Jan 21 The power of social information in the workplace.

The power of social information in the workplace.  Joe G. Thomas; Ricky W. Griffin.  Organizational Dynamics, Sep 22, 1989

Abstract: Managers who would like to improve employee attitude and morale need to consider the significance of social information in the workplace, because much of the perceptions about a work environment are influenced by the attitudes of co-workers, supervisors, family, as well as personal experience. A case study is described to illustrate the importance of social information in influencing the work of two similar employees.

 Full Text: COPYRIGHT American Management Association 1989

 The Power of Social Information in the Workplace

 After meeting with his district sales managers for the first time, John Rogers, the newly hired vice-president of marketing, reflected on the particularly puzzling conversations he had had with two of them - Bill Adams and Dick Woods. Both men had very similar backgrounds and experiences: They had been classmates at a prestigious Eastern university and had started employment with the company immediately after college. They had been successful sales representatives and had been promoted to regional sales manager positions after approximately four years with the company. Although they managed different sales areas, both areas appeared equally attractive.

 The puzzling part of the conversations with Adams and Woods was their inconsistent views of the organization and their future roles in it. Woods had been particularly positive about the work environment, describing the company as "fair" and the work as "challenging, exciting, and worthwhile." He had praised the company for its excellent reputation with its employees and customers, saying "It's really nice to have a job where you are helping people, where what you do really makes a difference!" Adams, on the other hand, had complained that the company was "ripping off" everybody and that the work was "a real bore." "The customers do not appreciate the quality of service they receive. The employees constantly complain about hours and working conditions. You just cannot keep them happy," he had said. Since both managers were working for the same company and in the same capacity - and had so much in common - how could they see things so differently?

 Most people have been in situations similar to the one experienced by John Rogers - situations in which, from an objective viewpoint, everything seems the same yet the people involved see things quite differently. Even though managers recognize that people's perceptions differ, they tend to assume that all employees evaluate and react to their jobs similarly. That kind of attitude is reflected in the following comment, made by a client in an executive development program: "The job is the same for everybody. There are job descriptions for each job. The employees do exactly what is stated in the job description. We are careful to stick to the job descriptions and not let anyone do more for fear of having problems with the union and EEOC."

 The common thread between the experiences of John Rogers and the client in the executive development program is the assumption that employees respond only to the "objective" job. In reality, employees respond to their jobs as they perceive them. Moreover, their perceptions are influenced, at least to some degree, by information they receive from others. Yet much of management research and practice is based on the assumption that managers and employees respond strictly to an objective job.

 In their article "A Social Information Processing Approach to Job Attitudes and Task Design" (Administrative Science Quarterly, June 1978), Gerald Salancik and Jeffrey Pfeffer reopened the question as to the extent of objectivity in evaluating work settings. Their theoretical framework, depicted in a simplified form in Exhibit 1, has served as a springboard for various research studies examining employees' reactions to social information. This line of research, commonly referred to as "social information processing," argues that people adopt attitudes, behaviors, and beliefs in light of social information provided by others.

 In his book Organizations and Organization Theory (Pitman, 1982), Pfeffer notes that "whether one characterizes jobs using dimensions such as variety, autonomy, feedback, and skill required or dimensions such as pay, effort required, and physical surroundings is in part under the control of a social environment in which some dimensions become talked about the other dimensions are ignored and thus are not salient." In one early experiment examining the influence of information from the social environment ("Informational Influence as a Determinant of Perceived Task Characteristics and Job Satisfaction," Journal of Applied Psychology, February 1979). Charles O'Reilly and David Caldwell showed that informational cues have a greater impact on reported task characteristics than do the objective task dimensions. In a later study of public health nurses in which objective jobs were identical ("Perceptual Measures of Task Characteristics: The Biasing Effects of Differing Frames of Reference and Job Attitudes, Academy of Management Journal, March 1980), Charles O'Reilly, G. N. Parlette, and J. R. Bloom reported that the perception of task characteristics is influenced by family and professional orientations. In a more recent study of nurses ("Sources of Social Information: A Longitudinal Analysis," Human Relations, September 1986), Joe G. Thomas found that information sources perceived as most relevant varied for different aspects of jobs. For example, family members were perceived as important in helping nurses see the significance of their work, but co-workers were perceived as most important in helping nurses develop new job skills.

 Social information refers to comments, observations, and similar cues provided by people whose view of the job an employee considers relevant. It may be provided by people directly associated with the job, such as co-workers, supervisors, and customers, or it may be provided by people not employed by the company, such as family members and friends. Although not all aspects of a job are likely to be influenced by cues from others (a hot work environment will be hot despite what anyone tells a worker), it seems realistic to assume that most of an employee's perceptions of job characteristics are subject to influence from information provided by others with whom the employee has contact.

 IMPACT OF SOCIAL INFORMATION

 Social information can influence an employee's view of the job in several different ways, as shown in Exhibit 1. Social information causes some characteristics of the job to be judged important, and attitudes about these salient characteristics are formed. Once attitudes are formed, social cues offer suggestions in evaluating and choosing appropriate behaviors. Finally, social cues influence the explanations or rationales offered for behavior. To understand and use social information, a manager must first recognize the probable impact of such information on employees and identify sources of information considered relevant.

 IDENTIFICATION OF ORGANIZATION

 AND JOB CHARACTERISTICS

 Jobs have many different facets. They allow varying degrees of autonomy, feedback, and job significance. They aid (or inhibit) employees in developing new skills and preparing for advancement. They are performed in a variety of settings, differing in terms of work conditions (such as temperature and noise level), work schedules (such as starting times, break schedules, and time clocks), rewards, and quality of supervision. Organizations differ in terms of attitudes, policies, and treatment of workers. All of these characteristics may influence an employee's feelings about his or her job. However, not all of them are viewed as equally important in each organization.

 IMPORTANCE OF CHARACTERISTICS

 Social information helps employees identify which characteristics of the job and the organization are considered important by other people. If the temperature in a work area or the requirement of clocking in and out is frequently discussed, those characteristics of the job setting receive increased attention from workers. Frequent discussion of such characteristics increases their perceived importance, and they become more salient.

 Rarely discussed job characteristics are less likely to be considered important by job incumbents, although the same job characteristics may be considered essential in another organization. Relatively high noise levels or bureaucratic travel-reimbursement policies, for example, may be major sources of employee concern in one organization, while employees of another organization may dismiss those job characteristics as just a fact of organizational life.

 Mining accidents provide an example of job characteristics that may be perceived quite differently by people, depending on their situation. Someone outside the industry may be astonished at a miner's ability to go to work with little apparent fear shortly after a disastrous mining accident at a neighboring mine. Miners want to believe information provided by the company and co-workers that there is little probability of an accident happening to them. They perceive occasional industrial accidents as an undesirable but largely unavoidable part of the job. To people outside the industry, however, the danger seems unbelievably high. The different assessments of the danger are at least partly the result of different evaluations of the information provided about the risks of an accident.

 EVALUATION OF JOB CHARACTERISTICS

 Other people's information about a job reveals their perceptions of the job to employees. All organizations develop cultures that are transmitted to workers. Organizations differ, for example, in terms of the importance attached to customer satisfaction and quality versus quantity of output, employee and subunit autonomy, administrative structures, and attitudes toward risk and diversification. Rituals, stories, symbols, and language are all used to inform employees about the organization and individual jobs.

 Military training provides recruits the information they need to evaluate military jobs. That information, much like the information provided to miners, may initially be perceived as inconsistent with the information held by the general public. However, as boot camp continues, the recruits generally become more accepting of authority, place greater importance on military values, and become willing to sacrifice their lives for the good of others. Rituals (such as basic training and mock battles), stories of both successful and unsuccessful missions, symbols (such as the U.S. flag and military heroes), as well as language (such as code words and slang) are used to influence the recruits' perceptions of the organization and their place in it. In effect, social information leads to a reevaluation of the basic meaning of life and its importance to the individual. Orientation programs for new employees are designed to accomplish similar ends, although the change in attitudes may be less marked.

 People outside the organization also provide information that is used to evaluate job and organization characteristics. Statements such as "You guys sure have to work some odd hours" or "Isn't that work boring!" provide information about what the speaker considers important as well as the speaker's evaluation of the work situation. A family member who constantly reminds a miner about the dangers of the job will likely increase the attention the miner gives to safety and may force the miner to reassess the risks of the occupation.

 JUSTIFICATION OF WORKERS'

 PERCEPTIONS

 Employees who have perceptions of their jobs or behavior that is inconsistent with the social information they receive may attempt to convince the information source of the inaccuracy of the information. Alternately, employees may justify (or rationalize) away the differences, or they may decide to adjust their perceptions to be consistent with the information they receive.

 Employees frequently change their perception of a situation to conform with the perception of information sources. In what has become known as the "Asch light experiment," subjects were asked to judge the lengths of lines of light. Less than 1% of the subjects misjudged line length when working individually. However, when co-workers (actually confederates in the experiment) provided incorrect judgments, more than one-third of the subjects gave an incorrect answer consistent with the incorrect answer provided by their co-workers. (See "Studies of Independence and Conformity: A Minority of One Against a Unanimous Majority" by Solomon E. Asch in Psychological Monographs No. 9 1956.) If people are willing to change their perceptions of objective phenomena such as the length of a line, they probably are even more likely to change their views of the less objective elements of jobs.

 SOURCES OF INFORMATION

 Employees can receive information from a wide variety of sources, ranging from bathroom graffiti to the evening news. However, the most likely sources of social information are the people employees come into contact with regularly - co-workers, supervisors, friends, family members and, in some cases, customers or clients.

 Co-workers

 Generally, co-workers are important sources of information for an employee. They not only spend several hours per day with the employee but also are most likely to be familiar with the employee's work. Co-workers'

 PHOTO : Joe G. Thomas is professor of management at Middle Tennessee State University, where he teaches, conducts research, and consults in the areas of organizational behavior and strategic management. His primary research interests are in the behavioral aspects of strategy formulation and implementation, particularly the processes by which the organization and its environment are "created" for planning purposes. His research has been published in such journals as Long Range Planning, Academy of Management Review, Planning Review, and Human Relations. He has also authored books on various aspects of management. Thomas received his Ph.D. degree from Texas A&M University.

 PHOTO : Ricky W. Griffin is an associate professor of management at Texas A&M University, where he teaches, conducts research, and consults in the areas of work system design, employee participation in the workplace, and social reality construction processes. He received his B.B.A. degree from North Texas State University and his M.B.A. and Ph.D. degrees from the University of Houston. His research has been published in such journals as Academy of Management Journal, Academy of Management Review, and Administrative Science Quarterly. In addition, he has authored several textbooks and scholarly books. He is currently completing a longitudinal study of determinants of managerial success and starting another study of the manager-employee interactions when the manager is from one culture and the employees are from another. knowledge of a job makes their views of job characteristics, the importance of specific characteristics, the importance of specific characteristics, and the evaluation of those characteristics particularly credible. Furthermore, the day-to-day contact with co-workers allows frequent discussion of workplace phenomena and thereby reinforces the perceptions co-workers have of a particular job.

 To illustrate the latter point, let's return to the story of John Rogers. As John became better acquainted with his new employer and with Adams and Woods, he began to agree with Adams that the work environment was less than ideal. Adams had complained that his job was boring and that he felt unappreciated - relatively mild criticisms compared with the views held by most of the salesforce. Adams and many other employees perceived the company as a place to obtain work experience and a "livable" salary until something better came along. His co-workers explained to John that other companies in the industry offered better benefits, more autonomy, and greater opportunities for advancement. As most employees agreed, promotion out of their adequately paid but dead-end jobs should be a primary career goal.

 Supervisors

 In many instances, supervisors are also a source of information. They can have a dual impact on workers' job perceptions. Obviously, a supervisor is a representative of higher levels of management and as such has an opportunity to present the organization's view of the job and the characteristics of the job considered important by the organization. For employees seeking rapid upward mobility and other "company" employees, the organization's view of the workplace as presented by the supervisor may be accepted with minimal questioning.

 In addition to being "management's representative," a supervisor may function in the capacity of a friend or co-worker. Employees and their supervisors may work as peers to solve particular problems. Similarly, they may interact on an informal basis during breaks, lunch, social functions, and so forth. The supervisor is in a position to comment on various elements of an employee's job during these informal times and may indirectly influence the employee's job perception.

 Woods, who had given John a positive view of the job during their conversation, was not particularly influenced by the information provided by his co-workers. Woods had been a personal friend of his division manager before being hired. The division manager continually provided Woods with information from upper management that advancement was almost automatic for employees who remained loyal to the company. Loyalty, seniority, and good performance were the keys to advancement. The division manager had convinced Woods that, although promotions were not as rapid as at other organizations, job pressures were less and job security was better. Woods did not consider himself to be a fast-track employee and preferred the relative safety and low pressure he associated with his current employer.

 Friends and Family

 Friends and family members provide a perspective on an employee's work situation that is often quite different from the perspective provided by supervisors and co-workers. Friends and family members who are not employed by the company are less subject to its influence and the influence of its employees. Thus they often are in a position to provide a different, and probably more objective, assessment of what a worker should experience on a job. New employees may attach greater validity to information provided by someone from outside the organization, believing that person to be less biased than a co-worker, especially if the person has the added credibility of being a trusted friend or family member. Alternately, some people may discount evaluations made by family members as being uninformed or naive.

 Family members and friends also are in a position to provide an external reference point. For example, they can inform a worker about jobs at other organizations. Discussing such jobs allows the employee to compare his or her job with situations elsewhere to determine the relative importance of various job characteristics and the relative merit of the company.

 Further, family members and friends often are an especially powerful source of support for new employees and employees who are having problems at work. Discussions with people outside the company allow employees to vent their feelings about their jobs. Family members and friends also provide support for the employee's self-image. They help an employee understand the rationale for particular characteristics of the job. Particularly for new employees, this kind of rationalizing is part of the process whereby a person's perception of what is important is modified to more closely parallel the information provided by others.

 In the original example, Woods' family members provided additional information, causing him to be satisfied with the company's slow rate of promotion. John learned that Woods was from a family of blue-collar workers. Woods had been the first family member to earn a college degree and to advance to a management position. Relative to other members of the family, Woods was doing quite well and was earning more than any of them. Besides, a quick promotion would almost certainly mean a transfer from the area, an alternative he did not really want to consider. Therefore, Woods was content to remain in his position and wait for a promotion that did not require a move.

 Customers or Clients

 In some cases, customers or clients provide workers with job-related information. Especially for employees of service companies, customers provide an evaluation of the company and its products. Such evaluations may not pertain to a specific job, but customers' assessments of the organization become part of its culture. Companies whose products are poorly received by customers are likely to have different expectations for their employees. Pressures to reduce costs, improve product quality, and/or increase quantity of output are usually greater at companies that are performing poorly. On the other hand, contacts with customers and customer treatment may be important considerations for an organization. These customer contacts, for example, often distinguish a self-service discount store from a store providing full service.

 Employees may perceive the importance of their work differently if the product is well accepted. Extremely poor customer relations may threaten the survival of the company and increase the attention employees focus on job security. Employees are more likely to feel that their job is secure and that they have career opportunities when a company has good customer relations.

 In organizations that encourage full service and personal contact with customers, the customer is likely considered an important source of job-related information. Both the employee and the employer are encouraged to be attentive to the needs and reactions of customers. Organizations with cultures attaching less significance to customer contact and satisfaction would likewise be expected to attribute less validity to information provided by customers. At those organizations, the line "This would not be a bad place to work if it were not for the customers" is too often said with sincerity by employees.

 GUIDELINES FOR USING AND

 MANAGING SOCIAL INFORMATION

 Managers often discuss the influence that groups have on the behavior of workers. Yet in planning interactions with employees, managers tend to overlook the social influence on employee behavior. Employee experience is an important factor affecting the ability of social information to influence behavior. Managers should also be sensitive to the impact of different information sources on employee behavior and attitudes. Moreover, they should use caution in attributing the results of various job measures to the "true, objective" job rather than to cues provided by others about the job.

 Employee Experience

 The length of time an employee has been in a particular position will likely influence the employee's susceptibility to information about the job. Employees who are new to the job, either newly hired workers or those transferred or promoted into a new position, are likely to be more receptive to social information than are employees who have greater seniority in the position. Especially when an employee is new to the job and the organization, a considerable amount of time is spent listening to many employees' views about the company's operations.

 The variety of information sources used by an employee decreases with his or her experience in the job, although reliance on a few selected sources may increase. The number of sources used decreases since much of the information provided from some sources is learned quickly. Thus those sources no longer contribute information of significant value to the employee. Other people, however, evolve as credible sources of worthwhile information. The latter will exert increased influence as employees gain work experience.

 INFORMATION SOURCE USAGE

 There are a vast number of potential sources of job-related information. As discussed above, family members, friends, customers, co-workers, and supervisors often are highly valued sources of information.

 During crisis periods of employment, family members and friends can be especially useful sources of information for an employee by helping the employee retain self-confidence. Family members and friends can encourage a new employee to keep trying and promise support if the new job does not work out.

 Although there is very little that managers can do to control information obtained from family members and friends, they need to be aware that information from such sources restricts the range of strategies available for responding to employees. Managers also must realize that employees are aware of the things other companies are doing. Depending on their information sources, some employees may know more about other organizations than their supervisors know.

 Customers and clients provide information about the value of a company's products relative to a competitor's products. Their evaluations may give employees insight into the probable success (or failure) of the company's product line. Frequent negative criticism of a company's product, for example, tells an employee that the product is inferior in some respect. Continued criticism may cause the employee to question the quality of the product, the quality of the company, and the probability of stable long-term employment. Ultimately, such negative information may provide the incentive for an employee to leave the organization.

 As with feedback from family members and friends, companies have little opportunity to insulate employees from feedback from customers. Instead, they must be sensitive to the feedback employees are receiving. Discussing with employees the information they receive enables management to explain steps the company is taking to correct problems and to assure employees of the company's integrity and stability. It also gives management the opportunity to learn about major developments at other organizations.

 Managers may be able to influence the initial image new employees have of the organization by selecting the co-workers to whom they are exposed. Assigning a new employee to a work group supportive of management will likely produce a more favorable initial attitude toward the company than assigning the worker to a more negative work group. However, assignment of co-workers is obviously a temporary control measure. Eventually, the new employee will be exposed to negative views of the company. If the criticisms seem more credible than the positive information provided by the first co-workers, management may be perceived as manipulative. Thus control of co-worker information must be used with discretion.

 The social information over which management has the greatest control is information provided by supervisors. Managers often overlook the influence supervisors have on their employees. For many employees, the immediate supervisor is the organization. A supervisor's negative attitude about the company or its management can be transmitted to employees, who in turn develop a negative attitude. Employees often know little about top management. Frequent critical remarks by a supervisor, even if the remarks are made in jest, may support negative information from other sources and cause employees to develop critical views of top management as well as the organization.

 In his article "Objective and Social Sources of Information in Task Redesign: A Field Experiment" (Administrative Science Quarterly, June 1983), Ricky W. Griffin reported that managers could change employees' perceptions of the job and organization without changing the job. One group of managers was trained to provide positive social or informational cues to employees. The employees' perceptions of task characteristics such as task variety, autonomy, feedback, and friendship opportunities differed significantly from the perceptions of the control group whose managers had no training in providing positive social or informational cues.

 Objective Job Versus Social Information

 Managers must be cautious when interpreting data gathered from employees through surveys and interviews. In taking steps to change jobs in response to data collected from employees, managers must be careful to distinguish between responses stemming from the "objective" job and from social information. If the responses are the result of the objective job, changing the objective job likely will change employees' perceptions and attitudes. However, if the responses are the result of information from the social context in which the job is being performed, changing the job will likely have minimal impact on employees' perceptions of and attitudes about the job as long as the social information provided about the job remains unchanged.

 SUMMARY

 Jobs and the characteristics associated with them rarely are totally objective. Employees' reactions to their jobs are influenced by information provided by co-workers, supervisors, family members, friends, and perhaps customers or clients. New employees are especially likely to use information from external sources to shape their perceptions of the job and the company. Long-term employees also respond to information provided by others. However, they tend to be more selective about their information sources than are new employees.

 Recent research suggests that for some aspects of work, social information about the job may be more important to understanding how employees view the job than is the actual "objective" job. Managers frequently overlook the impact that information from various sources may have on employees' perceptions. In fact, changing the job may have little effect on employees' feelings about the job if information provided by others remains unchanged