effects of perceived skill dissimilarity and task interdependence on helping in work teams

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DOI: 10.1177/0149206304271382

2005 31: 73Journal of ManagementGerben S. Van der Vegt and Evert Van de Vliert

Effects of Perceived Skill Dissimilarity and Task Interdependence on Helping in Work Teams

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10.1177/0149206304271382JournalofManagement/February2005VanderVegt,VandeVliert/ SkillDissimilarity

Effects of Perceived Skill Dissimilarity and

Task Interdependence on Helping in Work Teams

Gerben S. Van der Vegt*Department of Management and Organization, University of Groningen,

Landleven 5, 9700 AV Groningen, the Netherlands

Evert Van de VliertSocial and Organizational Psychology, University of Groningen,

Grote Kruisstraat 2/1, 9712 TS Groningen, the Netherlands

Thisstudyexamined theeffectsof perceived skill dissimilarity andtask interdependenceon individual team

members helping behavior in a panel study of senior business students enrolled in a management game.

Thestudentswere randomlyassigned to 20 teams andfunctioned as a firmstop managementgroupduring

a full-time 3-week period. Questionnaire data were collected after the 1st and 2nd week. Consistent with

self-categorization theory, theanalysesshowed perceived skill dissimilarity to decreasebothself-reported

and peer-rated helping behavior under conditions of low task interdependence and to increasean individ-

uals helping behavior under conditions of high task interdependence.

Keywords: task interdependence; helping; team performance; organizational citizenship behavior;

self-categorization

The effectiveness of many teams including product development teams, multidisciplinary work

teams, and cross-functional teams depends on whether members withdifferent backgrounds helpeach

other to fulfill their tasks and solve problems (Holland, Gaston, & Gomez, 2000). The complex and

dynamic nature of the task and the specialized knowledge and expertise of team members working in

such teams require that individualsprovide assistance to each other when they fulfill their tasks andare

confronted with task-related problems. Unfortunately, cooperative relationships appear to be difficult

to establish in diverse teams (Northcraft, Polzer, Neale, & Kramer, 1995). Although some teams com-

posed of individuals with different knowledge, skills, and abilities are characterized by cooperative

and effective intrateam relationships (Cooper, 1995; Griffin, 1997), others are plagued by interper-

Theauthorswould liketo thankthe threeanonymousreviewers fortheir valuablecommentson an earlier versionof thisarticle.

Preparation of this article was facilitatedby a RoyalNetherlandsAcademy of Arts andSciencesFellowship awarded to Gerben

S. Van der Vegt.

*Corresponding author. Tel.: 31 503 637 904; fax: 31 503 636 304.

E-mail address: [email protected]

Journal of Management, Vol. 31 No. 1, February 2005 73-89

DOI: 10.1177/0149206304271382

2005 Southern Management Association

73

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sonal conflicts and cooperation problems. Both the software of team members cognitions and emo-

tions and the hardware of jobs and coordination requirements seem to make the difference between

success and failure (Holland et al., 2000; Song, Montoya-Weiss, & Schmidt, 1997; Susman & Ray,

1999).

In this study, we examined to what extent team membersperceived skill dissimilarity affectedtheirhelping behavior, defined as providingassistance to other team members with an organizationally rel-

evanttask or problem (Organ, 1988).We also investigated thebeneficial impactof team memberstask

interdependence. In addition to the direct effects of perceived skill dissimilarity and task interdepen-

dence on helping behavior, we propose that the cooperative contacts resulting from task interdepen-

dence may result in individuated impressions of dissimilar others and reduce the negative conse-

quences or increase thepositive consequences of perceived skill dissimilarity. A panel study tested the

occurrence of these effects in a sample of business students enrolled in a management simulation.

Perceived Skill Dissimilarity and Helping

Much research has already examined theeffects of dissimilarity on prosocial behavior and effec-

tiveness. Most of these studies have employed a demographic approach that emphasizes the effects ofobjectively measurable differences on demographic attributes, such as gender, age, and job type (for

reviews, see Milliken & Martins, 1996; Tsui & Gutek, 1999; Williams & OReilly, 1998). Based on

self-categorization theory (Turner, 1987) and the similarity/attraction framework (Byrne, 1971), it is

assumed that individuals use social category information to make inferences about their similarity to

other individuals. People who are perceived to be less similar are typically thought to be less predict-

able andmore threatening (Hogg, 2000; Hogg & Mullin, 1999), which makes interaction less pleasant

(Byrne, 1971) and leads to less interpersonal attraction and prosocial behavior (Schroeder, Penner,

Dovidio, & Piliavin, 1995). However, as Harrison, Price, Gavin, and Florey (2002:1032) have men-

tioned, results of many studies employing a demographic approach have shown equivocal findings,

small effect sizes, and differential effects for the diversity attributes studied.

One way to explain this pattern of results is to note that the effects of demographic differences rely

on perceptions and that objective differences do not necessarily result in perceptions of dissimilarity

(Lawrence, 1997). Indeed, scholars have suggested that objective assessments of dissimilaritycan fail

to incorporate all the relevant components of interpersonal differences and that differences may be

more or less salient to an individual (Harrison et al., 2002; Hobman, Bordia, & Gallois, 2003; Randel,

2002). Consequently, individuals may strongly differ in their perception of, and reaction to, objective

dissimilarities. For this reason, this study focused on whether, and how, perceived dissimilarity, rather

than objective dissimilarity, is related to ones helping behavior.

Moreover, giventhe increasing useof teams inwhich members differin knowledge, skills, andabil-

ities, we decided to examine the relationship between perceived dissimilarityin knowledge, skills, and

abilities (henceforth skills dissimilarity) and the helping behavior of work team members. Consistent

withprevious diversity research (e.g.,Randel, 2002)and self-categorizationtheory (Turner, 1987), we

propose that members of work teams usesalient characteristicsof themselves andother team members

to developa mental representation of their ownknowledge, skills, andabilities, and those of thegroup

anditsmembers.Such representationscanbe based on demographic characteristicsbut also on a num-ber of other cues, including behavior patterns, verbal and nonverbal communication, and exchanged

personal information. When people compare their own knowledge, skills, and abilities with those of

the other team members, cognitions about the degree of skill dissimilarity are invoked. Other team

members are perceived as relatively similar to themselves (i.e., their in-group) or as relatively dissimi-

larfrom themselves (i.e., theout-group). These perceptions of skill dissimilarity mayvary across team

members and change over time because, as a result of continuing interaction, individuals may learn

74 Journal of Management / February 2005



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about the knowledge, skills, and abilities of the other team members and recognize that they are more

similar or dissimilar than they previously assumed (cf. Harrison, Price, & Bell, 1998).

Suchperceptions of skilldissimilaritymayaffect individualshelping behavior. Severalexperimen-

taland field studies have shown that perceptions of dissimilarity result in in-group favoritism and out-

group derogation (e.g., Bergami & Bagozzi, 2000; Ellemers, Kortekaas, & Ouwerkerk, 1999). Self-categorization research suggests that to create or maintain a positive self-image, individuals tend to

identify with similar in-group members and to move away from dissimilar out-group members. As a

result, team members will express more favorable actions toward members who are perceived to be

similar than to those who are perceived to be dissimilar (see Barnum, 1997; Hogg, 2000). Conse-

quently, we hypothesize the following:

Hypothesis 1:Individual team members perceived skill dissimilarity is negatively related to their helping

behavior.

Task Interdependence and Helping

Individualshelping behavior may not only be influenced by perceived skill dissimilarity but alsoby situational characteristics including job characteristics and coordination requirements (Chatman &

Barsade, 1995).An important situational variablethat mayinfluence theoccurrence of helping behav-

ior is task interdependencethat is, the degree to which the design of an individual team members

tasks and job requires that he or she coordinates activities and exchanges materials and information

with other members of the team for being able to carry out the job (Brass, 1981; Kiggundu, 1983; Van

der Vegt, Emans, & Van de Vliert, 2000, 2001). This task interdependence is not only the result of for-

mally prescribed positions and roles but also of patterned and repeated interactions among individual

team members that become relatively stable over time and take on an institutionalized quality (cf.

Brass & Burkhardt, 1993).

Normally, the task interdependence of individuals within a work group will vary a great deal (for

evidence, see Van der Vegt et al., 2000, 2001). Even individuals holding nominally the same job may

complete different tasks that may lead to differences in task interdependence. Moreover, although in

some jobs thedegreeof task interdependence is fixed andstable (e.g., workers on an assembly line), inmany other jobs the level of task interdependence is variable and changes over time. For example,

research hasshown that the total frequencyof interaction andinformation exchangeacross thevarious

functions involved in a product development project increases as the project moves from early to later

stages (Olson, Walker, Ruekert, & Bonner, 2001). Consequently, the degree of task interdependence

maynot only vary as a resultof thesimilarities anddifferences in thejobs, tasks,androlesof individual

employees but may also change over time.

Several cross-sectional studies have reported a positive relationship between task interdependence

and cooperation or helping behavior (e.g., Anderson & Williams, 1996; Pearce & Gregersen, 1991;

Wageman& Baker, 1997). The reasons for this positive relationshipare that, with increasing levels of

task interdependence, the interactive nature of the work itself enhances the experienced responsibility

for other team membersoutcomes (Kiggundu, 1983; Pearce & Gregersen, 1991) and encourages an

open flow of communication (Thompson, 1967). Higher levels of task interdependence may also

increase recognition of the need for coordination of effort and the need for helping to solve problems

that arise (Anderson & Williams, 1996). Finally, the possibility to punish or reward the behaviors of

interdependentothers motivates task-interdependent teammembers to subjugatepersonal interests for

collective interests (Mudrack, 1989; Murnighan & Conlon, 1991). Taken together, this leads to the

following hypothesis:

Hypothesis2: Individual teammemberstaskinterdependence ispositivelyrelatedto their helpingbehavior.

Van der Vegt, Van de Vliert / Skill Dissimilarity 75



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Joint Effect of Perceived Skill Dissimilarity

and Task Interdependence

Fora number of reasons, task interdependencemayalso moderate the impactof perceivedskill dis-

similarity on helping behavior in work teams. Many scholars have discussed the potentially powerful

effect of task interdependence in diminishing stereotyping and categorization bias. In the organiza-

tional sciences, for example, Lawrence and Lorsch (1967) have argued that organizations could bal-

ance the pressures of specialized expertise with the negative by-products of such specialization by

increasing the coordination and integration among team members through enhancing the level of task

interdependence among individual team members. In addition, reviewers of demographic diversity

effects have more or less explicitly proposed that task interdependence may diminish detrimental

diversity effects (e.g., Brickson, 2000; Milliken & Martins, 1996; Williams & OReilly, 1998).

Despite these predominantly theoretical foreshadows, to date, the moderating effect of task interde-

pendence on the effect of perceived skill dissimilarity has not been empirically tested.

On thebasis of theabove evidence, we investigated to what extent theeffects of perceivedskill dis-

similarity on helping maydepend on an individual team members degree of task interdependence. We

suspect that the hypothesized negative relationship between perceived skill dissimilarity and helpingbehavior will be especially negative for team members working under conditions of low task interde-

pendence. In such circumstances, individuals perceive dissimilar others less as in-group and more as

out-groupmembers, with theeffect that the tendency to help them will be weak. With increasing levels

of task interdependence, however, a team member who perceives to be dissimilar from the other team

members will have more interpersonal contact with the other team members, which may reduce cate-

gorization biases (Dovidio, Kawakami, & Gaertner, 2000; Pettigrew, 1998). The reason is that

increasedcontact increasesknowledgeabout thedissimilar others and produces personalizing interac-

tions with theexchange of more intimate information, which reduces anxiety (Brewer & Miller, 1984;

Stephan & Stephan, 1984).This is not to saythat highly task-interdependent workers ignoreperceived

interpersonaldissimilarities. Instead, they formindividuated rather thanstereotypic impressions of the

dissimilar others and learn to appreciate the others characteristics and differences. In such circum-

stances, negative categorization effects may be dampened, and perceived skill dissimilarity may even

stimulate interpersonal helping and cooperation because individuals may learn that dissimilar teammembersknowledge, skills, andabilitiescomplement their own(cf. Hornsey & Hogg, 2000).Consis-

tent with this contention, laboratory research has shown that groups of dissimilar experts use each

others unique information more when group members are familiar with one another (e.g., Gruenfeld,

Mannix, Williams, & Neale, 1996). Similar positive effects of dissimilarity were reported by Pelz

(1956), who found that frequent positive contact amongdissimilar scientists was positively correlated

with theextent to which they helpedoneanother. Moreover, research conducted in the intergroup liter-

ature (e.g., Dovidio et al., 2000; Gaertner, Mann, Dovidio, Murrell, & Pomare, 1990) has shown that

when interpersonal relationships are satisfying, individuals may react positively to interpersonal

dissimilarities.As a result, underconditionsof hightaskinterdependence, perceived skill dissimilarity

may be positively related to individual helping behavior. Hence, we hypothesize the following:

Hypothesis3: Forlow-task-interdependent teammembers, perceivedskill dissimilarity is negativelyrelatedto

their helping behavior. For high-task-interdependent team members, perceived skill dissimilarity is posi-tively related to their helping behavior.

76 Journal of Management / February 2005



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Method

Task Setting

The panel study presented below was designed to test the hypotheses among students enrolled in a

management game. The game is organized yearlyby theManagement Department and is used to train

students during a full-time 3-week period to function as members of a firms top management group

(for details about thegames nature, seeMCC, 1993).Teams competed ingroupsof five teams,a group

being the game equivalent of an industry. All the teams were six-person teams with an assortment of

different roles across teams, including general management, production, marketing, accounting, and

personnel.

Thegame wasplayed in four rounds, with each round containing several decision periods. Because

thegame and theassociated procedures arecomplex, thefirst round wasa practicing round containing

two decision periods. This minimized the chances for misunderstanding by participants. In each deci-

sion period, the teams had to make decisions on a total of about 30 strategy issues that covered all

important business areas such as investment in production capacity and quality, marketing, pricing,

advertising and sales promotion, finance, capital budgeting, quality issues, hiring personnel, layoffs,intelligence, and R&D. Their decisions had to be recorded on a special decision form that was sent to

the instructors (i.e., three faculty members of the Management Department). After processing the

decisions of the five competing companies, the instructors provided each team with a summary of the

teams results for thespecific period. This information involveda large range of relevantareas, includ-

ingmarketshares, profit rates, and financial stock positions, andwasused by the teams as the input for

their decisions in the next period.

After thepracticeroundandeach of thethreeserious rounds, theinstructorscomputedthe so-called

criterionscores, being a compositemeasure of market share, profit, and theprojectedsustainability of

the companys results after the last playing period. These scores proxy firm performance. Teams

received feedback about their criterion score after their practicing round, at the beginning of the 2nd

week, at the beginning of the 3rd week, and at the end of the management game after 3 weeks.

During themanagement game, the teams were physically located in a clearly defined area. Because

team members were allowed to autonomously divide tasks, plan activities, and distribute the different

roles across team members during the game, the degree of task interdependence varied substantially

both within and between teams. That is, whereas some of the teams chose to divide the work in such a

way that specific decisions were made by individual team members (e.g., only the marketing director

works on marketing issues), which resulted in low levels of task interdependence, other teams chose

fora collectivestrategy inwhich alldecisions were made together, which resulted in high levels of task

interdependence. In practice,however, most of the teams chose for a mixbetween these twoextremes.

Typical was that some of themembers workedclosely together, whereas others worked in relative iso-

lationon problems related to their area of expertise. This resulted in different levels of task interdepen-

dence withinone and the same team. No formal working hours were prescribed, but as a resultof time

pressure, participants generally worked for more than 10 hours a day.

Sample and Procedure

One hundred and twenty Dutch students from different faculties, including human resource man-

agement, economy, legal affairs,andorganizationalpsychology,participatedin themanagementgame

Van der Vegt, Van de Vliert / Skill Dissimilarity 77



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and were randomly assigned to 20 teams by the instructors. No effort was being made to creategroups

that were similar in composition regarding faculty, age, or gender. A presentation to allof the students

at the beginning of the business game was used to introduce the research team, consisting of the first

author and an assistant, and to ask for the students voluntary participation in a study that was pre-

sented as an investigation into the determinants of top management team effectiveness. Moreover,instructions for the completionand return of two questionnaires were provided as the study employed

a design with two measurement waves. It was explained to the respondents that questionnaires would

be coded for the purpose of Time 1 (T1) and Time 2 (T2) data matching but that their anonymity was

guaranteed and that the researchers would distribute questionnaires among the members of the work

teams who agreed to participate.

The first measurement wave was conducted after participants had interacted as a team for 1 week

(T1). A second administration of the same questionnaire was conducted 1 week later (T2). A 92%

response rate was achieved at T1 (n= 110, distributed across 20 teams) and a 65% response rateat T2

(n= 78, distributed across 15 teams). Seventy-four respondents filled out both questionnaires. Fifty-

four percent of the respondents were women, all of them were Caucasian, and the mean age was 21.1

years (SD= 1.2).

Measures

Unless otherwise stated, the questionnaires consisted of self-report Likert-type items (1 =strongly

disagree, 5 =strongly agree). When appropriate, the items for each scale were averaged to produce a

composite score for each respondent.

Perceived skill dissimilaritywas assessed using three newly developed items. The wording of the

items was such that they circumvented status differences: I have another educational specialization

than the other team members, I have other skills than my team members, and My abilities clearly

differfrom thoseof theother team members. Cronbachs alpha was.78 at T1 and.82at T2.Pretests of

this measure on a separate sampleof 48 students revealed a single reliable factor ( = .77) and showedthe perceived skill dissimilarity measure to be negatively related to team identification (r= .44,p

effects of perceived skill dissimilarity and task interdependence on helping in work teams

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