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Interdependence and Group Effectiveness
Author(s): Ruth Wageman

Source: Administrative Science Quarterly , Mar., 1995, Vol. 40, No. 1 (Mar., 1995), pp.
145-180
Published by: Sage Publications, Inc. on behalf of the Johnson Graduate School of
Management, Cornell University
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.com/stable/2393703
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Interdependence and This study investigated the differential effects of task
Group Effectiveness design and reward system design on group functioning;
the effectiveness of "hybrid" groups, in which groups'
tasks and/or rewards have both individual and group
Ruth Wageman elements; and how individuals' preferences for
Columbia University
autonomy moderate their responses to interdependence
at work. An intervention in the reward system at a large
U.S. corporation created group, individual, and hybrid
rewards for 150 existing teams of technicians that had
group, hybrid, or individual tasks. Groups performed
best when their tasks and outcomes were either pure
group or pure-individual. Hybrid groups performed quite
poorly, had low-quality interaction processes, and low
member satisfaction. Task and outcome interdependence
affected different aspects of group functioning: Tasks
influenced variables related to cooperation, while
outcomes influenced variables related to effort.
Individuals' autonomy preferences did not moderate the
effects of task and reward interdependence but, instead,
were themselves influenced by the amount of
interdependence in the work. These findings have
implications for the design of work and reward systems
for work groups.'
Two contrasting models dominate the way both managers

and researchers think about the design of work. On the one
hand, work can be designed to be highly interdependent,
requiring the input of several people to complete it. One
example of such a design is a team responsible for creating
a new advertising campaign. The team might include copy
writers, graphic artists, and project managers, all of whose
contributions are necessary for completing the task, with
members held collectively accountable for the quality of the
new promotion strategy. Alternatively, work can be
structured to be highly independent and to be performed by
individuals. The reward system then reinforces individual
excellence. An example is a sales team in which each
member is given responsibility for sales in one specific
territory and is paid a commission based solely on his or her
individual sales performance.
There also exists a third model that has received relatively

little attention: a "hybrid" design that combines elements of
interdependent and independent work. One example of such
a design is a group of researchers in a development
laboratory, each of whom pursues independent research
projects and, in addition, collaborates on some larger shared
? 1995 by Cornell University. enterprise. Members of such hybrid groups sometimes
0001-8392/95/4001-0145/$1 .00.
operate entirely independently and sometimes as a team.
0
I would like to thank Chris Argyris, In the above examples, both the means by which the work
Richard Hackman, and Mike Jensen for is accomplished (the task) and the ways in which
help throughout this research project.
performance is assessed and rewarded (the work outcomes)
Thanks also to Suzy Fenwick, Tom
Ruddy, and Chuck Ray at Xerox for their vary in interdependence. These distinct forms of
support and for help in making the interdependence can be designed independently of each
research possible. And special thanks to
all the managers and technicians at Xerox
other and be combined in different ways. The research
for making me welcome in their described here examines the separate and joint effects of
workplace. This paper is based on a different levels of task interdependence and outcome
doctoral dissertation; the research was
generously funded by the Harvard
interdependence-individual, hybrid, and group-on the
Business School and Xerox Corporation. effectiveness of working groups in organizations.
145/Administrative Science Quarterly, 40 (1995): 145-180

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The effects of task and outcome interdependence on group
effectiveness also may depend on the characteristics of the
individuals doing the work. The technicians studied here are
organized into groups that vary in task interdependence. I
changed the nature of the rewards they received to create
variance in outcome interdependence. And I measured work
preferences of individual technicians to explore the role of
individual differences in moderating the effects of
interdependence on group effectiveness.
Forms of Interdependence
Interdependence among people in organizations can derive

from several sources: (1) task inputs, such as the
distribution of skills and resources and the technology that
define the work (e.g., individuals on an assembly line vs.
teams building whole products), (2) the processes by which
members execute the work (e.g., people who make sales
calls alone vs. people who sell as teams), (3) the way that
goals are defined and achieved (e.g., measures of collective
vs. individual performance), and (4) the way that
performance is rewarded (e.g., rewards contingent on group
vs. individual performance). In this research, I focus on two
forms of interdependence. The first derives from inputs into
the work and from the process by which the work is carried
out, which I refer to as task interdependence. The second
derives from the degree to which significant consequences
of the work-such as goal attainment and tangible
rewards-are contingent on collective performance, which I
refer to as outcome interdependence.
Task interdependence. Some researchers (e.g., Johnson

and Johnson, 1989) distinguish task interdependence, in
which each member must take action for other members to
do any part of their work (as in a basketball team) from
resource interdependence, in which each member can
complete his or her part of the whole, but resources such as
information are distributed among members and the whole
task is not complete until each member has completed his
or her part (e.g., a design team). Other scholars (e.g.,
Thompson, 1967; Van de Ven and Ferry, 1980), by contrast,
focus on the different processes by which inputs can be
combined to complete a whole piece of work-e.g., pooled
interdependence, in which subtasks are performed
separately and in any order, vs. sequential interdependence,
in which subtasks are completed in a specified sequence.
What these various types of interdependence have in
common is that each describes the degree to which the task
requires collective action.
There are several different perspectives on task

interdependence. Thompson (1967) viewed task
interdependence as a characteristic of work that is inherent
in the technology of the task (e.g., assembly line work is
inherently sequentially interdependent). Others (e.g., Shea
and Guzzo, 1989) have viewed task interdependence as a
characteristic of the way people behave in executing their
work (e.g., assembly line workers who help each other are
more task interdependent than those who do not). This
paper takes a perspective that falls between these two
extremes: Task interdependence is a structural feature of
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Interdependence
work, but tasks can be designed to be performed at varying

levels of interdependence (e.g., workers formed into groups
and given the tools and instructions to build subassemblies
are more interdependent than those who are assigned
individual tasks on an assembly line). The instructions and
materials that define a task create a level of
interdependence that in turn may influence how much unit
members interact in executing the task (Hackman, 1969).
Task design is manipulable. Manufacturing work may be
designed so that individuals with distinct skills execute their
part of the task-one input into the final product-
independent of bther workers. Alternatively, group members
may be cross-trained and work simultaneously and, at times,
interchangeably, on completing the whole. And, finally, one
might create a hybrid form in which members sometimes
work alone at independent tasks and sometimes work
together as a team. This research investigates the
performance and processes of groups that experience these
three distinct forms of task interdependence.
Outcome interdependence. Outcome interdependence is

defined as the degree to which the significant outcomes an
individual receives depend on the performance of others. A
noninterdependent reward is one given exclusively for
individual excellence, such as a commission paid to
individual salespeople. A maximally interdependent reward,
by contrast, is one given to individuals based exclusively on
group performance, such as a gainsharing plan. A hybrid
reward is one in which a significant proportion of the reward
is based on group performance, and another significant
proportion is based on individual performance.
Goal achievement also may be seen as a significant

outcome of group work. The term goal interdependence
sometimes has been used synonymously with task
interdependence (Sayles, 1958), but task and goal
interdependence are conceptually and empirically
distinguishable: Goal interdependence can exist without any
interdependence in the means of accomplishing the work
(e.g., a room full of telemarketers may be held accountable
for a collective goal, but they complete individual tasks), and
vice versa (e.g., Mitchell and Silver, 1990). Like rewards,
goals can be established for groups, for individuals, or both.
This research focuses on how these three forms of outcome
interdependence, especially in conjunction with different
forms of task interdependence-individual, hybrid, and
group-affect group functioning. I develop the argument
with a set of research questions that I return to as I report
the results of the field experiment.
Interdependence and Performers' Work Experiences

Both task and outcome interdependence have been
identified by scholars as potentially key to group
effectiveness (Guzzo and Shea, 1987), and there has been
some debate about which is more critical (Deutsch, 1962;
Slavin, 1983), yet while these two forms of interdependence
can be conceptually distinguished, it is not clear that they
are experienced differently by group members. One
possibility is that an increase in either form of
interdependence increases members' general sense that
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they must depend on others at work, but they may not
differentiate between interdependence in the work itself and
interdependence in the outcomes of work. Alternatively,
members may experience task and outcome
interdependence differently, but changes in one form also
may influence experience of the other. Guzzo (1992), for
example, suggested that increasing outcome
interdependence may alter group members' experienced
task interdependence and, consequently, change the way
that they approach the work. Finally, group members may
perceive the design of the task and the nature of work
outcomes as distinct, and changes in one form may alter
their experience of interdependence in that form only.
Whether the two forms of interdependence are experienced
differentially has important implications for the design of
groups: If they act as substitutes for one another, for
example, then changes in either will alter team members'
experienced interdependence. This research examines
empirically the relative influence of task and outcome
interdependence on experienced interdependence through
the following question:
Research Question 1: To what extent do task and outcome

interdependence differentially affect the interdependence
individuals experience in their work?
Interdependence and Group Effectiveness
It also is not known how much interdependence among

group members is best for group effectiveness. For this
study, effectiveness is defined as having three components:
(1) the group's product meets or exceeds the needs of the
users of that product; (2) group members interact in ways
that allow the group to work more effectively over time,
learning from each other and developing norms of operating
that support high-quality performance; and (3) the group
experience, on balance, satisfies rather than frustrates the
needs of members (Hackman, 1987).
There are at least three distinct possible relationships

between total (task plus outcome) interdependence and
group effectiveness: (1) the level of interdependence does
not influence group effectiveness at all; (2) there is a
monotonic increase in group effectiveness as
interdependence increases; and (3) the relationship is
curvilinear, such that groups with very low and very high
levels of interdependence are less effective than groups
with moderate levels of interdependence.
The more the better. Group effectiveness may increase

with increasing levels of interdependence. In their
meta-analysis of the effects of cooperative vs. individualistic
and competitive forms of interdependence, Johnson and
Johnson (1989) made a strongly stated case for the benefits
of high interdependence, citing positive effects on learning,
achievement, cognitive complexity of thought, and
interpersonal relations. In a similar vein, Mesch et al. (1988)
found that high task interdependence in classrooms
enhanced learning relative to an independent task structure,
and this effect became even more pronounced when a
group reward was added to the interdependent task.
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Interdependence
Two problems arise in extrapolating from these findings to

group performance in general. First, both the Johnsons'
(1989) meta-analysis and Mesch et al.'s (1988) work focus
on groups in classrooms, where the task is learning, rather
than on working groups in organizations. Second, in Mesch
et al.'s study, no comparison group experienced an
interdependent task with rewards based on individual
performance. It may be that adding any performance-
contingent reward-even a noninterdependent
one-enhances interdependent learning. To test for an
additive effect of task and outcome interdependence on
working groups, tasks with different levels of
interdependence must be combined with both independent
and interdependent outcomes for groups in organizations, as
was done in the study reported here.
Either too much or too little is detrimental. Alternatively,

one might predict that either very high or very low levels of
interdependence will undermine group effectiveness. Too
little interdependence may result in very low levels of
interaction among group members, thus preventing mutual
learning and the development of collective norms of
operating (Johnson and Johnson, 1989). By contrast, very
high levels of interdependence in the task and outcomes
may raise the level of coordination to the point where its
costs outweigh its benefits. Much energy may be expended
coordinating members and regulating collective behavior that
might otherwise be expended on task performance itself.
No relationship. Finally, the quality of task performance,

coordination among group members, collective effort
directed at the task, and satisfaction with the work all may
be uninfluenced by the level of interdependence among
members. Each of these outcomes may be controlled by
other variables, such as individual characteristics or the
organizational context. Or perhaps work can be performed
effectively at any level of interdependence, and group
members can adapt their interactions to perform well at that
level of interdependence. The above arguments lead to the
following question:
Research Question 2: What are the effects of varying levels of
total (task plus outcome) interdependence on group effectiveness?
Differential Effects of Task and Outcome Interdependence
on Group Functioning
While some previous research suggests task and outcome
interdependence influence behavior similarly, they may
influence different aspects of group functioning. Three
particular aspects of group functioning may be differentially
affected by tasks and outcomes: cooperation among group
members, individuals' effort levels, and group norms about
cooperation and effort.
Cooperation. Studies of task interdependence have
demonstrated that higher levels of task interdependence
result in more communication, helping, and information
sharing than do individualistic tasks (Crawford and Haaland,
1972; Johnson, 1973). Studies of outcome interdependence
also have reported that group rewards increase cooperative
behavior (Miller and Hamblin, 1963; Rosenbaum et al., 1980;
Shea and Guzzo, 1989). Thus both forms of interdependence
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appear to influence the level of cooperative social interaction
in groups.
Effort. The level of individual members' effort has important

effects on the quality of group performance (Steiner, 1972).
Varying levels of outcome interdependence may differentially
influence motivation and thus affect task effort, as may be
the case with group versus individual rewards. People tend
to perceive the link between individual behavior and
outcomes to be more direct for individual rewards than for
group rewards, especially when the group is large. Because
people perceive group rewards to be less directly
influenceable by individual behavior than individual rewards,
group rewards may be slightly less potent motivators than
rewards for individual performance (Hayes, 1976). Thus,
other things being equal, highly interdependent outcomes
should result in lower motivation levels than independent
ones.
Norms. Task and outcome interdependence also may

influence different group norms, the informal rules that
groups use to regulate members' behavior. Norms provide
group members with a means for directing and anticipating
the behavior of others and for making quick and appropriate
responses (Kiesler and Kiesler, 1970; Shaw, 1981). Norms
emerge in groups to control the behaviors that are important
for the group's survival, its task success, and smooth
interpersonal relationships (Feldman, 1984). Two kinds of
behavior that may become codified as norms in
interdependent groups are the amount of cooperation
displayed by members and the level of effort exerted in the
task. Greater task interdependence makes mutual helping,
information sharing, and other cooperative behaviors more
important to completing the task, and it enhances members'
expectations of help and information sharing from others
(Thomas, 1957; Spilerman, 1971). Thus high task
interdependence may result in strong norms promoting
cooperation.
Effort norms, by contrast, may be more influenced by

outcome than by task interdependence. High outcome
interdependence makes high member effort more important
because all members' efforts contribute to an individual
member's chances to receive valued rewards (Deutsch,
1949). Group-based outcomes, then, may enhance group
norms that regulate members' efforts. Berkowitz's (1957)
study of the effects of different levels of outcome
interdependence on group member effort levels on an
interdependent task suggest this may be true. He found that
high outcome interdependence promoted the best
performance and concluded that group rewards enhanced
collective expectations (norms) about member effort and
heightened individual motivation, but his conclusions about
group effort norms and motivation were inferred from
performance scores, rather than being drawn from direct
measures of group norms. I examine this issue more directly
with the following research question:
Research Question 3: Do task and outcome interdependence
differentially influence interpersonal interactions, motivation, and
normative control of cooperation and effort?
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Interdependence
Hybrid Forms of Interdependence
Research on interdependence in groups has focused on

comparisons of the two extreme models: individual and group
work. The third model, the hybrid design, has received
relatively little attention in the literature, despite the
prevalence of jobs that require both collective action and
independent action. Johnson and Johnson (1989), who
examined the effectiveness of mixed models of
interdependence, found that they resulted in poorer
performance and lower-quality group processes than pure
cooperative (interdependent) forms. The mixtures they
studied, however, Combined different task structures
(cooperative or competitive) with contrasting forms of
outcome interdependence; there were no cases in which
both the task itself and the work outcomes combined
elements of both interdependence and independence.
More attention has been given to hybrid rewards than to

hybrid tasks (e.g., Lawler, 1990). Rosenbaum and his
colleagues (1980) offered individual, group, or mixed
rewards to subjects working on interdependent and
independent tasks. Groups performed relatively poorly when
hybrid or individual rewards, rather than group rewards, were
given for performance on the highly interdependent task.
The authors concluded that even a small proportion of
individual rewards undermines performance of a group task.
Even less is known about what happens when hybrid

outcomes are combined with a hybrid task. The few studies
that have simultaneously manipulated task and outcome
interdependence generally suggest that performance is best
when both tasks and rewards cue the same level of
interdependence (Miller and Hamblin, 1963; Wageman and
Baker, 1994). To examine the impact of hybrid tasks and
outcomes on group effectiveness, then, it may be most
useful to contrast the effectiveness of the three congruent
designs: group tasks and group outcomes, individual tasks
and individual outcomes, and hybrid tasks and hybrid
outcomes.
There are at least three distinct potential effects for hybrid

forms. First, hybrid tasks and outcomes may additively
combine the basic effects of group and individual designs.
Logically, for example, one might expect the level of
cooperation in a hybrid task to be greater than that for
individual tasks. At the same time, because they cue
significant independent action as part of the work, hybrids
should result in less cooperation than group tasks. The same
logic might be applied to hybrid rewards. The individual part
of a hybrid reward may result in clear relationships between
individual action and rewards (and thus strong motivation); at
the same time, the collective part of the reward signals
strong dependence on the actions of others for outcomes,
thus obscuring the relationship between individual actions
and rewards (and undermining motivation) (Vroom, 1964).
Hybrid forms of interdependence thus may show effects on
groups and their members that are intermediate between
pure group and pure individual forms.
Second, hybrid forms may capture the best of both designs
without their respective disadvantages, creating positive
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synergy. Hybrid tasks may afford the benefits of high
interdependence: Team members can learn from each other,
develop norms that promote high cooperation, and arrive at
more creative solutions to work problems than they might
have working independently (Maier, 1983). At the same
time, hybrid tasks may afford the benefits of independent
designs, such as giving each performer high personal control
over some portion of the work. Hybrid tasks also may be
productive and satisfying both for people who are
comfortable in groups and people with strong preferences to
work autonomously.
Finally, hybrid forms may result in negative synergy,

capturing the disadvantages of group and individual work
without their respective benefits. By allowing members to
concentrate energy on individual tasks, hybrid tasks may
prevent members from developing the collective processes
that facilitate group achievement. At the same time, by
making members partially dependent on each other's actions
for important outcomes, hybrid tasks and rewards may
undermine the sense of personal control that comes from
individual designs (Bird and Brame, 1978). Moreover,
because they demand both interdependence and
independence, hybrid tasks may be equally unpleasant for
people who prefer autonomous work and those who are
most productive in highly interdependent settings. I examine
this problem through the following research question:
Research Question 4: How do people perform under hybrid forms
of interdependence relative to pure group and individual forms?
Individual Differences
Some individual differences influence behavior across a wide

variety of situations, while others are activated only by
particular situations (Price, 1974). One such individual
difference that surely is activated by interdependence is the
degree to which members have strong preferences to work
independently. I call these autonomy preferences and use
the term to refer to the degree to which people dislike and
avoid settings in which they must depend on others.
Preference, in this sense, is conceptually distinct both from
personality traits and from transitory states. A prototypical
trait is a characteristic that is stable over time, resides within
the person, and may be observed across different situations,
while a prototypical state refers to a characteristic of a
person that is caused by the immediate situation and is of
short duration (Zuckerman, 1983). Many personal
characteristics belong to neither category (Chaplin, John, and
Goldberg, 1988), and preferences are among these: They
are more stable than mere transitory states but can be
influenced by experience. Because preferences are
constructed through multiple experiences of positive
outcomes, they are stable enough to condition how people
respond to a particular situation, but they can be altered over
time in response to counterpreference experience (Breer and
Locke, 1965).
The effects of task and outcome interdependence on work

satisfaction and on group processes and performance may
be moderated by the autonomy preferences of group
members. People with strong autonomy preferences are

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Interdependence
attracted to situations in which they can work alone and

control their own work pace (Birch and Veroff, 1966). Their
performance suffers when they cannot determine the timing
and sequence of their own tasks (Vroom, 1959). Thus
individual differences in preference for autonomy should
moderate the impact of high or low interdependence on
performers. Operating in highly interdependent groups, for
example, often requires high levels of interaction and close
coordination of members' actions in timing and sequence.
Members of such groups depend on one another to achieve
important outcomes. For people who have strong autonomy
preferences, therefore, group work can be constraining and
frustrating and may undermine their satisfaction with their
work. They may avoid working collaboratively and
concentrate on aspects of the task that allow them to work
alone, free of the constraints of others. When members
prefer autonomy, the level of interaction may be low,
resulting in weak norms regulating members' behavior and
low levels of learning from others.
Some people with strong autonomy preferences may have

accumulated relatively little experience with teamwork in
their work lives. If they were to experience a highly
interdependent group, their preferences might be altered.
Placed in a group with others who are comfortable with
highly interdependent work, people with strong autonomy
preferences might gradually come to tolerate and be
effective in such settings as well (Breer and Locke, 1965).
Over time, then, a highly task-interdependent group with
group-based rewards would produce more of a decrease in
autonomy preferences than any other combination of task
and outcome interdependence. Thus autonomy preferences
may moderate the effects of task interdependence on
motivation and satisfaction, and they may also be changed
as a result of experience with interdependence. I examine
the effects of preferences for autonomy with the following
research question:
Research Question 5: What are the joint effects of

interdependence and individual differences in preference for
autonomy on groups and their members?
Research Strategy
To address the research questions, I conducted a

longitudinal quasi-experimental field study with a selection of
existing groups that had individual, hybrid, and group tasks.
The organizational reward system was then altered such that
one third of the groups received rewards contingent on
group, individual, or both group and individual performance,
respectively (see Figure 1, below, for the research design).
In addition, I assessed individual differences in preference
for autonomy at work. Thus, of the three factors in the
design, one was a selection factor (task interdependence),
one was manipulated (outcome interdependence), and one
was a covariate (individual differences in preference for
autonomy). Surveys, observation, and archival sources
provided measures of the dependent variables, which
included group performance, group norms and interpersonal
processes, and individual satisfaction, motivation, and
learning.
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METHOD
Overview
Over 800 service technicians (152 groups) at Xerox

Corporation participated in the research. A pre-intervention
survey provided baseline measures of group and individual
performance, behaviors, and perceptions. First-line managers
were interviewed to assess task interdependence for the
participating groups. The outcome interdependence
intervention was then implemented, creating the three
different reward conditions. When the intervention had been
in place for four months, the survey was reissued, and
archival data gathered about post-intervention performance.
Field observations during the four months after the
intervention provided qualitative data that elaborated the
quantitative findings. Finally, individual differences were
reassessed eight months after the intervention.
Research Site
The research was conducted in the U.S. Customer Services

division of Xerox Corporation. The division employs more
than 15,000 men and women, of whom about 12,000 are
technicians who repair machines. The service organization is
divided geographically into nine areas, which are, in turn,
subdivided into districts. Each district is then broken into
approximately eight to ten subdistricts-some on the basis
of geographical distribution, others on the types of machines
serviced. At the head of each subdistrict is a field manager,
to whom 15-30 service technicians report. These
technicians are organized into work groups of between three
and nine individuals, forming, on average, between two and
five work groups per field manager.
Task. Service technicians repair complex machines, they

respond to customer calls about machine breakdowns, and,
to a lesser extent, initiate visits to customer sites for
preventive maintenance. Customer calls come in through a
central dispatching office that technicians call throughout the
day for repair calls that have come in. Technicians prioritize
calls based on the seriousness of the problem and the type
of machine or customer. Because replaced machine parts
are paid for by Xerox and not billed to customers, one
aspect of the technicians' task that is critical to the
organization is efficient use of parts. Technicians make their
own decisions about when to replace and when to repair
parts and which parts to replace preventively.
There is a great deal of variability in the amount and type of
maintenance different machines require, which is reflected
in the level of technicians' experience, training, and salary
and in the number of machines technicians are called upon
to service. Still, all technicians have a high level of control
over their work in many areas, including their work pace, the
order in which they handle customers, their strategies for
minimizing parts expenses, and their maintenance practices.
For all groups, excellence means providing quick, high-quality
service to customers while minimizing parts expenditures.
Outcomes. There are a number of important outcomes for

technicians: ongoing feedback about performance, merit
increases based on performance appraisals, a gainsharing

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Interdependence
program, and district-level monetary performance-contingent

rewards. Technicians receive periodic feedback about many
aspects of their performance. Typically, groups receive
monthly graphs of their response times, their call rate, their
parts expenditures, and reports of any machines performing
especially poorly. They also receive customer satisfaction
surveys. Some managers have begun providing group-level
performance goals and feedback, and some provide no
individual-level data at all to their groups. Informal feedback,
from machines and customers, accrues almost exclusively to
individuals. Thus, the pre-intervention level of
interdependence of goals and of performance feedback
about goal attainment varied to some extent but was largely
individual.
Yearly salary increases were based on a performance

appraisal consisting of an interim review in June and an
end-of-year rating that determined the technicians' merit
increase in salary for the subsequent year. Managers rated
technicians on their individual performance in a number of
areas, including professionalism with customers,
achievement of performance targets (e.g., "92.5 percent
customer satisfaction"), and teamwork. In some cases, field
managers were experimenting with group performance
appraisals; most, however, were based 50 percent or less
on group performance. Thus the level of interdependence for
merit increases was generally quite low, with some cases of
hybrid designs and a few cases of group designs.
Three further sources of rewards exist. First, all districts are

participants in a corporate gainsharing program that
distributes quarterly bonuses to technicians based on their
district's performance. In addition, a yearly President's Club
Award, usually consisting of a four-to-five-day vacation trip at
the company's expense, is awarded to a fixed percentage of
technicians in each district. President's Club Awards accrue
almost exclusively to individuals based on individual
performance. A few districts have set aside enough
individual allocations to give an award to an entire work
group. Other managers have redesigned the award to allow
all district members to participate in a weekend outing, thus
removing the performance contingency.
The final source of rewards was a fund available to field

managers, to be used at their discretion for rewards.
Discretionary funds allocated to field managers were most
typically used noncontingently on end-of-year events, such
as a picnic or Christmas party. More than 50 percent of
groups for which pre-intervention reward data were available
(N = 48) received some of these funds in the form of a
social event that was exclusively noncontingent on
performance.
Sampling Strategy
The sample selection process was designed to maximize the
commitment of participating district managers to the
research project, increasing the chances that the outcome
interdependence intervention would be thoroughly
implemented. Only managers who expressed strong interest
in participating and were willing to alter the ways rewards
were distributed in their districts were included. Twenty-four
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senior managers and their staffs in the customer services
organization were asked to nominate districts in which the
district manager would welcome new ideas about reward
strategies and therefore would be likely to participate. Of the
first eight district managers interviewed, five agreed to
participate, two in the group-reward condition and three in
the hybrid condition. None of them expressed interest in the
individual-reward condition. Consequently, two additional
district managers were invited explicitly to participate in the
individual condition, and both accepted. While this selection
strategy did not allow random assignment of districts to
reward conditions, it did substantially increase the chances
of producing large differences among reward conditions by
maximizing the managers' motivation to participate in the
intended changes. Further, this process did not mean that
managers would be using more of the same strategies
already in use; the outcome interdependence manipulation
produced substantial pre- and post-intervention differences in
reward system design, as detailed below.
Within any one district, all field managers participated in the

same outcome condition. Two districts participated in the
group outcome interdependence condition, two in the
individual condition, and three in the hybrid condition. The
seven districts were distributed throughout the eastern half
of the United States. Average tenure, percentage of women,
and percentage of minorities did not differ among outcome
conditions, although they did vary among districts. Mean
group size was 6.2 and did not vary by outcome condition. In
all, 60 groups (353 technicians) participated in the
group-outcome condition, 77 groups (398 technicians) in the
hybrid-outcome condition, and 55 groups (369 technicians) in
the individual-outcome condition.
Independence Variables
Task interdependence. Groups of technicians, who were

historically highly independent, had been created in 1984,
but the extent to which these so-called teams actually
operated as such varied widely. In many instances, the work
remained an individual task, with individual customer
responsibilities and no collective decision making or action.
Many groups had hybrid tasks that entailed some significant
individual responsibilities but also some significant group
decisions and actions. Finally, many groups had no individual
assignments but shared responsibility equally among
themselves for repair calls and collectively made decisions
about their work processes. Thus individual, hybrid, and
group tasks were all represented in the organization prior to
the start of the research. I categorized the level of task
interdependence of the participating groups in two stages: I
first assigned groups to categories based on a range of
descriptions of task features by managers, and then I did a
detailed inspection of data about the groups' tasks and
adjusted the categorizations, where necessary, to fit the
reality of the groups' work.
Initial categorization. I collected data about group task

interdependence by interviewing each first-line manager
about their groups' tasks. Managers described their own
instructions to groups on three dimensions: (1) whether
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groups managed their parts expenses collectively or

independently, (2) types of decisions made as a group, and
(3) frequency of required meetings. They also described
other task inputs such as (1) the extent to which group
members were trained to work on the same products; (2)
the complexity of products assigned to the group; (3)
groups' geographical dispersion (measured in maximum
minutes of travel across the group territory); (4) the
communications technology available to members (e.g.,
pagers or voice mail); and (5) how repair calls were queued
for the group-whether they were assigned to specific
individuals or to the group as a whole.
To create the provisional measure of task interdependence, I

coded each of these eight task dimensions as low, mixed, or
high interdependence and assigned values from 1 (individual)
to 3 (group). The exception was meeting frequency, which I
scored simply as the number of required meetings each
group held per month. I standardized each dimension across
groups to eliminate differences in variance due to scaling;
these standardized variables were summed to produce the
provisional estimate. Then, to determine which of these
eight variables most strongly differentiated among groups,
the unstandardized variables were entered into a
discriminant analysis on the overall interdependence score.
The five variables that emerged from the discriminant
analysis as the most powerful predictors of task
interdependence are described in detail below.1
Repair call queuing. In some groups, technicians took repair

calls in order of urgency, in any member's nominal territory.
Thus they were highly interdependent for the care of
customers in the collective territory. In other groups,
managers maintained rigid individual territories, and individual
members worked on their own machines only (an
independent strategy). There were few moderately
interdependent strategies, though in some groups members
shared collective responsibility for repair calls but maintained
individual responsibility for communication with customers to
determine the nature of the problem and give the customer
an estimate of the arrival time of a technician. In almost all
cases, technicians worked on the machines individually.
Thus interdependence in machine care varied mostly in
terms of how customer responsibilities were defined for the
groups and the extent to which group members were
assigned collective responsibility for responding to repair
calls from all the group's customers.
Parts expenses. Some managers promoted interdependence

by requiring the group to manage parts expenses for the
I group as a whole. Other managers provided only
The discriminant analysis produced two individual-level budgets and data about individual
canonical discriminant functions, only the
expenditures, thus treating parts usage as an individual task.
first with an eigenvalue above 1. The
second (nonsignificant) function
comprised geography, product Maintenance practices. Technicians were required to design
complexity, and communications and implement a standard set of maintenance practices to
technology; each correlated poorly (<.10)
be followed at every service call. Standard maintenance
with the first function. In addition,
geography and communications practices included decisions about how frequently to replace
technology proved to have relatively little certain parts; which parts of the machine to clean at each
variance. For these reasons, these three
variables were dropped from the task
visit; how to inform the customer about what was done to
interdependence measure. the machine; and how to test the machine's functioning
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before departing. Many groups developed these practices for
the group as a whole. In addition, some groups developed a
method for "auditing" each other to determine members'
compliance to the agreed-upon maintenance practices. Thus
they both designed and inspected their maintenance
practices as groups. In many groups in which technicians
were more independent, individuals determined their own
maintenance practices without consulting the group.
Cross-training. Some groups had members who worked on

many different products; others did not. To the extent that
members were trained to repair similar machines, they
shared a common set-of problems and a language for
discussing them, which promoted interdependence in the
work. By contrast, groups whose members were trained on
different products had no such commonality. The degree of
cross-training also significantly influenced the group's
queuing strategy: Groups whose members worked on
different product lines could not share collective
responsibility for the group's machines.
Meetings. The frequency of formal meetings of entire work

groups (as opposed to informal gatherings of two or three
technicians) varied from never to once a week. Some
managers promoted task interdependence by requiring
weekly or biweekly meetings at which members discussed
group decisions and areas of collective responsibility. Other
groups were not required to meet and either did not meet at
all or met only rarely.
I obtained a continuous measure of task interdependence by

taking the sum of the standardized scores on the five
variables that emerged from the discriminant analysis. To
produce the provisional measure of task interdependence-
individual, hybrid, and group levels-the distribution created
by summing the standardized scores on the five variables
was then trichotomized at natural break points.
Categorization adjustments. I examined groups in each

category of task interdependence qualitatively to assure that
the empirical measure truly reflected the conceptual
definitions of individual, hybrid, and group tasks. A detailed
inspection of the task descriptions of groups in each
category showed that only 6.5 percent of all groups had
been misclassified by the empirical process. All were groups
that had fallen into the hybrid category but were properly
associated with the individual task condition. The
misclassified groups had significant training and time
resources invested in off-line activities (meeting time and
cross-training), but their day-to-day work was designed to be
executed entirely independently.
A typical group in the hybrid condition (N = 51) had high

levels of interdependence around a set of tasks-for
example, they designed their maintenance practices as a
collective, met frequently, and managed parts expenses for
the group as a whole-and low interdependence around
others (e.g., members worked on widely differing products
and were responsible for machines and customers only in
their own individual territories). Thus members of hybrid
groups sometimes operated solo and sometimes in groups.
By contrast, members of a typical group in the individual

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Interdependence
task condition (N = 56) operated almost exclusively solo:

They cared for machines and customers in their own
individual territories, designed their maintenance practices
without group input, and managed parts expenses for their
machines alone, not as part of a collective. Members met
occasionally as a group, and in many groups were required
to do so, but their actual day-to-day work was not
accomplished with any reference to other group members.
Finally, members of a typical group in the group task
condition (N = 45) designed their maintenance practices
collectively and monitored members' compliance with those
practices; they responded to calls from any of the group's
customers, often actively consulting about which member
should handle a particular call; and they managed their parts
expenses as a group. Thus all the significant tasks of group
members in the group task condition were conducted
collectively.
Outcome interdependence manipulation. Unlike task

interdependence, the full range of levels of outcome
interdependence did not exist prior to the start of the
research. The purpose of the intervention was to establish
three distinct forms of outcome interdependence, thus
allowing the creation of the full 3 x 3 design. In the group
outcome condition, managers provided outcomes to
technicians contingent on group behavior and performance;
in the hybrid condition, managers provided outcomes to
technicians contingent on both group and individual behavior
and performance; in the individual condition, managers
provided outcomes to technicians contingent exclusively on
individual behavior and performance. To structure the
outcome interdependence intervention, I trained managers
to provide ongoing reinforcement, helped set up a public
recognition program, and worked with managers to make
performance appraisals and awards consistent with the
reward condition of each district.
First-line manager training in ongoing reward practices. In

each district, I conducted one-day training sessions in
"planned spontaneous" reward practices, developed
specifically for this study. In the course of this training, field
managers learned ways to use their already-existing
discretionary funds to provide ongoing reinforcement to
groups and/or individuals, contingent on specific behaviors.
The training provided managers with tools to plan their
opportunities to observe their technicians; it involved
exercises that helped them identify specific behavioral signs
that technicians were managing their own performance; and
it allowed the managers to practice providing intangible
rewards such as verbal feedback. Managers developed
monthly plans for delivering rewards to groups and/or their
members. Field managers in the individual condition were
instructed to dispense rewards to individual members,
contingent on individual behavior. In the group condition,
field managers were trained to reward the group as a whole
contingent on group behavior. Finally, field managers in the
hybrid condition were trained to provide rewards at times to
individuals and at times to entire groups. Field managers
recorded all rewards delivered each month on a special
research form and sent these records to me.

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Public recognition program. Participating district managers
and I jointly designed a public recognition program to
institute within the districts. District managers provided
public recognition of groups and/or individuals for
outstanding accomplishments and contributions to the
district as a whole. Managers in the group condition publicly
recognized entire groups; managers in the hybrid condition
used half their resources to recognize groups and half to
recognize individuals; managers in the individual condition
publicly recognized individuals. Examples of recognized
accomplishments and contributions included (1) a technician
volunteering to take oin a special project in the district, (2) a
work group offering one of its members to another group
with an unmanageably high call rate, and (3) an individual
taking over the responsibilities of an absent field manager.
District managers recognized such contributions in their
monthly newsletter, and these groups and individuals
received some tangible reward, such as a gift certificate
presented to them before their peers at a districtwide event.
Performance appraisals and major awards. Performance
data, performance appraisals, and cash achievement awards
not funded by the districts' discretionary recognition budget
were also made as consistent as possible with the reward
condition of each district. Because performance appraisals
are year-end events and did not occur during the course of
this study, they are unlikely to be a significant influence on
the overall experienced level of reward interdependence. In
the group and hybrid conditions, however, all technicians
were provided with group-level data about customer
satisfaction and machine reliability, and the planned
performance appraisal ratings were based in part (and in
some cases, entirely) on group performance.
In all cases, the intervention produced significant differences
in the reward practices of participating districts. Funds
previously distributed noncontingently were distributed
contingent on performance, in accord with the outcome
interdependence condition of the district; public recognition
programs were created where none existed before; and field
managers provided frequent rewards to groups and/or their
members that had not been provided before. Thus the
training manipulation did alter how managers distributed
rewards, and it created three distinct levels of outcome
interdependence-group, hybrid, and individual.
Individual preference for autonomy. Preference for autonomy

was assessed using a scale I developed (see Appendix A for
items). To distinguish between more general measures of
need for autonomy, I call this scale "preference for
autonomy at work." Technicians completed the
five-item-scale measure twice, once prior to the outcome
interdependence intervention and again when the
intervention had been in place for eight months.
Dependent Variables
Group effectiveness was assessed using (1) archival data
about group performance; (2) survey and archival measures
of the degree to which members interact in ways that
increase the chances of working more effectively over
time-including member learning, quality of interaction
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processes, and group norms; and (3) survey measures of

individual work motivation and satisfaction.
Sources of data. Archival data were collected for the four
months following the reward intervention. These monthly
assessments of technicians' performance were combined
across the four months to produce a single post-intervention
measure. In some cases, performance data were available
only at the individual level. When it was necessary to
compute group-level measures, individual data were
combined within work groups, either by averaging individual
data (e.g., average response time) or by combining raw
numbers to calculate proportions (e.g., percent of customers
satisfied).
Both pre- and post-intervention survey data were collected.

Surveys were distributed one month prior to the intervention
and again four months after the intervention began.
Response rates were as follows: 816 technicians (73
percent) completed the first survey; 573 (51 percent)
completed the second.2 The survey required about twenty
minutes and included measures of both group- and
individual-level variables. Group-level measures assessed
characteristics of the group as a whole, including norms and
the quality of group processes. Individual-level variables
described individual perceptions and affective reactions, such
as motivation and work satisfaction. To create group-level
measures, individuals' responses were averaged within work
groups. To ensure that these aggregated scores were
meaningful group-level measures, intraclass correlations
were computed for all group-level variables; all were
significant at p < .01 or better (ICCs ranged from .19 to .49).
I collected observational data over the course of four
months, beginning two months after the outcome
intervention was in place, and coded it before conducting
quantitative analyses. I selected 17 groups to observe to
explore the dynamics of the nine different combinations of
task and outcome interdependence. For each group
observed, I first attended a regularly scheduled work-group
meeting. Following each meeting, I spent the remainder of
the day travelling with a technician from that group to each
of his or her service calls. During this time, I took detailed
notes on such items as the technician's behavior with
customers, the repair and maintenance procedures followed
by the technician (for example, in order to determine the
extent to which the technician conformed to established
group procedures), and communications among group
members. I used these data to help elaborate the
quantitative findings.
In addition, I interviewed technicians about various aspects

of the group and its work. For example, I asked technicians
which work processes had been designed by group
consensus and which had been left to the individual
technician's discretion. I asked them to describe any
rewards they had received from the field manager during the
preceding month. These questions served, in conjunction
2 with more formal measures, as manipulation checks.
There were no significant differences in
response rate by task or outcome
Measures. Each dependent variable and its data source is
interdependence conditions. described below. Group-level measures include group
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performance, group norms, and the quality of member
interactions; individual-level variables include individuals'
experienced interdependence, their work satisfaction,
internal work motivation, and amount of learning from other
group members. Table 1 provides means and standard
deviations for all dependent variables and internal
consistency reliabilities (Cronbach's alpha) and discriminant
validities (average correlations within scale versus average
correlation with related scales) for all survey scales.
Group performance. Group performance was assessed using

five measures obtained from company archives. The first
was a measure of customer satisfaction with machine
reliability, derived from a customer survey distributed
periodically by the organization. Based on their survey
responses, customers were coded by the organization as
"satisfied" or "not satisfied." Customer satisfaction
performance was the percent of the group's customers
surveyed in the four months after the intervention coded by
the organization as "satisfied." This measure was included
only for groups that had received at least 10 surveys during
the four post-intervention months (67 percent).
A second measure of group performance was the cost of
parts used in maintaining machines. Xerox provides an
expected level of parts expenditures to groups/individuals
based on the type of machine and the historical volume of
usage on each machine. Parts expense is then measured as
expected expenditures divided by actual expenditures.
Three additional measures of performance concerned the
quality of the groups' repair practices: response time, repair
time, and machine reliability. Response time is the
percentage of calls taken by group members that falls within
specified time limits. It is a measure of how well technicians
are doing at getting to their customers quickly enough to
satisfy them. Repair time is assessed as the amount of
Table 1
Descriptive Statistics
Cronbach's r within r with

Variable Mean S.D. alpha scale related scales
Preference for autonomy 3.21 .90 .78 .38 .09
Performance measures
Customer satisfaction 90.74 14.56
Parts expenses 111.35 22.71
Response time 86.73 7.09
Repair time 102.61 56.43
Machine reliability 101.53 12.47
Cooperation norms .72 .41 .74 .36 .25

Effort norms .50 .44 .63 .31 .17
Quality of group processes 4.75 .86 .85 .46 .25
Time out of territory 40.45 11.88
Experienced task interdependence 5.10 .95 .76 .40 .22
Experienced outcome interdependence 4.60 1.07 .73 .35 .30
General work satisfaction 5.28 1.15 .65 .32 .10
Work motivation 5.55 .86 .79 .56 .34
Learning 5.53 .98 .76 .51 .37
Note: Scale statistics reported are for time 1; scale reliabilities and discriminant validities did not differ between time
1 and time 2.
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Interdependence
repair time a machine is expected to require (based on

historical data), divided by the actual number of minutes
spent repairing a machine. Repair time is a measure of
technicians' technical proficiency-how quickly they can fix
problems. Machine reliability is measured as the number of
repair calls expected on a machine (again, based on historical
data) divided by the actual number of repair calls. Machine
reliability assesses how well the machines are repaired and
maintained. Expected levels for response time, repair time,
and machine reliability all vary with the type of machine and
the volume of usage on each machine. By dividing expected
levels (derived from national averages for each machine
type) by actual levels, measures are produced that assess
performance as a proportion of national averages and are
reasonably comparable across groups that differ widely in
the types of products they maintain. To create a measure of
overall performance, the cells of the design were ranked,
from best to worst, on all five performance measures.
Group norms. Survey data assessed the strength and

direction of group norms about cooperation and effort.
Technicians were asked to describe, on a scale from -2
("group strongly discourages") to +2 ("group strongly
supports") their group's expectations about a number of
behaviors, including acts of cooperation (or refusal to
cooperate), and actions that represent high (and low) levels
of effort (see Appendix A for items). The mean of group
members' ratings served as a measure of norm direction
and strength (i.e., a mean of 1.5 represents stronger
pro-cooperation norms than a mean of .5), while the inverse
of the variance of group members' ratings served as a
measure of consensus among group members (consistent
with Jackson, 1965).
Quality of group process. A seven-item survey scale

assessed group members' perceptions that group members
were working together in ways that increased their
effectiveness over time (Allmendinger et al., 1992).
Technicians rated, on a scale ranging from 1 ("strongly
disagree") to 7 ("strongly agree") their agreement with
statements describing positive and negative group
processes, such as "Every time someone tries to straighten
out a work group member whose behavior is not acceptable,
things seem to get worse rather than better." A second
measure of group process was taken from company archival
data. Xerox keeps records of which technician takes each
repair call and to which the machine is officially assigned.
Using these data, I constructed a measure of the percentage
of calls taken within groups by technicians outside their own
official territories. This measure provides a behavioral
assessment of how much group members help each other
in the course of their work.
Experienced interdependence. Two survey scales assessed

respondents' experienced task and outcome
interdependence. A five-item survey scale asked members
to assess how much they needed other members'
resources and actions to complete their task (e.g., "My work
is not done until everyone in the group has done his or her
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part."). A second five-item measure assessed technicians'
beliefs that contingent outcomes were influenced by the
actions and outcomes of their fellow group members (e.g.,
"My teammates' performance affects my rewards."). While
correlated, these two scales have good internal consistency
reliabilities; moreover, the average intercorrelation among
items within scale is substantially higher than with items
from the other scale (see Table 1). Consequently, they were
retained as two distinct measures of experienced
interdependence.
Individual satisfaction, motivation, and learning. Three survey

items assessed technicians' overall satisfaction with their
work (e.g., "Generally speaking, I am very satisfied with this
job."), and three measured the extent of their internal
motivation to perform well at their work (e.g., "My opinion
of myself goes up when I do this job well.") (Allmendinger
et al., 1992). A final three-item scale asked group members
to assess the extent to which they learned skills and
strategies from each other at work (e.g., "I learn things in
my group that make me a better technician.").
Data Analysis
Analyses were conducted using the SAS General Linear

Models (GLM) program. Because individual subjects are
nested within groups, groups within field managers, and
field managers within districts, hierarchical models were
used, and these differed slightly for group-level and
individual-level analyses. For group-level variables, GLMs
were run entering task condition, outcome condition, the
interaction of task and outcome, district, and field manager,
in that order. The error term used for testing higher-level
effects was thus the mean squared error for field manager
within district. For individual-level dependent variables, GLMs
(that did not include individuals' preference for autonomy)
were run entering task condition, outcome condition, the
interaction of task and outcome, district, field manager, and
group, in that order. The error term used for testing
higher-level effects was thus the mean squared error for
group within field manager. For analyses that included
preference for autonomy, autonomy was entered as a
continuous measure, and group was dropped from the
design to avoid overspecification of the model.
RESULTS
Appendix B presents the omnibus 3 x 3 analyses of

variance for all major dependent variables, showing Fs and
significance levels for the main effects of task
interdependence condition and outcome interdependence
condition, and their interaction.
Manipulation Checks
The following two sets of analyses assess whether (1) the

measure of task interdependence derived from managers'
descriptions predicted real differences in members' task
behavior, and (2) the experimental manipulation of outcomes
resulted in the intended levels of outcome interdependence.
Task interdependence. Highly interdependent groups were

those described as having (among other features) a
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Interdependence
call-queuing process that placed responsibility for all

machines on all group members, whereas less
interdependent groups had more assignment of individual
responsibility for machines in specified territories.
Consequently, I expected to find that technicians in highly
task-interdependent groups took a significantly greater
number of repair calls in other members' nominal territories
than did members of less interdependent groups.
A GLM was performed on the mean percentage of calls
taken outside the technicians' own territories, averaged
across the four months before the task interdependence
data were collected. Members of groups in the group task
condition spent significantly more time out of their territory
(mean = 46.33) than did technicians in the hybrid condition
(mean = 39.71), who in turn spent significantly more time
out of their territory than did technicians in the individual
task condition (mean = 38.05), [F(2,44) = 3.26, p < .05].
Thus, the measure of task interdependence derived from
managers' descriptions does predict an important behavioral
difference among groups.
Outcome interdependence. I used the monthly worksheets
provided by field managers to count the number, type, and
target (i.e., group or individual) of rewards they administered
and thus assessed the percentage of the total number of
rewards that each field manager gave to groups versus
individuals. Managers who participated in the group outcome
condition delivered a mean of 99 percent of rewards
contingent on group behavior. Those who participated in the
hybrid condition delivered a mean of 48 percent to groups,
and those who participated in the individual condition
delivered a mean of 8 percent to groups and 92 percent to
individuals.
These results show that the manipulation had its intended
effects. Nevertheless, it is useful to know something about
managers' behavior prior to the intervention to ensure that
any effects of outcome interdependence were due to the
intervention rather than to initial differences among manager
preferences. Interviews with 26 of the 57 participating
managers prior to the intervention revealed that slightly
more than 37 percent were spending their reward funds
noncontingently (e.g., technicians were given gifts or invited
to parties regardless of their performance or behavior).
Another 40 percent were contingently rewarding individual
behavior exclusively; fewer than 23 percent were rewarding
group behavior exclusively; and none of the managers was
using a hybrid reward strategy. For field managers'
discretionary rewards, the correlation between the
pre-intervention and post-intervention proportion of rewards
given to groups is .29. Clearly, the manipulation did alter
how managers distributed rewards.
Still, although managers in the hybrid condition did divide
their rewards roughly evenly between groups and
individuals, they may have done so by providing only
group-level rewards to some of their groups and only
individual-level rewards to others. Because this research
explores the effects of the level of outcome
interdependence experienced by groups, it is important to
know how rewards were distributed within groups.
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The worksheets again provided the relevant data. For each
group, I divided the total number of rewards delivered to the
group as a whole by the total number of rewards delivered
to members. Within the hybrid training condition, the
proportion of group rewards received by each group varied
from 0 percent to 100 percent. While variance in the group
and individual outcome conditions was lower, a few groups
in the individual condition received some group-level
rewards, and a few groups in the group condition received
some individual-level rewards. This means that some groups
reporting to managers in each training condition did not
experience the intended level of outcome interdependence.
Therefore, for the main analyses, I reassigned groups to
outcome conditions based on the rewards groups actually
received. Those groups who received 90 percent or more of
their rewards as groups (N = 61) were included in the group
condition, regardless of the training intervention in the
district. Groups that received fewer than 20 percent of their
rewards as groups were assigned to the individual condition
(N = 50); and groups that received between 30 percent and
85 percent of their rewards for group behavior were
assigned to the hybrid condition (N = 41). Only 12 percent
of groups were reassigned. For reassigned outcome
conditions, the mean percent of rewards delivered for group
behavior was 99.9 percent, 49.3 percent, and 0.4 percent
for group, hybrid, and individual conditions, respectively.
Having established that the task conditions reflect real
differences in task interdependence and that the reward
manipulation resulted in real changes in outcome
interdependence, I now turn to the research questions I
examined through the analyses.
Research Question 1: Effects of Tasks and Outcomes on

Experienced Interdependence
Effects of tasks on experienced interdependence. To

assess the influence of task interdependence on
experienced interdependence at time 2, two GLMs were
performed predicting the two dependent variables from task
condition, outcome condition, and their interaction. The top
panel of Table 2 shows the results. The linear trend for the
effect of task condition on experienced task
interdependence was significant; members of groups with
highly interdependent tasks reported significantly greater
experienced task interdependence than did those in the
hybrid task condition; members of hybrid task groups, in
turn, reported significantly greater experienced task
interdependence than did those in the individual task
condition. Task condition also significantly influenced
outcome interdependence experienced by groups,
independent of the actual outcome condition: Groups with
higher task interdependence experienced their outcomes as
more interdependent than did those whose tasks required
less interdependence.
Effects of outcomes on experienced interdependence.

Because outcome interdependence was experimentally
manipulated, a more controlled test of its effects on
experienced interdependence was possible by assessing its
effects on changes in interdependence between time 1,
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Interdependence
prior to the start of the study, and time 2, four months after
the outcome intervention was implemented. The bottom
panel of Table 2 shows mean changes in experienced task
and outcome interdependence by outcome and task
conditions. Individual-reward groups showed no significant
change in experienced outcome interdependence; groups
that received group-level rewards showed a significantly
greater increase in experienced outcome interdependence
than those in the individual condition. Hybrid groups fell
between individual and group conditions. Thus the outcome
intervention did alter technicians' experienced outcome
interdependence. By contrast, Table 2 shows that the
manipulation of outcome interdependence did not alter
technicians' experienced task interdependence. Thus the
influences of task and outcome interdependence on
experiences of interdependence are not symmetric. Task
characteristics influenced experienced interdependence both
in the work and in important reward outcomes, while
outcome interdependence affected experienced outcome
interdependence but had no influence on how technicians
experienced their work.
Research Question 2: Effects of Total Interdependence on

Group Effectiveness
Total interdependence was calculated by summing task and

outcome interdependence (where individual = low, hybrid
= moderate, group = high) for each cell. Figure 1 shows
the total interdependence scores. Cells with the same total
interdependence score were combined. Table 3 presents the
effects of total interdependence at time 2 on group
Table 2
Effects of Task and Outcome Conditions on Experienced

Interdependence at Time 2*
Experienced Experienced
task outcome
interdependence interdependence
Task
condition Mean S.D. Mean S.D.
Individual 4.73a .80 4.61 b 1.07

Hybrid 4.93a .97 4.76c .90
Group 5.31a 1.04 5.24bc .92
F(2,44) = 14.85, p < .05 F(2,44) = 26.34, p < .05
Change in Change in
experienced experienced
outcome task
Outcome interdependencet interdependence

condition Mean S.D. Mean S.D.
Individual .15d .76 - .07 .78

Hybrid .30 1.04 .07 .80
Group .45 1.07 .05 .98
F(2,44) = 3.97, p < .05 F(2,44) = 1.01, n.s.
* Means within columns that share a superscript differ significa

to Tukey's HSD.
t Change in experienced outcome interdependence differs significantly from 0
for the group and hybrid outcome conditions. For the individual outcome
condition, it does not.
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Figure 1. Research design.
TASK INTERDEPENDENCE
Individual Hybrid Group
A B C
Individual
Z Very Low Low Moderate

z
L AJI D E F
CLA
0 0
cc a:Hybrid
ILU
Low Moderate High
G H
Group
Moderate High Very High
Note: Total interdependence scores are noted in the bottom left of each cell.
performance, processes, and norms, and individual

satisfaction, motivation, and learning. Total interdependence
does significantly influence all these aspects of group
functioning, but in different ways for different variables. For
some variables, the effect is best described as "more is
better." As Table 3 shows, cooperation norms [F(4,42) =
2.64, p < .051, self-reported quality of interpersonal
processes [F(4,42) = 2.80, p < .051, the degree to which
members learn from each other [F(4,42) = 3.38, p < .05]
and work satisfaction [F(4,561) = 1.43, p < .05] all increase
with total interdependence. For two variables, the
relationship is "less is better." Stronger effort norms [F(4,42)
= 3.42, p < .05] and greater work motivation [F(1,557) =
1.55, p < .05] are associated with very low degrees of
interdependence. Finally, two effects showed curvilinear
relationships. First, although the differences among mean
performance ranks are not significant, performance tends to
be better at very high and very low levels of
interdependence. Second, the level of cross-territory helping
is significantly greater when interdependence is either very
low or very high [F(4,42) = 3.97, p < .051. In no case was
any aspect of group effectiveness best at moderate rather
than extreme levels of interdependence.
Research Question 3: Differential Effects of Task and

Outcome Interdependence
The omnibus analyses of variance (reported in Appendix B)

show that task and outcome interdependence significantly
influence different aspects of group functioning. Table 4
presents the means of the effects for task and outcome
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Interdependence
Table 3
Effects of Total Interdependence on Group Effectiveness
Interdependence
Very low Low Moderate High Very high

Effects (S.D.) (S.D.) (S.D.) (S.D.) (S.D.)
"More is better"
Cooperation norms* .62 (.39) .70 (.45) .65 (.53) .91 (.36) .98 (.39)
Quality of group process* 4.67 (1.12) 4.64 (.97) 4.56 (.83) 4.93 (.94) 5.37 (.77)
Learning* 5.37 (1.04) 5.32 (.92) 5.36 (1.00) 5.48 (.80) 5.81 (.72)
General satisfaction 5.22 (1.11) 5.22 (1.10) 5.25 (1.24) 5.42 (1.03) 5.32 (1.18)
"Less is better"
Effort norms .91 (.49) .46 (.38) .56 (.43) .63 (.37) .69 (.40)
Work motivation 5.59 (.92) 5.54 (.74) 5.54 (.82) 5.42 (.84) 5.45 (.99)
Curvilinear
Performance rankt 2.4 3.8 3.3 3.3 2.2
Time out of territoryt 42.7 (13.0) 37.7 (14.7) 40.1 (18.4) 40.3 (12.2) 49.9 (12.8)
* Linear trend is significant at p < .05.

t 1 = high rank, 5 = low rank.
$ Very low and very high interdependence differ significantly from all others.
conditions on each dependent measure at Time 2. The

differential effects of task and outcome interdependence
help account for the patterns observed in the analyses of
total interdependence.3 The observed more-is-better effects
of total interdependence are due solely to main effects of
task interdependence (with the exception of effects on
learning, discussed below). The top panel of Table 4 shows
that groups with group tasks have stronger norms promoting
cooperation, higher quality group processes, and greater
member satisfaction with work than do groups with hybrid
or individual tasks. Main effects of outcome
interdependence for these variables were not significant.
The observed less-is-better effects are due, by contrast, to
main effects of outcome interdependence. The middle panel
of Table 4 shows that groups that receive individual
outcomes show significantly stronger norms promoting
effort and significantly higher work motivation than do
groups that receive either hybrid or group outcomes. In each
case, the main effect of task was nonsignificant.
The observed curvilinear relationship between total

interdependence and out-of-territory helping comes from two
significant effects (see Table 4, bottom panel): (1) an effect
of task, already described above, such that group tasks
result in significantly greater cross-territory helping than do
hybrid or individual tasks and (2) an effect of outcome
interdependence, such that relatively low levels of helping
occur under hybrid outcomes. The simple effects of task and
outcome conditions on learning parallel the findings for
out-of-territory helping (Table 4, bottom panel): High task
interdependence increases learning, and hybrid outcomes
undermine learning.
Finally, the bottom panel of Table 4 shows the main effects

3 of task and outcome interdependence on overall
There were no significant effects on performance. GLMs performed on the five separate
normative consensus-the variance
among members' ratings of norm
performance measures indicated that both task and outcome
direction and strength. interdependence significantly influence some measures of
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Table 4
Means and Differential Effects of Task and Outcome Interdependence*
Task Condition Outcome Condition
Effects Individual Hybrid Group F Individual Hybrid Group F
"More is better"
Cooperation norms .66a .76 1.01 a 4.26 .88 .78 .75 2.64
(.47) (.45) (.39) (p < .05) (.40) (.54) (.43) (p = .08)
Quality of group process 4.45a 475b 5.24ab 7.32 4.94 4.70 4.80 1.50
(1.06) (,81) (.76) (p < .05) (.93) (.99) (.96) (n.s.)
General satisfaction 5.12a 5.27 5.50a 3.96 5.42 5.22 5.26 1.95
(1.20) (1.11) (1.10) (p < .05) (1.06) (1.20) (1.20) (n.s.)
"Less is better"
Effort norms .56 .64 .62 .02 .69cd .55C .59d 2.21
(.55) (.34) (.36) (n.s.) (.25) (.37) (.46) (p < .05)
Internal work motivation 5.46 5.58 5.66 .98 5.66c 5.58 5.46c 3.74
(.84) (.83) (.90) (n.s.) (.82) (.84) (.90) (p < .05)
Curvilinear
Proportion of calls out 38.05a 39.71b 4633ab 7.97 42.19c 38.29cd 43.60d 2.53
of territory (16.97) (13.38) (12.85) (p < .05) (14.05) (12.03) (17.76) (p = .05)
Learning 5.20a 5.44b 5.65ab 14.45 5.51 c 5,30cd 5.49d 4.02
(1.04) (.91) (.75) (p < .05) (.88) (1.08) (.86) (p < .05)
Mean performance rankt 4.8 5.4 4.6 6.12 4.5 6.7 3.6 9.04
(p < .05) (p < .05)
* Means within rows that share a superscr

t Note: 1 = high rank, 9 = low rank; all nine
in the F column for performance is a Krus
performance, and a Kruskal-Wallis nonparametric analysis of

variance on the mean ranks confirms this finding for the
measure of overall performance (see Appendix B). An
inspection of the mean ranks shows that the specific
effects detected are that both hybrid tasks and hybrid
outcomes are associated with poor group performance
relative to individual and group tasks and outcomes. Thus
the trend observed in the relationship between total
interdependence and performance becomes clearer: Groups
with moderate levels of total interdependence have hybrid
tasks, hybrid outcomes, or both, and these are performing
much worse than those with either group or individual
designs.
Research Question 4: Effects of Hybrid Designs
As seen in Table 4, both hybrid tasks and outcomes lead to

poorer performance than do group and individual designs.
Moreover, hybrids also undermine other measures of group
effectiveness-such as helping behavior and
learning-relative to group and individual designs. It remains
possible, nonetheless, that congruence between the levels
of interdependence of tasks and outcomes may be critical
for group performance (e.g., Wageman and Baker, 1994).
Consequently, it may be that when hybrid tasks are
combined with hybrid outcomes, groups perform better than
when hybrid tasks and outcomes are combined with group
or individual outcomes and tasks.
Table 5 shows the performance ranks for all nine cells of the
design. A Mann-Whitney U test was performed to test the
hypothesis that the mean performance of the congruent
cells (cells A, E, and I in Figure 1) was significantly better
than that of the moderately and extremely incongruent cells.
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Table 5
Mean Rank on Performance Measures by Task and Outcome Condition
Task Interdependence
Outcome
Interdependence Individual Hybrid Group Total
Individual 3.6 5.6 4.3 4.5

Hybrid 7.6 6.6 5.9 6.7
Group 3.2 3.9 3.7 3.6
Total 4.8 5.4 4.6
Note: 1 = high rank, 9 = low rank.
This test was nonsignificant [U(3,6) = 7, p = .36],

consistent with the lack of significant interaction effects
found in the analysis reported in Appendix B. An inspection
of the mean ranks for all nine cells shows once again that
both hybrid tasks and hybrid outcomes, including the
congruent hybrid, produce poor performance relative to
group and individual tasks and outcomes. A Mann-Whitney U
test of ranks confirms this observation when the four corner
cells (cells A, C, G, and I in Figure 1) are compared with all
cells that contain either hybrid outcomes or a hybrid task.
This test is significant, U(4,5) = 1, p = .016, indicating that
pure group or individual outcomes, and pure group or
individual tasks in any combination lead to better
performance than all hybrid task and outcome designs.
Research Question 5: Individual Differences
To test the degree to which relationships between

interdependence and group effectiveness are moderated by
individual differences, preference for autonomy was entered
both separately and in interaction with task and outcome
interdependence. For group-level analyses, group
composition around preference for autonomy was entered
as the proportion of group members scoring in the top
quintile of the preference for autonomy scale.
Only one analysis of the moderating effects of autonomy

preferences showed a significant interaction with
interdependence. The analysis of work motivation indicated
that autonomy preferences interact significantly with
outcome interdependence (P = -.06, p < .05), such that
the decrement in work motivation due to group rewards is
even greater for those individuals who strongly prefer
autonomy. Beyond this one finding, there was no evidence
that individual differences in preference for autonomy
moderate the effects of interdependence on group
effectiveness [median F(2,38) = .45, n.s.]. This lack of
significant moderating effects is not due to problems with
the preference for autonomy measure per se, because there
were significant main effects of autonomy such that people
with high preferences for autonomy helped each other less
and learned less from others.
The final analysis examined the effects of task and outcome

interdependence on individuals' preferences. Because task
interdependence was a selection variable, any changes in
autonomy preferences from experience with group tasks
should already be observable in the pre-intervention
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preference for autonomy scores. The upper panel of Table 6
displays the preference for autonomy means by task
condition at time 1. This table shows that those individuals
who worked on group tasks show significantly lower
preferences for autonomy than individuals who worked on
hybrid tasks, who in turn show lower preferences than those
who worked on individual tasks.
To test the influence of outcome interdependence on

autonomy preferences, mean change in preference for
autonomy (post-intervention score minus pre-intervention
score) was broken down by outcome interdependence
condition. Autonomy preferences changed with the level of
interdependence in group outcomes. The lower panel of
Table 6 indicates that technicians who experienced individual
outcomes showed significantly greater increases in their
preference for autonomy than did technicians who
experienced hybrid outcomes. Technicians in groups that
received group outcomes showed the least change. Thus
preference for autonomy is itself influenced by the level of
interdependence in the task and in reward outcomes.
Table 6
Effects of Interdependence on Individual Differences in Preference

for Autonomy*
Preference for
autonomy
Condition Mean S.D.
Task interdependence
Group 3.02a .58
Hybrid 3.18a .64
Individual 3 35a .74
F(2,575) = 3.14, p < .05
Change in preference
for autonomy
Outcome interdependence
Group .26b .66
Hybrid .46b .85
Individual .69b ,74
F(2,31 1) = 1.82, p < .05
* Means within columns that share a superscript differ significantly according

to Tukey's HSD.
DISCUSSION
The findings of this research illuminate three aspects of the

interrelations among task interdependence, outcome
interdependence, and the characteristics of individuals in
influencing group behavior and performance: (1) the relative
potency of the three sources of influence, (2) the
comparative dynamics of pure individual, pure group, and
hybrid designs, and (3) how the interrelationships among
tasks, rewards, and individuals evolve over time.
Potency of Task, Outcomes, and Preferences
Individual differences in autonomy preferences did not

moderate personal reactions to tasks and to rewards.
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Interdependence
Rather, individuals' preferences came into congruence over

time with the kinds of tasks and rewards they experienced.
While people who preferred autonomy in their work did tend
to help each other less and to learn less from their fellow
group members, their work performance depended almost
entirely on the design of the work they did and the kinds of
rewards they received. This research shows that individual
differences are malleable: As people gain experience with
interdependence, they grow more accepting of it, and even
come to prefer it.
The design of the work had strong effects on cooperation,

helping, and learning, regardless of reward system design.
By contrast, group rewards had no independent influence on
cooperative behavior. Moreover, the design of the group
task strongly influenced members' perceptions of their
outcome interdependence; outcomes, by contrast, had no
such effect on experiences of the task.
Reward outcomes appear to affect the character of

members' motivation rather than to influence group behavior
directly. Collective rewards helped motivate highly
interdependent groups to perform well, whereas rewards for
individual excellence energized members of independent
groups, demonstrating that outcomes either enhance or
undermine motivation for the kinds of work behaviors that
are elicited by the task. The pivot, then, is how the work is
structured. Work design shapes individuals' preferences,
their behavior, how they experience their rewards, and the
impact of those rewards on their performance. Not all work,
perhaps, permits as much choice about how tasks are
designed as was the case for the service technicians in this
study. But whenever cooperative behavior is critical to
excellent task performance, it is most essential to create real
task interdependence and then support the task design with
interdependent rewards.
Individual, Group, and Hybrid Designs
Findings showed that the work performed by the technicians

in this study can be done well in two different ways:
independently and interdependently. Service technicians with
an individual work design are principally responsible for
machines in their own territories, they work alone, and they
have long worked in this way. With no one to share the
responsibility, these technicians develop a strong sense of
personal responsibility for how well their machines run. They
know their machines and customers extremely well, and
when they arrive at customer sites, they often know from
memory what preventive maintenance practices are due on
each machine. The individual reward system reinforces the
cues they get from their tasks and increases their work
motivation and efforts to improve their own performance.
Technicians operating individually also reported a stronger
perceived link between their individual actions and positive
outcomes than did those working in group and hybrid
designs. Individual designs enhance norms that support high
levels of independent, rather than coordinated effort, as
shown in this exchange among members of a group in the
individual reward condition with a highly individualistic task

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design, who, at the behest of management, were trying to
work out some collective work strategies:
First technician: If I have one call in the queue and I'm out on a
call, I don't want help unless I ask for it. I'll back you up if you
want, but it shouldn't be automatic.
Second technician: OK, then should we go through all our group's
machines and just get retrofits installed on all of them [regardless
of whose machine it is]?
First technician: No, I think it's the responsibility of each tech rep
to take care of retrofits on his own machines during regular call
time. We shouldn't have to do extra visits for that.
The group continued the discussion for an hour and never

agreed on anything. But if one looks at this group's
performance, its machine repair record is extraordinary.
Members were more than 20 percent faster than average at
fixing machines, their machine reliability was well over
national standards, and 100 percent of this group's
customers who were surveyed described themselves as
satisfied with service.
Highly interdependent groups use the collective knowledge

and skills of their members to get their work done. They
exhibit high-quality social processes, extensive mutual
learning, and a sense of collective responsibility for
performance outcomes. The demands of the task and cues
from the reward system to operate as a collective were
potent enough to encourage strong norms supporting high
levels of cooperation and effort. Positive interpersonal
interactions developed most strongly in task-interdependent
groups, suggesting that such groups must develop
constructive ways of interacting to survive as teams. Group
outcomes may foster a different kind of motivation than that
which fuels the independent process. Members of
interdependent groups often talk about excellent
performance in collective terms. One technician reported
that when members of her group took calls on machines
that were assigned to other groups, they often felt they had
to clean up after others who had been sloppy in their care
practices. "Actually, we're pretty pleased with ourselves
about this. We were rated as 'role models' for our
preventive maintenance practices." Groups with high task
interdependence see their rewards as highly interdependent:
Rather than a strong sense of personal responsibility for how
satisfied an individual's own customers are, they feel
responsible to other group members for all the group's
customers: "There's no 'mine' and 'yours' for us. We go
where we're needed, and we take care of each other."
Because technicians generally repair machines alone, even

the highly interdependent task in this setting does not
represent an extreme form of high task interdependence,
like the task of surgical teams, which are reciprocally
interdependent and work together constantly (Steiner, 1972).
Nevertheless, by creating instructions and processes that
cued group work, it was still possible to make the task
interdependent enough to fuel a collective process.
By contrast, a look at the dynamics of hybrid groups shows

that both the independent and the interdependent processes
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Interdependence
were barely half-fueled in the hybrid-task/hybrid-outcome

condition. Hybrid tasks required groups to act sometimes as
groups, sometimes as individuals. While the individual part
came naturally, acting as a group was relatively new.
Individuals perceived the introduction of group-level
elements to their work and rewards as an add-on, not a
fundamental change in the work, and it undermined
attention to the basic aspects of the task. When technicians
in hybrid groups were required to spend time meeting as a
group, they interpreted it as a signal that "street-time" was
no longer as important as looking like a team. Rather than
using meetings as an opportunity to solve collective
problems, they treated them as an escape from their
individual responsibilities: "Our manager comes to all our
meetings now, because we used to spend two hours a
week in meetings just cracking jokes and telling stories."
Nor do hybrid groups experience the benefits of the

interdependent process. Their cooperation norms are weak,
and the quality of their interpersonal processes is relatively
low. They work alone, with loose and ineffective
coordination. Groups with hybrid tasks and outcomes rarely
cross territories to help other technicians, even though their
call-queuing strategies often require collective care of
machines. Because hybrid groups have only half the
opportunity to learn to become teams that highly
interdependent groups have, they have less time to develop
norms, work through process problems, and develop
collective strategies. As a result, group norms do not
support good performance. Reported one technician from a
hybrid group: "There's always a few customer accounts that
everybody hates going to. When we had individual
territories, those people got taken care of by their assigned
tech rep. Now, if I comply with the no territory strategy, I
get stuck with accounts the other reps are avoiding."
The problems that arise with hybrid groups may be due to

the mixed signals they receive from the task instructions
they are given. One technician in a hybrid group described
his manager as "very expense-conscious. He sends us voice
mail about month-to-date expense performance every week
for the whole group and broken down by individual. He gets
after [individual technicians] pretty quick if they're running
over budget." Yet in this group, managing parts expenses
was a group task. Hybrid outcomes only add to the
confusion. Members of hybrid groups see their rewards as
dependent neither on individual performance nor on group
performance. Hybrid outcomes do not lead to the strong
perceived behavior-outcome link that comes from individual
rewards for excellence; neither do they promote the
collective motivation engendered by group outcomes. As
one technician said, "We're on this 50/50 [reward] thing,
which I think just gets in my way. I can concentrate on
doing my job well, but in the end it doesn't do me much
good because others don't do theirs." Introducing some
group-level rewards undermined technicians' sense of
individual responsibility, without providing strong enough
collective motivation to fully develop the interdependent
process.

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Congruence and Change over Time
The results of this study also provide some insight into what
happens when the task and rewards are incongruent. People
in the individual-task/group-outcome and group-task/
individual-outcome conditions received different mixed
messages. Groups in both of these conditions experienced
tasks that were either consistently independent or
consistently interdependent, but the outcomes they
experienced were incongruent with the cues in their tasks.
Despite such incongruence, these groups performed
considerably better than did groups in the matched hybrid
condition. Groups with individual task and group outcomes
had generally poor group and individual processes, yet they
performed quite well, both in absolute terms and relative to
the other task and outcome conditions. What may have
helped these groups is a long history of operating
independently. What was new for them were the group-level
outcomes introduced by this research. The interaction
process problems and low work satisfaction they
experienced may have been due to the disruption of their
familiar independent work routines by the introduction of
interdependent outcomes. Although these difficulties were
not so severe that they destroyed members' capability to
get the work done well, these are groups in transition.
Observational data on several of these groups suggest that
collective outcomes from their managers had prompted
some of them to increase the interdependence in their work.
At one meeting I attended, the group of technicians
developed a plan for cross-training group members on all
products so that they could share collective responsibility for
all machines. If they succeed, the task could become highly
interdependent. By contrast, a second group in the same
condition could not alter its task because the manager
viewed cross-training as too expensive. Variance in the
degree to which groups can change the structure of their
tasks may be an important predictor of how the instability of
such groups resolves itself.
The performance of groups with group task and individual

outcomes presents a different puzzle. These groups exhibit
all the benefits of group tasks and individual outcomes in
their social processes and in members' satisfaction with the
work, yet their performance falls exactly in the middle of all
the task and outcome conditions. A similar pattern emerged
in a laboratory study of the joint effects of task and reward
interdependence, in which pairs of subjects working on an
interdependent editing task showed high levels of
cooperation regardless of outcome interdependence but
performed less well when outcome interdependence was
low (Wageman and Baker, 1994). Group tasks tend to
increase members' perceptions that their outcomes are
interdependent, even when they actually are not. Because
outcome interdependence in these groups was perceived
rather than real, it may have been insufficient to generate
the level of collective task motivation that was exhibited by
groups that had both interdependent tasks and
interdependent outcomes. By contrast to the above
mismatched groups, these groups had less opportunity to be
groups in transition; they had little latitude to change the
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Interdependence
rewards they get from management to more interdependent

outcomes. Moreover, given their comfortable social
relationships, they had little incentive to alter their tasks and
thus may continue to operate in this fashion without direct
intervention from outside the group.
Change over time. Findings from this research suggest that

the design of the work that people do, the types of rewards
they receive for good performance, and their personal
characteristics may come into congruence over time. Groups
experiencing incongruence change in ways that reduce it.
These changes happen dynamically: Tasks alter individuals'
experiences of their outcomes, outcome contingencies
prompt individuals to alter their tasks, and both tasks and
outcomes shape the work preferences of the individuals
themselves. But whether congruence leads to favorable
outcomes or unfavorable outcomes may depend a great deal
on the motivational properties of the tasks and the
characteristics of the people who perform them. In this
study, group members worked on a task that was
motivationally well designed, whether it was performed
independently or interdependently. Technicians had ample
opportunity to use their own initiative and judgment, they
faced challenges from a wide range of engaging technical
problems, and they received rich and detailed feedback on
their performance both from customers and from the
machines themselves. Moreover, the technicians were
generally competent, well trained, and self-starters. In this
study, both a strong independent process and a strong
interdependent process led to stable, long-term good
performance. Congruence of task and outcome
interdependence-with both being either independent or
interdependent-can lead to excellent performance and
well-satisfied individuals, as it did in this research. But that
may only be the case as long as the work itself is
motivationally well designed, the groups well composed, and
the individual members competent.
Groups with hybrid tasks and outcomes may be unstable

over time, in part because they are likely to suffer from
performance problems. Such hybrid groups have not been
much studied, but examples of problems with hybrid groups
are easy to find in organizations. Task forces often turn their
group tasks into hybrid tasks by meeting once and dividing
subtasks among individuals, and people proceed
independently, with little contact with other members of the
group. In the interests of saving time, they may not meet
again as a group until their individual contributions must be
combined. Such teams often run into disasters because
some members have not done their part to acceptable
standards or have taken disparate views of what the group
was trying to accomplish-problems that the group could
not deal with during its life, because after initial meetings it
never met or acted as a group.
Popular books on management extol the benefits to

organizations of using groups to perform work. But if
managers inadvertantly create hybrid groups by importing
group processes into a high-performing system with
individual tasks and rewards, they may find that what they
actually have brought in is a Trojan Horse.
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APPENDIX A: Survey Items on Preference for Autonomy and Norms

Preference for Autonomy at Work
I like my work best when I do it all myself.

I prefer tasks that allow me to work with others.*
I would rather work alone than with other people.
The less I have to rely on others at work, the happier I am.
I would rather work through a work problem myself than ask for advice.
Working in small groups is better than working alone.*
Group Norms
Cooperation
Going out of one's way to help a group member with a difficult customer.
Helping a group member without being asked.
Keeping in touch with other group members during the day.
Not taking calls outside one's own territory.*
Effort
Looking for ways to beat last month's response time performance.

Spending time in the parts drop/coffee shop when another group member
still has calls on the board.*
Taking repair calls after hours.
* Reverse-scored.
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APPENDIX B: Omnibus GLMs for All Dependent Variables
Dependent variable Factor x2 p
Performance ranking Task 6.12 p < .05

Outcome 9.04 p < .05
TxO interaction .74 n.s.
F P
Cooperation norms Task 4.26 p < .05

Outcome 2.64 p = .08
TxO interaction 1.53 n.s.
Effort norms Task .02 n.s.
Quality of group process Task 7.32 p < .05
Outcome 1.50 n.s.
Out-of-territory helping Task 7.97 p < .05
Outcome 2.53 p = .05
Learning Task 14.45 p < .05
General satisfaction Task 3.96 p < .05
Outcome 1.95 n.s.
TxO interaction .93 n.s.
Work motivation Task .98 n.s.
Note: Regression analyses on these dependent variables employing continu-

ous versions of task and outcome interdependence showed no significant
differences from these ANOVA findings, with one exception: The effect of
outcome interdependence on cooperation norms (p = .08 in the above anal-
ysis) becomes significant at p < .05.
180/ASQ, March 1995

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Interdependence and Group Effectiveness

Author(s): Ruth Wageman

Stable URL: http://www.jstor.com/stable/2393703

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Two contrasting models dominate the way both managers

There also exists a third model that has received relatively

145/Administrative Science Quarterly, 40 (1995): 145-180

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Interdependence among people in organizations can derive

Task interdependence. Some researchers (e.g., Johnson

There are several different perspectives on task

1 46/ASQ, March 1995

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work, but tasks can be designed to be performed at varying

Outcome interdependence. Outcome interdependence is

Goal achievement also may be seen as a significant

Interdependence and Performers' Work Experiences

147/ASQ, March 1995

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Research Question 1: To what extent do task and outcome

Interdependence and Group Effectiveness

It also is not known how much interdependence among

There are at least three distinct possible relationships

The more the better. Group effectiveness may increase

148/ASQ, March 1995

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Two problems arise in extrapolating from these findings to

Either too much or too little is detrimental. Alternatively,

No relationship. Finally, the quality of task performance,

149/ASQ, March 1995

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Effort. The level of individual members' effort has important

Norms. Task and outcome interdependence also may

Effort norms, by contrast, may be more influenced by

150/ASQ, March 1995

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Hybrid Forms of Interdependence

Research on interdependence in groups has focused on

More attention has been given to hybrid rewards than to

Even less is known about what happens when hybrid

There are at least three distinct potential effects for hybrid

151/IASQ, March 1995

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Finally, hybrid forms may result in negative synergy,

Some individual differences influence behavior across a wide

The effects of task and outcome interdependence on work

1 52/ASQ, March 1995

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attracted to situations in which they can work alone and

Some people with strong autonomy preferences may have

Research Question 5: What are the joint effects of

To address the research questions, I conducted a

153/ASQ, March 1995

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Over 800 service technicians (152 groups) at Xerox

The research was conducted in the U.S. Customer Services

Task. Service technicians repair complex machines, they

Outcomes. There are a number of important outcomes for

1 54/ASQ, March 1995

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program, and district-level monetary performance-contingent

Yearly salary increases were based on a performance