Handbook of Principles of Organizational Behavior - Soltanieh ...

USE PARTICIPATION TO SHARE INFORMATION AND DISTRIBUTE KNOWLEDGE 449
In sum, these studies and others like them indicate that participatory pro cesses can be
used to share or redistribute information, and that such redistribution can have positive
effects on performance when it provides otherwise uninformed individuals with ready
access to requisite knowledge and insights (Bartlem and Locke, 1981 ; Bass, Valenzi,
Farrow, and Solomon, 1975 ; Lowin, 1968 ; Tsai, 2001 ). Also highlighted are motivational
boundary conditions that influence the strength and utility of these effects. Supported is
the principle that participation will be beneficial when some individuals possess or can
discover pertinent information and use participatory processes to disseminate it to others
(Durham, Knight, and Locke, 1997 ).
MODERATORS: WHEN IS PARTICIPATION MOST ABLE TO INFORM?
In addition to confirming participation’s effectiveness in distributing information, Scully,
Kirkpatrick, and Locke ( 1995 ) also provided evidence of an important situational condition –
information impactedness, or the degree to which information is differentially distributed
among people – that appears able to determine whether participation will improve participant
cognition and performance. Participation’s effects appear stronger in instances where
information is impacted, that is, in the possession of some but not all individuals, since participatory
information exchange allows participants to break down information disparities
and increase the extent to which knowledge is shared and generally accessible. Conversely,
participation’s effects are weaker when information is already available to all, since additional
information sharing is unnecessary and consumes resources more profi tably devoted to
other activities (Latham and Yukl, 1975 ; Bass and Valenzi, 1974 ; Williams, 1982 ).
Beyond the effects of impactedness, speculation and the results of prior research suggest
several additional situational conditions that might also affect the workings of the cognitive
mechanism. One of these, interdependence, concerns the degree to which participants must
work together to perform and succeed. Under conditions of low interdependence, individuals,
groups, or organizations can perform successfully by working alone, while under conditions
of high interdependence, individuals, groups, or organizations must work together to
succeed. Differences in interdependence exert situational influence on participation’s effi cacy
by affecting the amount of information required to coordinate ongoing relationships. While
individuals performing independent tasks need not exchange much information to do their
work, individuals performing interdependent tasks must share a great deal of information,
including messages about what has been done, what must be done next, what adjustments
need to be made in response to changing conditions, and so forth. To the extent that this
information flow must be ongoing, that is, occurring as coordination problems emerge (as
opposed to taking place on an occasional basis or through a supervisory intermediary), participatory
“ mutual adjustment ” contributes to successful coordination and enhanced performance
(Durham et al., 1997 ; Lawler, 1982 ; Sashkin, 1976 ).
Another situational condition, complexity, also appears likely to exert contingency effects
on relationships between participation and performance. Complexity reflects the degree
to which a task, objective, or situation is understandable, with low complexity referring
to conditions that are simple and readily understood, and high complexity alluding to conditions
that are complicated or intricate and therefore difficult to interpret and comprehend.
Successful performance in the presence of lower complexity is possible without additional