Stronger Than the Sum of Its Parts? The Performance Implications of Peer Control Combinations in Teams

Abstract

I ntegrating theorizing on situational strength and complementarity with control theory, we investigate the mediating processes that transmit peer control combination effects to team performance. We argue that two critical peer control mechanisms-norm strength and peer pressure-complement each other such that their joint impact on team members becomes stronger than the sum of their parts. In a multiple mediator model, we identify effort and trust as two distinct mediating processes that explain the relationship between peer control combinations and team performance. Multisource, multiwave data from 41 self-managing healthcare teams largely support our model. The pattern of mediation was more complex than we anticipated, revealing an indirect effect of peer controls on effort via trust. Together, our findings offer insight into how controls complement each other and the processes through which they do so.

Organizational control as antidote to politics in the pursuit of strategic initiatives

“…Whereas most prior work on the effectiveness of organizational controls has taken an either‐or approach rooted in contingency theory that predicts the usefulness of behavior or outcome control in specific situations, our study extends recent notions of balance and synergy (Cardinal et al ., ; De Jong et al ., in press; Flaherty and Pappas, ; Turner and Makhija, ) and explicitly theorizes on the complementarity between behavior and outcome control and the benefits of such a complementary approach. Traditional control theory foundations based in agency and organization theory have relied upon assumptions that limit both their ability to explain how controls combine and complement each other and their applicability to nonroutine and uncertain contexts where both means and ends may be difficult to specify.…”

“…Going beyond this contingency view, more recent work has suggested the complementary use of different control types (Cardinal, Sitkin, and Long, , ; De Jong, Bijlsma‐Frankema, and Cardinal, in press; Flaherty and Pappas, ; Long, Burton, and Cardinal, ; Turner and Makhija, ). Notwithstanding its intuitive appeal, however, little theory exists on how exactly different control types interact, and empirical studies remain rare, which is surprising as the advantages and disadvantages of each control type would suggest the efficacy of their combined use, especially in ambiguous and novel situations.…”

Contracting outsourced services with collaborative key performance indicators

“…A second, more modest research stream investigating how the shortcomings of performance‐based contracting may be alleviated examines the effects of combinations of different contracting forms or controls (Cardinal et al, ; Selviaridis & Wynstra, ). These studies observe that practitioners combine output and process contracting approaches to share different types of risks across the buyer and supplier (De Jong, Bijlsma‐Frankema, & Cardinal, ). For example, Handley and Gray () investigate the complementarity in use and in effectiveness of output (or outcome) and process (or behavior) controls.…”

Organizational control rationales in knowledge‐intensive organizations: An integrative review of emerging trends

“…Social, normative sources of control often stand as distinct sources of control. Recent work has begun to explore the coercive side of normative control and its effects on employees' organizational commitment (De Jong, Bijlsma‐Frankema, & Cardinal, ; Martin‐Rios, ), group cohesion (Adler & Chen, ), and accountability (Martin‐Rios, ).…”