The Significance of Influence in Our Current Work Environment: Understanding and Exploring the Shift and Emergent Domains
Year: 2014
Type: article
Abstract: The workplace continues to develop as a complex and diverse setting complicating interactions related to influence around task and relationship enactments.Anecdotal comments from leaders and members in organizations suggest that the experience of influence is shifting and that extant research is not identifying or understanding this shift.This study investigates the emergent shift of influence at the leader-member and leader-team interactional levels.The findings in this three-study mixed methods approach suggest that the experience of influence is shifting and that there are two fundamental domains that differ at the leader and member levels in today's work environment.Twenty-six qualitative interview results suggest that non-dyadic relationships are changing and normative collisions are occurring around domains of tasks and relationships.In addition to task and relationship classifications, a third category labeled task/relationship was identified when the second study using 1,793 xvii comments from intact 1 teams were triangulated with the initial twenty-six interviews.This was further triangulated with quantitative data capturing the experience of team interaction from 30 intact teams that underwent a team coaching process where the data was collected over two time periods spanning four to six months.This finding prompted post hoc analysis and reveals clear indication of two emerging domains of influence each of which defines the experience of influence at the team leadership and team membership levels in the current work environment.The domains of influence are classified as Promotive Influence and Participative Influence.I conclude with a proposed scale to be developed and piloted, post dissertation, to explore this phenomenon further.It is hoped that such a scale could be refined and used to inform individual and team coaching programs geared toward maximizing team effectiveness.1 Intact teams refers to leaders and members all working physically together as a team.Study Leadership Leader-Member Tasks & Relationships Power and Influence Influence Teams
Author: Donna L. Haeger
Institution: Case Western Reserve University
Language: English
Subfield: Social Psychology
Field: Psychology
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W2603889294