Abstract
Though communal orientation impacts how people interact, and members’ interactions influence interdependent decision-making, communal orientation’s impact on interdependent decision-making has received little attention. We address this by applying interdependence theory to take a bottom-up approach across three studies. We find that individuals who are higher on communal orientation are less likely to use prohibitive voice. We also show that dyadic communal orientation harms interdependent decision performance by lowering the amount of prohibitive voice used. At the team level, we find that team communal orientation is negatively related to interdependent decision performance unless the team is also high on relationship orientation diversity, which has a positive effect on interdependent decision performance. Combined, these studies contribute to the communal orientation literature by extending it to an important context—interdependent decision-making—and helping it be more balanced by demonstrating communal orientation’s downside.
Keywords
People’s communal orientation—a preference for relationships in which each member is responsive to the other’s needs—has a substantial impact on how they interact (Bryan, Hammer, & Fisher, 2000; Clark & Mills, 1979; McCall, 1995). For instance, individuals higher on communal orientation tend to be more empathetic (Bryan et al., 2000) and caring (Righetti, Finkenauer, & Finkel, 2013). Relatedly, members’ interactions have a substantial impact on interdependent decision-making (Aramovich & Larson, 2013; Beck & Fisch, 2000; Sanner & Evans, 2019)—whereby members move “from a diverse set of individual positions or preferences to agreement on a consensus choice” (Kerr & Tindale, 2004, p. 632)—that is critical to a variety of professions (Guzzo & Dickson, 1996). Because communal orientation affects interactions and interactions affect interdependent decision-making, communal orientation likely impacts interdependent decision-making.
However, the nature of that relationship is theoretically unclear. On one hand, members higher on communal orientation tend to be more helpful (Clark, Mills, & Powell, 1986; Korsgaard, Meglino, Lester, & Jeong, 2010), which should benefit interdependent tasks such as decision-making. On the other hand, being communally orientated can increase willingness to sacrifice performance in order to spare feelings (Batson & Shaw, 1991), which could inhibit beneficial but interpersonally risky behaviors that are essential to interdependent decision-making.
We help resolve these contradictory interpretations by applying interdependence theory (Thibaut & Kelley, 1956, 1978) to investigate communal orientation’s impact on interdependent decision performance and the use of prohibitive voice. Consistent with interdependence theory’s bottom-up approach, we develop and test hypotheses at the individual, dyadic, and team levels across three studies. These studies make two primary contributions to the communal orientation literature. First, we advance understanding of communal orientation by extending it to an important context, interdependent decision-making. In so doing, we make a second contribution in finding that communal orientation lowers the use of prohibitive voice when it is needed and can actually diminish interdependent decision performance. By revealing a potential dark side to communal orientation, we help to create a more complete and balanced understanding of it.
Dyadic and Team Communal Orientation
According to interdependence theory, individuals express their priorities in interactions, which impacts the formation, maintenance, and aggregation of relationships (Thibaut & Kelley, 1956, 1978). Research on relationship orientations builds on this principle by showing how stable differences in the type of relationship a person prefers, ranging from exchange to communal relationships, manifest in behaviors (Clark, Oullette, Powell, & Milberg, 1987; Coriell & Cohen, 1995; Piff, Stancato, Martinez, Kraus, & Keltner, 2012). On one end of the spectrum, individuals with an exchange orientation prefer quid pro quo relationships. They enact their preference by being transactional and outcome-focused in their interactions, because they do not feel responsible for helping others nor do they expect others to help them.
On the other end of the spectrum, individuals with a communal orientation prefer relationships in which they “feel responsible for the other’s welfare” and expect the “other person to be responsive to their needs and to demonstrate concern for their welfare” (Clark et al., 1987, p. 94). Consistently, people higher on communal orientation tend to be more concerned for others (Clark et al., 1986) and empathetic (Bryan et al., 2000), which leads them to engage in more organizational citizenship behaviors (Korsgaard et al., 2010; Lester, Meglino, & Korsgaard, 2008) and have more enduring relationships (Lemay, Clark, & Feeney, 2007). Communal orientation has also been shown to impact dyadic outcomes in mixed-motive negotiations (Thompson & DeHarpport, 1998) and relationships (Clark, Lemay, Graham, Pataki, & Finkel, 2010; Gordon & Chen, 2013).
Apart from negotiation outcomes and relationship satisfaction, communal orientation’s effect on interdependent outcomes at the dyadic and team levels has received little scholarly attention (for a quantitative review, see Le, Impett, Lemay, Muise, & Tskhay, 2018). Moreover, the impact of members’ communal orientation on their behaviors and how they interpret others’ behaviors (Lemay et al., 2007) suggests that communal orientation may affect many interdependent outcomes in ways that warrant investigation.
We address this by focusing on interdependent decision-making for two reasons. First, it has measurable performance outcomes that allow us to quantify communal orientation’s collective consequences. Second, many important decisions are made interdependently.
More specifically, we focus on a common form of interdependent decision-making where members have some shared and unshared information. In this context, the way members’ productive and unproductive behaviors impact performance (conjuctive vs. compensatory; Barrick, Stewart, Neubert, & Mount, 1998) depends on whether members’ goals are shared. Interdependence theory suggests that shared goals encourage a member to try to cooperatively compensate for another member, because doing so is in that member’s own interest (van der Vegt, van de Vliert, & Oosterhof, 2003). For example, a member not sharing information is frequently compensated for by another member getting the information through asking questions in contexts where teams have shared goals (Sanner & Evans, 2019). In contrast, competitive or independent goals give members little reason to help each other out, creating a conjunctive aggregation of behaviors where one member’s unproductive behavior is likely to harm group outcomes.
Because decision-making teams usually have shared goals (Eisenhardt, 1989), we study the former type of interdependent decision-making where members have shared goals, thereby encouraging them to behave in ways that can compensate for one another. The compensatory nature of interdependent decision-making with shared goals implies that the average of members’ individual differences is the most appropriate conceptualization (Barrick et al., 1998). Consistently, we conceptualize dyadic communal orientation as the average of two members’ communal orientation, and team communal orientation as the average of three or more members’ communal orientation.
For the sake of clarity, it is also worth contrasting communal orientation with two similar yet different constructs, prosocial motivation and agreeableness, along the four dimensions frequently used in comparing drivers of action—“self-regulation (autonomous vs. introjected/identified), goal directedness (process vs. outcome), and temporal focus (present vs. future)” (Grant, 2008, p. 49)—as well as stability across time.
First, prosocial motivation, or being motivated to “expend effort out of concern for others” (Bolino & Grant, 2016, p. 1), is different from communal orientation on all four dimensions. In terms of self-regulation, communal orientation and prosocial motivation’s self-regulation are motivated by different reasons: communal orientation’s self-regulation comes from wanting a pleasant interaction, while prosocial motivation’s self-regulation is driven by an identified output from the task. Second, they have different goal directedness. Communal orientation is focused on the process of pleasant interactions, but prosocial motivation is about desiring an outcome that helps others. In relation to temporal focus, communal orientation is focused on having a pleasant interaction in the present. In contrast, prosocial motivation is about the future—prosocially motivated people “are concerned with achieving a meaningful outcome upon completing” the interaction (Grant, 2008, p. 49; see also Batson, 1998). Lastly, communal orientation is a stable trait, while prosocial motivation is an unstable state.
We argue that these differences are meaningful. In particular, we propose that because communal orientation is about pleasant interactions, it negatively relates to prohibitive voice. In contrast, previous research shows that prosocial motivation, being about helping people outside of the interaction, is positively related to voice (Grant & Mayer, 2009).
In terms of agreeableness, or the extent to which one wants to be liked and is willing to socially conform (Goldberg, 1990), the primary difference is around the source of self-regulation: agreeableness is about wanting to fit in, but communal orientation is about wanting to develop strong relationships. Being agreeable means conforming to predominant social cues, whether they be communal or exchange (Graziano, Habashi, Sheese, & Tobin, 2007). Likely because agreeableness’s manifestation is sensitive to interpersonal cues, team agreeableness’s effect on creativity is dependent on the presence of other motives (Bechtoldt, De Dreu, Nijstad, & Choi, 2010, Study 1) and the results of team agreeableness vary widely across studies (Neuman, Wagner, & Christiansen, 1999). Being communally oriented, however, means consistently prioritizing relationships over exogenous outcomes (Bryan et al., 2000; Clark & Mills, 1979; Le et al., 2018), which suggests that a communal orientation will more accurately predict behaviors and interdependent decision performance.
Promotive and Prohibitive Voice
Interdependence theory suggests that individual priorities are transformed into shared outcomes by being expressed in interactions (Thibaut & Kelley, 1956, 1978). In interdependent decision-making, voice—“an expression of a constructive challenge intended to improve” outcomes (van Dyne & Lepine, 1998, p. 109)—is a critical form of expression, as it helps turn members’ diverse perspectives and knowledge into high-quality decisions by checking the accuracy of the inputs that ultimately determine decision performance (Morrison, 2011). Importantly, voice can be expressed in two ways—promotive or prohibitive—which we propose are factored into decisions differently.
Promotive voice is defined as an “expression of new ideas or suggestions for improving the overall functioning” (Liang, Farh, & Farh, 2012, p. 74). Because promotive voice does not directly state a problem, we suggest that it is usually interpreted with less urgency; this reduces its ability to expediently update others’ beliefs and improve interdependent decision performance. Although proposing change has the potential to offend, promotive voice is directed toward positive future states (Kakkar, Tangirala, Srivastava, & Kamdar, 2016) and therefore is typically interpreted as good natured. As a consequence, it is less likely to offend than prohibitive voice (Liang et al., 2012).
Prohibitive voice, which is an “expression of concern about work practices, incidents, or employee behavior that are harmful” (Liang et al., 2012, p. 75), is more focused on errors. This focus on errors can make prohibitive voice seem more urgent, resulting in its being noticed and thereby improving the accuracy of others’ beliefs. However, because it also highlights someone else’s error, prohibitive voice can upset the other person and harm the relationship (Liang et al., 2012).
To illustrate the differences between promotive and prohibitive voice, consider a team of writers for Saturday Night Live, a sketch comedy TV show, deciding whether a skit parodying the band Aerosmith should be part of the next show (Mohr, 2004). One writer, using promotive voice, stated that other sketches might be funnier, but his input was largely ignored. Another writer, using prohibitive voice, said that parodies of Aerosmith’s lead singer had been overdone. The sketch did not make it into the next show, and in the process, the writer using prohibitive voice visibly upset the comedian, Adam Sandler, who had proposed the sketch.
Interdependence Theory
We apply interdependence theory to examine how communal orientation impacts the exchanges that influence interdependent decision performance. Interdependence theory proposes that interdependent outcomes are created through members communicating with one another. It further suggests that interacting is a motivated act driven by one of two motives. At one end of the spectrum, individuals who are exogenously motivated focus on the extrinsic reward they can extract from the interaction (Thibaut & Kelley, 1956, p. 31). At the other end, individuals who are endogenously motivated engage in interactions for the intrinsic pleasure they hope to get from them and future interactions (Thibaut & Kelley, 1956, p. 51).
Interdependence theory developed in part by investigating and demonstrating how different relationship orientations (ranging from communal to exchange) make people inclined toward one of two motivators. Individuals higher on communal orientation value interactions and relationships and are thus more inclined to be endogenously motivated. Exchange-oriented individuals tend to be more exogenously motivated and focused on the extrinsic result of the interaction (Clark & Mills, 1979; Thibaut & Kelley, 1978).
We further extend interdependence theory to suggest that the motives for promotive voice may be mixed, but that prohibitive voice is exogenously motivated. Compared with prohibitive voice, promotive voice is endogenously motivated, as it prioritizes a pleasant interaction over directly correcting another’s beliefs to improve interdependent decision performance. However, since (a) both forms of voice suggest change and (b) people are inclined toward the status quo (van Dyne & Lepine, 1998), not using voice at all is less likely to offend than using promotive voice (Liang et al., 2012). By alluding to the issue, promotive voice is also more likely to improve outcomes than not using voice at all. Promotive voice being both more likely to offend and to improve outcomes than not using voice at all suggests that promotive voice may, at times, also be exogenously motivated. Therefore, promotive voice is endogenously motivated in comparison with prohibitive voice, and exogenously motivated in comparison to not using any voice. As a result, the motives that predict promotive voice are mixed, and predictions about communal orientation’s impact on promotive voice are difficult to justify theoretically.
Prohibitive voice is, however, more clearly exogenously motivated. In interdependent decision-making, each person usually brings some unique information and perspectives that can improve decision performance as long as they are processed by other members to update their beliefs (Aramovich & Larson, 2013). Prohibitive voice is likely to be helpful in updating beliefs, as it explicitly points out the error; this suggests that it would also improve interdependent decision performance. However, it is also more likely to offend the other person than both promotive voice and not speaking up. Prohibitive voice’s ability to improve outcomes at the expense of a pleasant interaction implies that it is exogenously motivated. Because communally oriented people are less exogenously motivated, we suggest that they use less prohibitive voice. And because prohibitive voice should improve interdependent decision-making, we further suggest that dyadic and team communal orientation harm interdependent decision performance.
Consistent with interdependence theory’s bottom-up approach, we test these propositions at three levels of analysis. At the individual level, we propose that communal orientation is negatively related to prohibitive voice, even when prohibitive voice would benefit joint outcomes. Study 1 supports this idea by putting individuals in a situation in which the other person clearly has errors in judgment, and finding that more communal individuals are less likely to use prohibitive voice.
Study 2 then investigates dyads, because interdependence theory suggests that dyadic interactions drive dyadic and, ultimately, team outcomes (Thibaut & Kelley, 1956, 1978). Our findings show that higher dyadic communal orientation is associated with less use of prohibitive voice, and thereby lowers interdependent decision performance.
Consistent with interdependence theory’s notion that going from the dyadic to the team level introduces more variety in dispositions, Study 3 tests the joint effects of team communal orientation and relationship orientation diversity—that is, differences in members’ relationship orientation. As is the case at the dyadic level, we find that team communal orientation lowers interdependent decision performance.
Interdependence theory also suggests that differences are managed through norms (Thibaut & Kelley, 1956, 1978). Relatedly, we propose that relationship orientation diversity creates norms that lower the risks associated with speaking up, through exchange-oriented members engaging in interpersonally risky but beneficial behaviors that are not socially sanctioned. Our results support this notion by finding that relationship orientation diversity improves decision performance and attenuates team communal orientation’s deleterious effect on interdependent decision performance.
Study 1: Individual Level
Because more communally oriented people are less inherently motivated by exogenous outcomes (e.g., Righetti et al., 2013), we propose that they are unlikely to use prohibitive voice when it could improve an extrinsic outcome but also hurt another person’s feelings. One such situation is when errors need to be corrected to improve interdependent decision-making. In this context, it is paramount that both parties have an accurate understanding (Aramovich & Larson, 2013; Hinsz, Tindale, & Vollrath, 1997)—and prohibitive voice’s explicit focus on inaccurate beliefs renders it particularly effective for correcting them (Liang et al., 2012), which suggests that it is also effective for improving interdependent decision performance. However, explicitly pointing out the inaccurate belief is also likely to offend the other person and thereby make the interaction less pleasant. Because more communally oriented individuals tend to be motivated by pleasant interactions over exogenous outcomes (Clark et al., 1986), we suggest that individuals higher on communal orientation are less likely to use prohibitive voice to correct errors.
It is worth noting that our hypothesis is consistent with Clark and Finkel’s (2005) finding that more communally oriented people are more willing to demonstrate their trusting nature by expressing emotions that make them vulnerable in communal contexts. Similarly, we propose that exchange-oriented individuals’ tendency to prioritize exogenous outcomes will manifest as them being more likely to use prohibitive voice in an exogenous-outcome-focused situation—interdependent decision-making.
Methods
Participants
Seventy undergraduate students at a private mid-Atlantic university participated for course credit (female: 41%; White: 75%, Black: 13%, Asian: 6%, Latino: 6%; average age: 21.6 years).
Procedure
Participants completed a survey on their level of communal orientation and agreeableness, and reported their demographic information as part of a personality survey administered early in the semester. Approximately 2 weeks later, they participated in a class exercise for course credit.
At the start of a class on voice, students were told that they would be doing an online exercise with an anonymously and randomly assigned classmate and were then divided equally between two classrooms. After the students were seated, they received a link to participate in the exercise. The study started with detailed instructions for the “lost at sea” exercise, in which they ranked 15 items based on their importance for surviving after being stranded in a lifeboat because their yacht had sunk. To increase engagement and encourage them to think about how the items should be ordered, they were then given 5 minutes to rank the items.
Next, the screen asked them to wait while they were being randomly assigned to a classmate and told that one of the pair’s two initial suggestions would be randomly selected as a starting point for their final recommendation. In reality, they were all being assigned to the same fictitious partner whose ranking was selected as the starting point. The suggested order given to all participants would have scored the lowest possible rating, “die at sea,” by the exercise. We made the initial order poor in order to create errors and to make prohibitive voice seem like a socially acceptable option.
When reviewing the list, students were told that their partner would submit the final ranking and that they had 5 minutes to modify their partner’s recommendation and send it with an explanation of their choices. To start their explanation, they were asked to select between two dialogue boxes. One was for explaining what was wrong with their partner’s suggestion, with the introductory statement “The concerns I have with your list and why I corrected them are below.” The other dialogue box suggested improvements, with the introductory statement “The suggestions I made for improving your list and why I made them are below.”
Measures
Communal orientation was measured using Clark et al.’s (1987) 14-item Communal Orientation Scale (α = .78). Sample items, which were ranked on a 7-point Likert scale (1 = strongly disagree, 7 = strongly agree), are “When making a decision, I take other people’s needs and feelings into account” and “I don’t especially enjoy giving others aid” (reverse-scored [RS]).
Promotive and prohibitive voice were operationalized based on the dialogue box selected. In particular, promotive voice was opting to explain why the participant believed their suggestion improved on their fictitious partner’s. This is consistent with the definition of promotive voice, since it focuses on improving on what is currently being done (Liang et al., 2012). Prohibitive voice was operationalized as selecting the dialogue box that stresses what is wrong with the partner’s list. This is also consistent with the definition of prohibitive voice, because it focuses on concerns about the partner’s list.
Control variables
We included whether the participant made changes to the list provided by the fictitious partner, along with the participant’s gender, in the analysis to control for the possibility that those factors impacted the type of voice used (Fiske, 2012).
To enable us to compare and contrast communal orientation with agreeableness, we also asked subjects to take the 10-item Agreeableness Scale (α = .76) from the NEO-FFI Personality Inventory (Costa & McCrae, 1992) when they completed the Communal Orientation Scale. Subjects were asked to rate how accurately (1 = very inaccurate, 7 = very accurate) each statement describes them (e.g., “I make others feel at ease,” “I get back at others” [RS]).
Results
Descriptive statistics and correlations are shown in Table 1. All but one of the participants 1 suggested changes, which implies that they identified errors that needed to be corrected. Also, 54% of the participants selected prohibitive voice, which implies that it was viewed as a socially acceptable option. Agreeableness was positively but insignificantly related to communal orientation (r = .22, p > .05), suggesting that the two constructs are different. Moreover, communal orientation had a stronger relationship with not selecting prohibitive voice (r = −.36, p < .01) than agreeableness (r = −.25, p < .05); this further suggests that those differences matter.
Study 1 correlations and descriptive statistics.
Note. n = 70. Cronbach’s alphas are reported in parentheses along the diagonal.
p < .05. **p < .01.
We suggest that communal orientation is negatively related to an individual’s decision to use prohibitive voice. Because the outcome variable is dichotomous (prohibitive or promotive voice), we used binary logistic regression to predict the probability of selecting prohibitive voice, based on participants’ communal orientation. Results are shown in Table 2. Model 1 includes the control variables, and Model 2 tests our hypothesis by adding communal orientation.
Study 1 logistic regression results for the use of prohibitive over promotive voice.
Note. n = 70.
Gender dummy-coded: male = 0, female = 1. bMade changes dummy-coded: no changes = 0, changes = 1.
p < .05. **p < .01.
The results of this analysis support our prediction by indicating that communal orientation is negatively related to the likelihood that an individual selects prohibitive over promotive voice to correct errors (B = −1.22, Wald χ2 = 5.13, p < .05, OR = 3.37).
Discussion
Study 1 shows that communal orientation is related to members’ reluctance to use prohibitive voice, even when it would likely be more effective for improving joint outcomes by correcting errors. However, the study does not explicitly test whether communal orientation harms interdependent decision performance through prohibitive voice. It also makes choosing not to use any voice difficult by presenting participants with only promotive and prohibitive voice options. Lastly, it leaves open the possibility that social desirability bias may affect the accuracy of our communal orientation measure.
Study 2 addresses all of these issues and extends our theoretical model to the dyadic level. In particular, we manipulate communal orientation to limit social desirability biases, eliminate prompts for voice type, and test dyadic communal orientation’s effect on interdependent decision performance through prohibitive voice.
Study 2: Dyads
According to interdependence theory, dyads become compatible by communicating in ways that are accurately interpreted and favorably received (Thibaut & Kelley, 1956, 1978). As dyads identify these mutually beneficial behaviors, they tend to increase their use of those behaviors. Thus, the amount a type of expression is used is reflective of the extent to which it transitions from being an individual to a dyadic input. Consistently, we conceptualize dyadic promotive and dyadic prohibitive voice as the amount of promotive and prohibitive voice used in a dyad.
Study 1, therefore, suggests that communal dyads in which both members enter the dyad prioritizing pleasant interactions will likely be low on dyadic prohibitive voice, due to its reflecting exogenous over endogenous motives. Prohibitive voice is also likely to be especially beneficial for interdependent decision-making, which requires the combination of disparate knowledge to accurately understand an issue (Kerr & Tindale, 2004). An essential part of using different information to improve comprehension is using it to correct another’s inaccurate understanding (Aramovich & Larson, 2013). Since prohibitive voice is effective for getting such errors corrected (Liang et al., 2012), it follows that prohibitive voice improves interdependent decision performance.
Lastly, combining communally oriented dyads being particularly averse to prohibitive voice with prohibitive voice being essential for interdependent decision performance, suggests that dyadic communal orientation harms interdependent decision performance through reducing dyadic prohibitive voice.
Methods
Study 2 tests dyadic communal orientation’s effect on interdependent decision performance through prohibitive voice. To do this, we employ a computer-mediated decision-making task. We also manipulate communal orientation to minimize the social desirability bias that can be present when asking participants to rate their own communal orientation.
Participants
One hundred sixty participants, most of whom were undergraduate students at a large mid-Atlantic university, participated for $8.00. They were divided into 80 dyads in which each member received some shared and some unshared information. We omitted the data for 12 dyads due to logistical errors during the experimental session. As a result, the analytic sample consists of 136 participants in 68 dyads (female: 69%; 18–24 years: 97%, 25–34 years: 1%, 35–44 years: 1%, 45–54 years: 1%; White: 58%, Asian: 22%, Black: 9%, Latino: 7%, biracial: 3%, other: 1%).
Task
We used a hidden profile task that was modified from Toma and Butera’s (2009) road accident investigation to involve two instead of three people. The information given to participants concerned the suspects in and circumstances surrounding the accident. This consisted of eight pieces of unshared information (with each person in the dyad receiving four pieces) and 12 pieces of shared information. Participants were tasked with deciding which of four suspects caused the accident by combining their shared and unshared information.
It is worth noting that Toma and Butera’s (2009) initial use of the task would suggest that it is conjunctive (Barrick et al., 1998); one member withholding information harmed shared decision performance. However, they made the goals competitive where the member who got the answer first was rewarded. In contrast, de Wit, Jehn, and Scheepers (2013) gave the members shared goals and showed that performance was determined by a compensatory process in information processes, where information was similarly shared by members who used the information to improve their shared performance.
Procedure
Participants arrived in groups of eight and were told that they would be working on three tasks and be randomly assigned to an anonymous partner for the last task. They were then split into two groups of four, with each group assigned to a separate room that had cubicle dividers, materials, and computers. The first two tasks were manipulations (more on this later) and timed so that members would start the decision-making task immediately after completing the manipulations.
For the decision-making task, participants were told that it was possible to solve the crime and that they would be communicating via Google Hangout with someone in the other room. We used Google Hangout to minimize any confounds from race and gender. They were also informed that their discussions would be recorded and that they should only identify each other by their identification numbers. They were then given 3 minutes to submit their decision.
Manipulation
Participants were randomly assigned to one of two conditions: a communal or exchange orientation. For each condition, we used two well-established manipulations to bolster the strength of the treatment. Participants first completed an anagram task (Bargh & Chartrand, 2000) in which they rearranged letters to make exchange orientation (mine, unique, etc.) or communal orientation (kind, helpful, etc.) words. Second, they were given a fictitious story about a fifth grader’s trip to New York City and asked to circle occurrences of “I” in the exchange condition or “we” in the communal condition (Brewer & Gardner, 1996).
To test the effectiveness of our manipulation, we conducted a manipulation check. One hundred twenty participants (female: 38%; White: 66%, Latino: 13%, Asian: 12%, Black: 9%; average age: 35.7 years) were recruited in an MTurk study about exercise development. They were randomly assigned to one of the two manipulations just described. Twelve participants were excluded for failing to attempt to rearrange any of the words in the anagram task. Following the task, participants rated their communal orientation using the14-item scale used in the previous studies (Clark et al., 1987; α = .86). As expected, participants in the communal orientation condition (M = 5.12, SD = 0.74) rated themselves as being higher on communal orientation than those in the exchange orientation condition (M = 4.62, SD = 0.96; F = 8.39, p < .01).
Measures
Dyadic prohibitive voice
Each discussion was coded by two independent coders. Before coding, they were given instructions that included the definitions of prohibitive and promotive voice and asked to count the occurrences of each. To strengthen agreement, they first coded two dialogues together and then two dialogues separately, and afterward met to discuss discrepancies (these dialogues are not included in the analysis).
For the coders, prohibitive voice was defined as any expression of concern about what the other person was doing. Consistent with our definition of dyadic prohibitive voice, coders counted instances of prohibitive voice. Comments counted as prohibitive voice include “It doesn’t say Mr. X was driving,” and “It can’t be Mr. Z because he is driving a motorcycle, not a car.” Because the high correlation coefficients (r = .89) and intraclass correlation coefficients (ICCs), F = 19.13, p < .001, ICC(1) = .65, ICC(2) = .95, indicated agreement, the coders’ scores were averaged.
Dyadic promotive voice
Promotive voice was counted for completeness. Coders were told that promotive voice is a suggestion about improving on what the other person is doing using a positive tone. Examples of comments counted as promotive voice are, “Good information! And I think we could’ve been given different information that we need to combine” and “It also says that the guilty person was inattentive.” Because the high correlation coefficients (r = .79) and ICCs, F = 5.96, p < .001, ICC(1) = .47, ICC(2) = .83, indicated agreement, the coders’ scores were averaged.
Decision performance
Decision performance was dichotomous, with 1 being correctly and 0 being incorrectly identifying the instigator of the accident.
Gender
Because gender can impact how people interact (Fiske, 2012), participants indicated their gender at the completion of the study, with gender being the count of females.
Results
Descriptive statistics are shown in Table 3. In it, there is a positive and significant correlation between the number of females in a dyad and the use of prohibitive voice (r = .30, p < .05). Previous findings that women are expected to, and tend to, choose a more communal orientation (Fiske, 2012), combined with our proposition that communal orientations are negatively related to prohibitive voice, would suggest a negative relationship here instead of the positive one we found. However, we used Google Hangout to mask participants’ gender. This anonymity may have encouraged female participants to break gender norms, thereby increasing their use of prohibitive voice.
Study 2 correlations and descriptive statistics.
Note. n = 68 dyads. Correlation between coders shown along the diagonal.
p < .05. **p < .01.
We proposed that dyads in the communal condition would be less likely to make the correct decision. Consistent with this, an ANOVA revealed that dyads in the exchange condition were more likely to make the correct decision (68% decided correctly) compared to those in the communal condition (38% decided correctly), F(1, 66) = 6.27, p < .05.
To investigate our dyadic theoretical model in its entirety, we used structural equation modeling (SEM) through the lavaan package for R (Rosseel, 2012). We tested the model with weighted least squares analysis, because our dependent variable was dichotomous (Rosseel, 2012).
We evaluated the goodness of fit using four metrics and their standard thresholds (Schumacker & Lomax, 2010). For a model to be considered a satisfactory fit, the chi-squared (χ2) should be insignificant, the comparative fit index (CFI) should be greater than .90, the root mean residual (RMR) should be less than .10, and the root mean error approximation (RMSEA) should be less than .08. All indicators satisfied those limits. Specifically, the χ2 was insignificant (χ2 = 1.59, p > .10), CFI was .99, RMR was .04, and RMSEA was .06. We also used modification indices to determine whether adding gender as an independent variable or promotive voice as a mediator would improve the model. The results did not indicate that either addition would improve the model (modification χ2 in all equations involving gender and promotive voice were less than .32). We report the results for the parsimonious model in Figure 1 and discuss them in what follows.
Study 2 structural equation model.
We proposed that being in the communal condition would lower prohibitive voice, and that prohibitive voice is positively related to decision performance. The analysis revealed that being in the communal condition was negatively and significantly related to prohibitive voice (β = −.34, z = −2.95, p < .01). The path coefficient from prohibitive voice to decision performance was positive and significant (β = .35, z = 2.80, p < .01), supporting both hypotheses.
Lastly, we suggested that dyadic communal orientation’s negative impact on decision performance is mediated by prohibitive voice. In SEM, a significant indirect path indicates (at least partial) mediation—and being in the communal condition had a significant, negative indirect effect of −.12 (z = −2.04, p < .05) on decision performance through prohibitive voice. This suggests (at least partial) mediation.
Discussion
Study 2 finds that dyadic communal orientation lowers interdependent decision performance by lowering the amount of prohibitive voice used. However, the context could be criticized for requiring a decision in a short period of time and with minimal interpersonal cues. Study 2 also does not examine whether communal orientation harms interdependent decision performance after controlling for a somewhat similar construct in agreeableness.
Study 3 addresses these limitations by controlling for agreeableness in the analysis and having members interact face-to-face for over an hour. It also extends our theoretical model to the team level and develops a fuller understanding of communal orientation’s results by investigating relationship orientation diversity’s effect on interdependent team performance.
Study 3: Team Level
When going from the dyadic to the team level, the introduction of more members increases the likelihood of there being different motives and beliefs (Thibaut & Kelley, 1956, 1978). Consistently, we investigate both team communal orientation and relationship orientation diversity. Relationship orientation diversity is defined as differences in members’ relationship orientation (ranging from exchange to communal). Because relationship orientation is a difference “along a single continuous attribute,” we conceptualize it in terms of separation—that is, differences in beliefs or orientations (Harrison & Klein, 2007, p. 1203).
According to interdependence theory, teams manage differences through norms, or “a behavioral rule that is accepted” (Thibaut & Kelley, 1956, p. 129; see also Homans, 1950). Norms help diverse members work collectively by creating shared expectations about how members should and should not behave. For interdependent decision-making, norms that encourage productive but interpersonally risky behaviors are essential because those behaviors are necessary to accurately understand issues (Edmondson, 1999; Sanner & Bunderson, 2015).
Relatedly, we suggest that relationship orientation diversity improves interdependent decision performance by creating a norm that encourages speaking up. A norm that facilitates a behavior can be formed by introducing a behavior that is not socially sanctioned (Bettenhausen & Murnighan, 1985; Thibaut & Kelley, 1978). On teams with diverse relationship orientations, exchange-oriented members should be less concerned with pleasant interactions and more concerned with performing well, which requires correcting inaccurate assumptions. Because exchange-oriented members are more motivated by performing well than having pleasant interactions (Clark & Mills, 1979; Clark et al., 1986), they are likely to speak up when needed. Communally oriented members will also be unlikely to chastise exchange-oriented members for speaking up because they will not want to make the interaction even less pleasant. In addition, speaking up can improve shared understanding (Morrison, 2011), suggesting that exchange-oriented members speaking up without being socially sanctioned can create a shared belief that speaking up is helpful, and thereby increase members’ engagement in interpersonally risky but productive behaviors (Edmondson, 1999). Because these behaviors are essential for interdependent decision performance, we suggest that relationship orientation diversity is positively related to interdependent decision performance.
In contrast, we propose that team communal orientation is negatively related to interdependent decision performance. The prolonged absence of a behavior creates a belief that the behavior should be avoided (Kish-Gephart, Detert, Treviño, & Edmondson, 2009). Also, when members enter a group with a similar preference to avoid a type of behavior, it tends to not be introduced into the group, which facilitates an implicit norm to avoid it (Bettenhausen & Murnighan, 1985; Thibaut & Kelley, 1956, 1978). Our previous findings suggest that highly communally orientated teams will consist of members who prefer to avoid sharing constructive but potentially controversial ideas and information. Thus, in the absence of relationship orientation diversity, higher team communal orientation should be related to members not speaking up and, as a result, creating a norm whereby those behaviors should be avoided. Because of the importance of speaking up, we suggest that team communal orientation is negatively related to decision performance.
However, when members are concerned about voicing an opinion and see someone else speak up without being socially sanctioned, the perceived risk of speaking up is lowered (Kish-Gephart et al., 2009). Relationship orientation diversity should facilitate this by increasing the likelihood that exchange-oriented members will speak up without getting sanctioned, thereby lowering the perceived interpersonal risks. Lowering communally oriented members’ interpersonal concerns should then enable them to engage in beneficial but interpersonally risky behaviors. Therefore, we suggest that relationship orientation diversity attenuates team communal orientation’s negative relationship with interdependent decision performance.
Methods
To create time for norms to form, Study 3 uses a 90-minute, three-round management simulation to test three hypotheses: (H1) team communal orientation is negatively related to interdependent decision performance, (H2) relationship orientation diversity is positively related to interdependent decision performance, and (H3) the negative relationship between team communal orientation and interdependent decision performance is moderated by team communal diversity, such that it is attenuated at high levels of relationship orientation diversity.
Participants
Two hundred and five undergraduate students (female: 58%; White: 59%, Black: 23%, Asian: 13%, Latino: 5%; average age: 21.7 years) at two mid-Atlantic universities on 65 three- and four-person teams participated in a 90-minute simulation for a course grade.
Procedure
Students were surveyed on their communal orientation and agreeableness as part of a lecture on power and personality early in the semester. About a month later, they were randomly assigned to teams for a graded team-based simulation that took place over two class periods.
Team-based simulation
Participants engaged in a three-round team decision-making simulation called “tinsel town,” in which participants represented the top management team of a fictional Hollywood movie studio. Each team’s goal was to “maximize cumulative profit over 3 simulated years (i.e., decision periods) by choosing screenplays to produce and setting corresponding marketing levels for each film” (Devine, Habig, Martin, Bott, & Grayson, 2004, p. 94). Each member of the team represented the head of a different part of the movie studio (marketing, script, and industry 2 ) and was given some shared and some unshared information. The usefulness of this information varied, and teams received new information in each round. The simulation required that participants made sense of disparate, complex, and changing information.
Before each round, teams were given 11 new screenplays, individual reports, and a new budget. Before the first round, students read the instructions along with the instructor and then were given 15 minutes to read the remaining information silently and independently. At the end of each round, teams were told their profit for the round in dollars and their profit for the round divided by the maximum profit possible, and given approximately 2 minutes to review the feedback. Teams were given 20 minutes per round to reach their decisions. The simulation was designed so that the teams would have to combine their feedback with both shared and individual information to identify and solve the equations that determine the profitability of potential movie and marketing combinations.
Because a member withholding unshared information could hurt the team’s ability to determine and solve the equations, it should be considered conjunctive when goals are not shared 3 (Barrick et al., 1998). However, Sanner and Evans (2019) recently conducted a detailed analysis of the interactions that take place during this task when goals are shared. They found that shared approaches reliably form in teams, allowing for members to coordinate actions so that they can compensate for each other in developing a shared task understanding.
Measures
Team decision performance
Consistent with interdependent decision-making studies, the simulation used a series of mathematical equations to evaluate team performance relative to the optimal decision (i.e., the combination of movies and marketing levels) that could be made (e.g., Sanner & Evans, 2019). Performance was calculated by averaging a team’s performance across the three rounds.
Communal orientation
To measure members’ communal orientation, each participant completed the same 14-item scale used in Study 1 (Clark et al., 1987; α = .71).
Team communal orientation
In line with team communal orientation being compensatory, we used the additive form of aggregation (Barrick et al., 1998) to calculate team communal orientation and averaged members’ communal orientation.
Relationship orientation diversity
We define relationship orientation diversity in terms of diversity as separation (Harrison & Klein, 2007). To capture the fact that this diversity is maximized when the absolute differences between members’ relationship orientations are largest, we calculate team relationship diversity as the standard deviation of members’ communal orientation (Harrison & Klein, 2007). We also conducted the analysis with relationship orientation diversity operationalized as the mean Euclidean distance, with no difference in the direction or significance of the findings. For ease of interpretation, we report the results in which relationship diversity was operationalized in terms of standard deviations.
Control variables
Because members had face-to-face interactions in which gender and race could impact the amount and nature of their interactions (Fiske, 2012), we measured and controlled for both. Gender was the count of females, and race diversity was measured using Walsh’s (1988) recommended adaption of Blau’s (1977) index. To control for the possibility that team size could impact how members interact and team performance (Waller, Hope, Burrowes, & Morrison, 2011), we controlled for team size, measured as the number of members. We again controlled for agreeableness using the same scale as in Study 1 (Costa & McCrae, 1992; α = .89), and aggregated it to the team level through averaging. Exclusion of any of the control variables does not impact the significance or direction of our results.
Results
Table 4 reports descriptive statistics and correlations. As predicted, team decision performance is positively related to relationship orientation diversity (r = .31, p < .05), as well as negatively and significantly correlated with team communal orientation (r = −.40, p < .01). This is not the case for team agreeableness (r = −.21, p > .10). In line with Study 1’s implication that agreeableness and communal orientation are distinct constructs, the correlation between them is positive and significant, but not large enough to support the notion that they are the same construct (Rosenthal & Rosnow, 2007) at the team level (r = .31, p < .05). And while we did not predict this, it is worth noting that interdependent decision performance is significantly and negatively related to the number of females on a team (r = −.25, p < .05). This may be due to the decision-making being face-to-face, which can strengthen the presence of gender-based norms whereby females are expected to act communally (Fiske, 2012).
Study 3 correlations and descriptive statistics.
Note. n = 65. Cronbach’s alphas are reported in parentheses along the diagonal.
Measured using Walsh’s (1988) recommended adaption of Blau’s (1977) index. bMeasured as the standard deviation of members’ relationship orientation.
p < .05. **p < .01.
We use ordinary least squares (OLS) regression to test our hypotheses. Because the third hypothesis involves an interaction, we centered our predictors (Aiken & West, 1991). We report the results in Table 5. In Model 1, we include the control variables. In Model 2, we enter team communal orientation as a predictor. In Model 3, we enter relationship orientation diversity as a predictor. Lastly, the interaction is entered in Model 4.
Study 3 regression results for interdependent decision performance.
Note. n = 65. Standardized regression coefficients (β) and student’s t (t) distribution reported. Adjusted R2 reported for R2.
Measured using Walsh’s (1988) recommended adaption of Blau’s (1977) index. bMeasured using the standard deviation of members’ relationship orientations.
p < .05. **p < .01.
As predicted, team communal orientation is a negative and significant predictor of interdependent decision performance (β = −.36, t = −2.99, p < .01) and explains an additional 11% of the variance in decision performance, ΔR2 = .11, F(1, 59) = 8.93, p < .01. Also, as predicted, relationship orientation diversity is a positive and significant predictor of interdependent decision performance (β = .29, t = 2.61, p < .05), and explains an additional 7% of the variance in performance, ΔR2 = .07, F(1, 58) = 6.80, p < .05.
Lastly, Model 4 shows initial support for relationship orientation diversity attenuating team communal orientation’s negative effect on interdependent decision performance, with the interaction between team communal orientation and relationship orientation diversity being a positive and significant predictor of interdependent decision performance (β = .23 t = 2.13, p < .05) that explains an additional 5% of the variance in performance, ΔR2 = .05, F(1, 57) = 4.52, p < .05.
To determine whether the pattern is in the predicted direction, we conduct simple slopes analysis following the procedure recommended by Aiken and West (1991). The results are displayed graphically in Figure 2 and show a pattern similar to the one predicted. When teams are 1 SD below the average level of team communal diversity, team communal orientation is negatively and significantly related to team decision performance (β = −.83, t = −3.72, p < .001). However, when teams are 1 SD above the average of team communal diversity, the slope is positive but not significant (β = .08, t = 0.37, p > .10).
Study 3 regression slopes for interdependent decision performance.
It is worth noting that not only are the slopes in the predicted direction, but that differences in the performance of low compared to high relationship orientation diversity teams are particularly striking when communal orientation is high on average. When teams had high team communal orientation and low relationship orientation diversity (for example, a team communal orientation of 6 through all three members scoring a 6 on the communal orientation measure), they performed particularly poorly. But when they had high team communal orientation and high relationship orientation diversity (for example, a team communal orientation of 6 through two members scoring a 7 and one member scoring a 4 on the communal orientation measure), they performed much better.
Interdependence theory suggests that this difference is due to the diverse team having an exchange-oriented member who spoke up without being socially sanctioned by the communal members. This interaction then creates a norm that removes the communal members’ concerns about speaking up, enabling productive but interpersonally risky behaviors for all members. In contrast, teams with similarly highly communal members will likely have a prolonged absence of speaking up, which hurts performance by creating a norm that speaking up should be avoided (Kish-Gephart et al., 2009).
General Discussion
Communal orientation is positively related to helping others (Bryan et al., 2000), engaging in organizational citizenship behaviors (Korsgaard et al., 2010), and having more favorable relationships (Lester et al., 2008). Given that an environment in which team members get along with and help one another is a critical determinant of success (Thibaut & Kelley, 1956, 1978), the majority of communal orientation research suggests that managers should staff their organizations with highly communal individuals.
In contrast, we point out that organizations also need their members to work on tasks that demand combining disparate knowledge to comprehend complex issues. These tasks require interpersonally risky behaviors such as voicing concerns, questioning assumptions, and correcting errors (Sanner & Bunderson, 2015)—key characteristics of prohibitive voice (Liang et al., 2012). Our findings suggest that more communal members may engage in less prohibitive voice due to their inclination to be endogenously and not exogenously motivated. Our results further demonstrate that communal orientation can actually undermine interdependent decision performance unless interpersonal concerns are reduced.
Relatedly, our results suggest that these interpersonal concerns can be reduced by having some exchange-oriented members on the team. In particular, our analysis and interdependence theory suggest that teams higher on relationship orientation diversity have norms that encourage speaking up. Consistently, we show that relationship orientation diversity is positively related to interdependent decision performance, and mitigates team communal orientation’s deleterious effect on interdependent decision performance
Our results also increase theoretical and methodological precision by suggesting differences between two often-conflated constructs, communal orientation and agreeableness. In the two studies in which we measure agreeableness and communal orientation, their positive correlations imply that the two constructs have commonalities—for instance, general affableness. However, the small size of the correlations between them and the different outcomes suggest that important differences exist, and that communal orientation and agreeableness should not be used interchangeably.
More fundamentally, our research also advances a more comprehensive and balanced perception of communal orientation by (a) investigating the effects of communal orientation on interdependent decision performance and (b) demonstrating that communal orientation lowers the use of prohibitive voice when it is necessary to make sound interdependent decisions. Communal orientation research has largely focused on individual behaviors, such as helping (Bryan et al., 2000) or refraining from blaming others (McCall, 1995), with a few dyadic investigations of relationships (Clark et al., 2010; Gordon & Chen, 2013) or mixed-motive negotiations (Thompson & DeHarpport, 1998). We add to this by investigating communal orientation’s impact on interdependent decision-making, which can have important consequences. Thus, we advance understanding of communal orientation by extending it to an important context, interdependent decision-making.
In so doing, we make a third contribution by revealing a potential dark side: dyadic and team communal orientation actually harm interdependent decision performance. Communal orientation research tends to be skewed toward positive individual outcomes (Le et al., 2018), yet fully understanding something requires knowledge of potentially negative consequences. The few studies that find that communal orientation leads to harmful outcomes tend to focus on a specific subset of communal motivation—unmitigated communal motivation—in which individuals are only concerned for their partner (e.g., Fritz & Helgeson, 1998). Thus, by showing that communal orientation can be harmful when aggregated, we help create a more nuanced and balanced understanding of communal orientation.
Moreover, we help to highlight the difference between communal orientation and prosocial motivation; the lack of theoretical distinctiveness between them has added confusion to both literatures (Bolino & Grant, 2016). Where dyadic and team prosocial motivation increase engagement in critical processes (Hu & Liden, 2015) that improve interdependent decision performance, we show that dyadic and team communal orientation have the opposite effect. Of the four differences between communal orientation and prosocial motivation discussed earlier, our findings suggest that the root differences are that communal orientation is associated with currently having a pleasant interaction, while prosocial motivation is about creating a future positive outcome from the interaction. As a result, communal orientation leads people to avoid prohibitive voice to maintain a positive interaction, while prosocial motivation increases voice (Grant & Mayer, 2009) to improve future outcomes.
Despite the studies’ combined strength, it is important to note their limitations and areas that the analysis could not address. First, our theory suggests, but our results do not explicitly show, that communal orientation lowers engagement in interpersonally risky behaviors besides prohibitive voice. Other potentially contentious behaviors, such as experimentation or supporting a minority viewpoint, are also critical for teams. Because of this, we hope that future research will examine communal orientation’s impact on a host of behaviors that are essential but potentially contentious.
Similarly, we focus on the effects of team composition but do not investigate other ways leaders could help communal collectives perform well. The effectiveness of communally oriented members, dyads, and teams being hampered by interpersonal concerns also has implications for leadership. More specifically, it is possible that inclusive leadership—the “words and deeds exhibited by leaders that invite and appreciate others’ contributions” (Nembhard & Edmondson, 2006, p. 941)—contributes to deriving the most from communally oriented members. Inclusive leaders increase psychological safety (Nembhard & Edmondson, 2006) and engagement in interpersonally risky behaviors such as correcting errors, experimentation, and speaking up (Edmondson, Bohmer, & Pisano, 2001). Combined with our premise that heightened concerns about discord keep more communal members from speaking up, this suggests that inclusive leadership reduces that barrier; it would also therefore reduce communal orientation’s negative relationship with prohibitive voice and interdependent decision performance. We hope that future research will investigate how inclusive leadership and other types of leadership impact the effects of communal orientation.
Third, our results highlight a place where communal orientation could be related to being shortsighted and that more work on exploring the interaction between communal orientation, context, and time horizon should be done. In relationships that are not task-focused, research implies that communally oriented people are farsighted in that they make short-term sacrifices to create more enduring friendships and romantic relationships (Clark et al., 2010; Gordon & Chen, 2013). In contrast, our findings imply that communal orientation is associated with being shortsighted in task-focused relationships; communally oriented members using less prohibitive voice in interdependent decision-making groups and dyads, thereby lowering performance, could lead to negative interactions in the long term. Combined, this suggests that communal orientation is associated with being farsighted in relationships that are not task-focused, but shortsighted in task-focused relationships. Due to the importance of correcting errors and of friendships in the workplace (Methot, Lepine, Podsakoff, & Christian, 2016), future research should explore the interplay between communal orientation, context, and time horizons.
As an early investigation into the costs of communal orientation for dyads and teams, this paper sheds light on an important dynamic and demonstrates that more work is needed. While we do not dispute that there are advantages to having communally oriented individuals in a variety of contexts, we qualify this by pointing out that having too many of them working together can lower interdependent decision performance. We hope that our findings will encourage scholars to further illuminate communal orientations’ costs and how to manage them so that people who enjoy being together can also perform better together.
Footnotes
Acknowledgements
We would like to thank Scott Tindale and his review team as well as members of the University of Virginia’s BRAD Lab Group for their feedback and advice. We would also like to thank Drs. J. Stuart Bunderson and J. Keith Murnighan for their guidance and encouragement.
Funding
The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
