Using Social Psychology to Constructively Involve Colleagues in Internal Evaluation

Internal evaluators can lead positive, helpful, promotive interactions among colleagues to make evaluation more appropriate, understandable, and accessible. As the motivations and abilities of non-evaluator colleagues are highly varied, interpersonal skills help facilitate cooperation and promote evaluation. Social interdependence theory from social psychology can assist with understanding teamwork and developing interpersonal competence. While the literature links social interdependence theory with evaluation, there is limited understanding of its application in practice. In this article, we share our internal evaluation experiences in three Australian nonprofit organizations to elucidate how we harnessed social connections and interpersonal dynamics to achieve cooperative goals. The purpose of this article is to share our process for using theory and literature to assist with reflecting, planning, and acting, around the way we interact with colleagues. Evaluators may find this process useful when considering how to personalize professional development around interpersonal competencies for evaluation.

Effects of Cooperation and Competition on Performance, Emotion, and Effort: Goal and Means Interdependence

Social interdependence theory proposes that task structure influences performance via social interaction. Using this framework, we examined sport performance. Fifty-six males performed a basketball task under four conditions: as an individual (individual, perform your best) and as a member of a team of two (cooperation, where teammates sought to better their individual performance; means independent competition, where two teams competed sequentially to outperform the other team; means interdependent competition, where two teams competed simultaneously to outperform the other team). Task performance (points) was better during means independent competition than other conditions. Anxiety and effort peaked during the competitions and enjoyment was greater during competition and cooperation than during the individual condition. Emotions, effort, and actions are discussed as explanations for the performance effects. Social interdependence theory provides a valuable framework to understand emotion, motivation, and performance. Team competition can be used to promote effort and enhance performance in sport.

The Impact of Teammates’ Online Reputations on Physicians’ Online Appointment Numbers: A Social Interdependency Perspective

Online medical team is an emerging online medical model in which patients can choose a doctor to register and consult. A doctor’s reputation cannot be ignored. It is worth studying how that online reputation affects the focal doctor’s appointment numbers on the online medical team. Based on the online reputation mechanism and social interdependence theory, this study empirically studied the impact of the focal doctor’s own reputation and other teammates’ reputation on his/her appointment numbers. Our data include 31,143 doctors from 6103 online expert teams of Guahao.com. The results indicate that for a leader doctor, his/her appointment numbers are not related to his/her own reputation, and there was an inverted U-shaped relationship with the ordinary doctors’ reputations on the team. For an ordinary doctor, his/her appointment numbers were positively correlated with his/her own reputation and positively correlated with his/her leader’s reputation and there was an inverted U-shaped relationship with the other ordinary doctors’ reputations. The research showed that there is a positive spillover effect on the team leader’s reputation. There are two relationships between team doctors: competition and cooperation. This study provides guidance for the leader to select team members and the ordinary doctor to select a team.

Parental Influence on Pupils' Conflict Responses: A Case Study of Tangenhamo Secondary School in Mt. Darwin District, Zimbabwe

The study investigated the influence of parents on pupils’ conflict responses at Tangenhamo secondary school basing on the Social interdependence theory and Lederach’s Moral Imagination theory using the case study method. Parents directly intervene in pupils’ conflict and can indirectly influence gender considerations, religion and the extended family interrelationship matrix. The peer influence of adolescence is extensively divorced from parents’ factor. Although parents shape gender and religion considerations, individual pupils use them to shape future conflict responses independent to parents. Diversity in factors influencing conflict responses is becoming more pronounced due to media influence and the guidance and counselling offered in schools and the researchers recommend a more diverse conflict resolution partnership including parents in shaping conflict responses of pupils at school. The researchers believe that collaboration between parents and teachers can bring about peace oriented conflict responses in school.

Review of Web-Based Research in Health Care for Georgia

Information and Communication Technology (ICT) has become distinguished from Information Technology in that ICT extends specifically beyond technology to its use with critical organizational skills, the skills across a market segment, or across a system of organizations. In this chapter, the authors begin to apply social interdependence theory to their interest in the technologies and techniques that increase both knowledge and social welfare (e.g., ICT), in particular the application of metrics to organizational performance. In this chapter, they address ICT in our research as it is applied to Telemedicine, eHealth, and e-Institutional Review Boards (eIRBs) for healthcare in Georgia.

Mixing Individual Incentives and Group Incentives: Best of Both Worlds or Social Dilemma?

Equity theory emphasizes making distinctions between individual contributions to teams and then recognizing these with differentiations in rewards. However, social interdependence theory emphasizes maximizing cooperation in teams by compensating members equally. Several researchers have advocated offsetting the limitations of individually based incentives and group-based incentives by mixing the two. However, the authors contend that this puts team members in a social dilemma, leading them to focus on the individually based component. The authors find that in comparison to group-based only incentives, mixed individual/group incentives lead team members to perform faster but less accurately and focus on their own taskwork to the detriment of backing up behavior.