The relationships among asymmetry in task dependence, perceived helping behavior, and trust.

Abstract

Social relations analyses involving 132 working relationships among 60 individuals from 29 teams revealed that an increase in a team member's task dependence on another team member was associated with higher levels of perceived help from and interpersonal trust in that specific team member, provided the other member was highly task dependent on the focal member. The degree to which an actor perceived a relationship with a partner to be helpful partially mediated the relationship between task dependence and trust. These findings highlight the importance of attending to asymmetries in task dependence and provide valuable insights into mechanisms that can explain the development of trust in organizational work teams.

Working Together versus Working Autonomously: a New Power-Dependence Perspective on the Individual-Level of Analysis

“…Thus, we attempted to provide more than a simple response to scholars' calls for more research on this topic (e.g., Langfred, 2005;Molleman, 2009;Rasmussen & Jeppesen, 2006) by also providing an alternative theoretical perspective that can be used to gain a better understanding of this interaction at a new level of analysis. Our alternative perspective is based on powerdependence theory (Emerson, 1962), interdependence theory (Thibaut & Kelley, 1959), recent reviews of the power literature (e.g., Fiske & Berdahl, 2007), and recent studies on power that focused on asymmetries in task dependence (De Jong et al, 2007;Van der Vegt et al, 2010). Based on these theories and studies, we hypothesized, and subsequently demonstrated, that team members who report they are highly taskinterdependent and highly task autonomous are considered relatively powerful by their peers.…”

“…Molleman, 2009). Based on recent studies focused on power that results from asymmetries in task dependence (De Jong et al, 2007;Van der Vegt et al, 2010), as well as on literature related to power-dependence theory (e.g., Emerson, 1962;Fiske & Berdahl, 2007;Keltner et al, 2003), we argued above that the interaction of task interdependence and task autonomy is related to the power of individual team members. Below, we will argue that, if this is indeed a valid line of reasoning, this interaction should also be related to individual performance because more powerful team members should be in better positions to successfully complete their tasks than their less powerful colleagues.…”

“…Based on Emerson's (1962) power-dependence theory, we expect that asymmetries in task dependence might be very important because they may result in situations in which asymmetrically less task-dependent team members maintain power over asymmetrically more taskdependent co-workers. By building on this theory of power offered by Emerson (1962), as well as by drawing upon recent insights (e.g., De Jong et al, 2007;Fiske & Berdahl, 2007;Van der Vegt et al, 2010), we conceptualized that team members' power relates to imbalances in the resource exchange relationships between those team members and their peer team members 1 .…”

“…Our argument is that a) the high task-interdependence of these individuals indicates that they exchange many resources within their teams and b) that this reveals, when viewed in conjunction with their perceptions of high task autonomy, that these individuals need fewer resources from others than others need from them. Hence, based on power-dependence theory (Emerson, 1962), interdependence theory (Thibaut & Kelley, 1959), and recent studies on power-dependence asymmetries (De Jong et al, 2007;Van der Vegt et al, 2010), we expect that these highly task interdependent and highly task autonomous individuals will be relatively powerful within their teams.…”

“…Hence, based on power-dependence theory (Emerson, 1962), reviews of the power literature (e.g., Fiske & Berdahl, 2007;Keltner et al, 2003), and recent empirical studies focused on power that results from asymmetries in task dependence (De Jong et al, 2007;Van der Vegt et al, 2010), we expect that the interaction between task interdependence and task autonomy is related to the performance of individual team members. We put forward three key reasons for this, namely a) powerful individuals already possess the majority of resources required to complete their own tasks and cannot be easily affected by others (Giebels et al, 2000), b) powerful individuals possess valuable resources they can exchange with others so they can use more influence and problem-solving strategies (Rahim et al, 2001), and c) powerful individuals have fewer process losses and less distractions (Keltner et al, 2003).…”