Exploring interpersonal behavior and team sensemaking during health information technology implementation.

PURPOSE: We examine how interpersonal behavior and social interaction influence team sensemaking and subsequent team actions during a hospital-based health information technology (HIT) implementation project. DESIGN/METHODOLOGY/APPROACH: Over the course of 18 months, we directly observed the interpersonal interactions of HIT implementation teams using a sensemaking lens. FINDINGS: We identified three voice-promoting strategies enacted by team leaders that fostered team member voice and sensemaking; communicating a vision; connecting goals to team member values; and seeking team member input. However, infrequent leader expressions of anger quickly undermined team sensemaking, halting dialog essential to problem solving. By seeking team member opinions, team leaders overcame the negative effects of anger. PRACTICAL IMPLICATIONS: Leaders must enact voice-promoting behaviors and use them throughout a team's engagement. Further, training teams in how to use conflict to achieve greater innovation may improve sensemaking essential to project risk mitigation. SOCIAL IMPLICATIONS: Health care work processes are complex; teams involved in implementing improvements must be prepared to deal with conflicting, contentious issues, which will arise during change. Therefore, team conflict training may be essential to sustaining sensemaking. RESEARCH IMPLICATIONS: Future research should seek to identify team interactions that foster sensemaking, especially when topics are difficult or unwelcome, then determine the association between staff sensemaking and the impact on HIT implementation outcomes. VALUE/ORIGINALITY: We are among the first to focus on project teams tasked with HIT implementation. This research extends our understanding of how leaders' behaviors might facilitate or impeded speaking up among project teams in health care settings.

On the benign qualities of behavioral disinhibition: because of the prosocial nature of people, behavioral disinhibition can weaken pleasure with getting more than you deserve.

This article focuses on social situations in which people are surprised about what is happening and inhibited about how to respond to the situation at hand. We study these situations by examining a classic topic in social psychology: how people respond to receiving better outcomes than are deserved. In these situations, the actions of an authority or a coworker push in the direction of accepting and enjoying the unfair outcome, whereas personal values for most people push in the direction of rejecting or being displeased with the outcome. This conflict may inhibit people's response to the advantageous but unfair outcomes. If people are indeed inhibited about how to respond to these kinds of outcomes, then lowering behavioral inhibition by reminding people of having acted in the past without inhibitions (in a manner that is unrelated to the outcomes participants subsequently receive) should affect reactions to the outcomes. Specifically, we hypothesize that because many people are prosocial and want to adhere to principles of fairness, reminders of behavioral disinhibition will lead to less pleasure with the unfairly obtained outcomes. The results of 8 experiments (conducted both inside and outside the psychology laboratory) revealed evidence for this benign disinhibition effect on various reactions to outcomes that are better than deserved. In further accordance with our line of reasoning, the effect is particularly pronounced among those who adhere to a prosocial orientation or who have adopted a prosocial mindset and is not observed among those with proself orientations or mindsets.

Realpolitik versus fair process: moderating effects of group identification on acceptance of political decisions.

Three studies examined the effects of perceived procedural justice and the favorability of a group-level outcome on the endorsement of a group-level decision and the evaluation of the authority responsible for the decision. Results showed that, contrary to findings usually seen with individual-level decisions, collective outcome favorability was more important than procedural justice in influencing the endorsement of the decision. Furthermore, increased identification with the group reduced the importance of procedural justice but accentuated the importance of collective outcome favorability. With regard to the evaluation of the authority, the results were similar to those obtained in individual-level decisions: Procedural fairness mattered more than collective outcome favorability.

It's a bet! A problem-solving approach promotes the construction of contingent agreements.

Negotiators often have different expectations about the future. A contingent agreement, or a bet that makes the ultimate outcome dependent on some future event, builds on negotiators' differences. The authors argue that a problem-solving approach, in which negotiators thoroughly explore options to build on their differences, is most likely to construct contingent agreements. The authors explore two factors expected to influence this problem-solving approach, namely, negotiators' relational and accountability concerns. The authors argue when these considerations are imbalanced, negotiators are less likely to adopt a problem-solving style and construct a contingent agreement. To test this hypothesis, negotiators' relationships and accountability pressures were manipulated in two experiments. In Experiment 1, participants engaged in an integrative negotiation, allowing the authors to examine whether a contingent agreement was constructed and joint gain. Experiment 2 sought to replicate and extend the findings of Experiment 1 using a scenario study. Results across the two experiments support the authors' hypotheses.

Fairness heuristic theory is an empirical framework: a reply to Arnadóttir.

In this article on fairness heuristic theory, we point out some important flaws in Arnadóttir's (2002) claim that fairness heuristic theory is "not empirical," by which Arnadóttir meant that theory's predictions are knowable a priori, and are not contingent upon circumstances. To this end, we demonstrate that empirically testing effects predicted by fairness heuristic theory was and is important because this showed that the theory's propositions are not necessarily knowable a priori and are contingent upon circumstances. This implies that, according to Arnadóttir's definition, fairness heuristic theory clearly is an empirical framework. It would have been helpful if Arnadóttir had studied the fairness literature more thoroughly (as this would have easily revealed fairness heuristic theory to be not knowable a priori and to be contingent upon circumstances) and also if she had pointed out which of our studies fail to follow her line of reasoning. Our reply was written not as an attempt to defend fairness heuristic theory as we applaud, indeed are honored by, attempts to scrutinize our work in progress. Our only aim here was to point at some important flaws in the Arnadóttir article, because we think these will hamper rather than advance the science of psychology of justice.

Primacy Effects in Justice Judgments: Testing Predictions from Fairness Heuristic Theory.

We tested predictions from fairness heuristic theory that justice judgments are more sensitive to early fairness-relevant information than to later fairness-relevant information and that this primacy effect is more evident when group identification is higher. Participants working on a series of three tasks experienced resource failures that interfered with their productivity and always had the possibility of explaining problems to a supervisor. In a manipulation of the timing of fairness-relevant experiences, the supervisor refused to consider explanations on the first, second, or third of three work trials (but did consider explanations on the other two trials) or the supervisor never refused to hear the explanations. Prior to the work periods, the participants either had or had not undergone a manipulation designed to induce greater identification with the work group. As predicted, the timing of fairness-relevant experiences showed a primacy effect on fairness judgments and acceptance of authority in the high identification conditions and no evidence of such an effect in the low identification conditions. The implications of the findings for understanding the psychology of justice and for real-world justice phenomena are discussed. Copyright 2001 Academic Press.