002; Raith, 2008) or considered autonomy at individual level (Karasek, 1979; Ortega, 2009). Given that there are few studies that take into account the influence of autonomy at team level the focus of this thesis is to study the effects of both individual and team-based autonomy on employee behaviour, satisfaction and career prospects. The contribution of this dissertation resides also in the introduction of both types of autonomy which are explored in detail and expected to work like a buffer that compensates for potential injustices of the reward system. While team working has proved to have advantages for productivity (Gomez-Mejia & Balkin, 1989; Hamilton, Nickerson & Owan, 2003), cooperation (Miller and Hamblin; 1963; Van der Vegt et al., 2003; Bamberger & Levi, 2009) and knowledge sharing (Siemsen, Balasubramanian & Roth, 2007) its effects on career advancement prospects received little attention. Furthermore and in line with employee learning theory and previous career development literature, the connection between productivity and promotion has been studied but the complex set of variables (at individual and group level) that affects advancement beyond this needs further investigation. The data that I use in this thesis comes from the fourth European Working Conditions Survey conducted in 2005 by the European Foundation for the Improvement of Living and Working Conditions1. This survey provides an analysis of working conditions in the 27 countries of the European Union, in the two candidate countries (Turkey and Croatia), in Switzerland and Norway. In total, nearly 30.000 individual workers were interviewed in face-to-face interviews in their own homes between September and November of 2005, but I kept mainly the observations referring to employees working in a team. The focus of this thesis is the team member given that it is essential to understand individual behavior and expectations in order to understand work groups. Once inside the team, individual satisfaction, cooperation and career opportunities have to be carefully looked at, as through a microscope, in order to analyze the underlying factors which influence them. I attempt to address this central theme through three essays, each one exploring a different research question and using the same dataset described above. Chapter 1 entitled The Antecedents of Satisfaction with Pay in Teams: Do Performance-based Compensation and Autonomy Keep Team-members Satisfied? aims to investigate the effects performance-based compensation and autonomy on satisfaction with pay in the context of team working. Given that previous literature suggests that organizations using team working should also change their compensation system accordingly, I aim at developing a complex perspective that considers the influence of different monetary and non-monetary rewards on satisfaction with pay. Drawing from agency theory, equity theory and theory of cooperation I predict that both piece rates and team-based rewards are associated with higher pay satisfaction. Moreover, I claim that autonomy in the form of both individual and team-based contribute to increased satisfaction with pay. Using a cross-sectional dataset of randomly selected European employees who are asked about specific working and living conditions, results confirm that both productivity based rewards and autonomy are important tools when it comes to determining employee satisfaction. Managers should know when to introduce rewards based only on individual merits so as to keep their workers motivated and when to give use autonomy as a buffer to compensate for potential fairness lacks in the payment system. In Chapter 2 entitled The Determinants of Helping Behavior in Teams I address the antecedents of helping behaviour in teams by looking at performance based compensation and autonomy. Given that previous literature has mainly examined each determinant separately, I aim at developing a complex perspective that considers their effect simultaneously. Using agency theory, social exchange theory and the theory of cooperation, I predict that piece rates and individual productivity payments decrease cooperation while and empowerment, at both individual and team level, leads to more helping behavior. This paper measures helping behaviour through the degree of assistance received by a team-member from other colleagues. We assume that workers receive help-from somebody else who may be called the good Samaritan- in two cases: first, when somebody else has something to gain if he or she offers help (for instance higher common reward or the perspective of receiving help himself) and second, when somebody else wants to help only because he or she can, this person being the Good Samaritan. I claim that a potential explanation that goes beyond compensation and autonomy refers to altruistic behaviour. Results yield support for the majority of the hypotheses confirming that managers could control their employees through either the compensation system or through autonomy in order to determine them to assist others. Practical implications are also identified and new directions for further research are proposed. In Chapter 3 entitled Team Participation and Career Advancement I study the relationship between team affiliation and career advancement. Given that previous literature has mainly examined the connection between productivity and promotion, it is interesting to analyze the complex set of variables that affect career prospects beyond this. Drawing from employee learning and career development literature I aim at investigating both the antecedents and consequences of team affiliation. I claim that both the level of education and tenure are associated with team participation while inside the group, together with individual and team-based autonomy, they lead to high career advancement prospects. The findings suggest that managers may prefer to select in teams employees who are highly educated or have a large history and experience with the organization and once inside the team, team affiliation, individual autonomy, higher education and team discretion in the form of team freedom over the choice of the group leader contribute to high career prospects as expected. The implication regarding attaining further education is in line with findings from Arrow (1972), Spilerman & Lunde (1991) and Chao & Ngai (2001) who consider education credential as an important signal about employee level of competence
