• What are the mental processes of individuals involved in

collective work?

• If we think in terms of people working together, be it in

aircraft carrier flight crews, disaster relief teams, product

innovation teams or choirs, people have to perform actions

that are interrelated with the actions of others.

• The (positive) outcomes (landing a plan, saving lives,

creating new products or producing beautiful sound) produced

by the group or collective are due to the coordination between

individuals’ activities.

•My dissertation will investigate the role of attention in

coordinating activities between individuals in collective,

interdependent work.

Aircraft carriers, Choirs, and Attention to the Self-in-Relation-to-Other: Foundations for a Psychology of Organizing

John Paul Stephens, University of Michigan, Department of Psychology

Organizing = the ongoing process of meaningfully assembling these interdependent actions (Weick, 1979)

Organizations = “assemblages of interacting human beings” (March and Simon, 1958: 4)

consisting of complementary or interdependent activities performed by individuals who have a common goal (Katz and Kahn, 1978)

Collective = individuals acting as if they are part of a group, thus interrelating their actions with some care for the other members of their group (Weick & Roberts, 1993).

Coordination = the management of interdependent activities (Malone & Crowston, 1994).

Heedful interrelating = individuals contribute (perform actions ) as if they were part of a system, rather than independent elements (Weick & Roberts, 1993)

Responsiveness = the probability of an actual response to the communication behaviors of another; the proportion of these responses that are actually relevant to the behavior to which they are a response; the appropriateness of the response latency; and the appropriateness of the response elaboration (Davis & Holtgraves, 1984)

• Quantitative- Song Creation Group Task•Participants

•120 undergraduate students •3 X 3 Manipulation Design

• ATTENTIONAL FOCUS INTSRUCTIONS

•SELF vs. OTHER vs. SELF-IN-RELATION-TO-OTHER

• TOPIC INSTRUCTIONS

• SELF vs. OTHER vs. SELF-IN-RELATION-TO-OTHER

•Dependent Measure: Response latency, creativity of song

• Qualitative- Singing & UMS Choral Union•Participants:

•Conductor and members of the UMS Choral Union

•Design:

•Interviews

•Participant-observation

METHODS

(Individual A)Attention to self-

in-relation-to-other

Responsiveness to other

Coordination quality

CollectivePerformance

(Individual C)Attention to self-

in-relation-to-other

Interdependent Activity

(Individual D)Attention to self-

in-relation-to-other

Interdependent Activity

InterdependentActivity

(Individual A)Attention to self-

in-relation-to-other

THEORETICAL MODEL

KEY DEFINITIONS:

Relatedness and Interdependence in Organizational Life

• How does this attention vary by levels of interdependence (Thompson, 1967)?

• Status/Power (Overbeck & Park, 2001)?

• Expertise ?

INTERDEPENDENT ACTIVITIES IN COLLECTIVES

METHODS

THEORETICAL COMPLICATIONS

REFERENCES

In order to better understand “organizing” and “heedful interrelating” the concept of “attention” can be used to describe what is going on at the individual

and then the group level.

Attention = “the taking possession by the mind, in clear and vivid form, of one out of what seem several

simultaneously possible objects or trains of thought”. (James, 1890)

-the process of selection amongst alternatives aimed at improving the efficiency of mental processes (Luck & Vecera,

2002).

Self-in-relation-to-other = the self as defined in terms of its relationship(s) with others (Jordan et al., 1991; Kuhnen &

Oyserman, 2002; Markus & Kitayama, 1991)

Attention to self-in-relation-to-other = attention that focuses on or selects information about how the

actions of the self and the actions of the other relate or correspond to each other

Heedful interrelating has been empirically examined at the group level (Vogus & Sutcliffe, 2007).

But what occurs in the minds of individuals who act as a collective?

Weick (1979) posed the question : “How are the processes and contents of attention influenced by the

conditions of task-based interdependency found in those settings we conventionally designate as organizations?” (pp.

32-33).

I attempt to answer this question, suggesting linkages between individual-level constructs that describe how

attention might be operating amongst individuals in the collective of a choir.

THEORETICAL & EMPIRICAL GAPSKEY DEFINITIONS

INTRODUCTION

Acknowledgements: My thanks to Jerry Blackstone, Jane Dutton & Lance Sandelands for their guidance and encouragement thus far. Thank you also to Karl Weick & Kathie Sutcliffe for encouraging ideas that inspire…

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Davis, D. & Holtgraves, T. 1984. Perceptions of unresponsive others: attributions, attraction, understandability and memory of their utterances. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 20: 383-408. James, W. 1890. The principles of psychology. New York: Holt. Jordan, J.V., Kaplan, A.G., Miller, J.B., Stiver, I.P., & Surrey, J.L. 1991. Women’s Growth in Connection: Writings from the Stone Center. New York: Guilford. Katz, D., & Kahn, R.L. 1978. The social psychology of organizations. New York: Wiley. Kuhnen, U., & Oyserman, D. 2002. Thinking about the self influences thinking in general: cognitive consequences of salient self-concept. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 38: 492-499. Luck, S.J., & Vecera, S.P. 2002. Attention. In H. Pashler (Series ed.) & S. Yantis (Volume ed.), Stevens’ Handbook of Experimental Psychology: Vol. 1 Sensation and Perception (3rd ed.). New York: Wiley. Malone, T. W., & Crowston, K. 1994. The interdisciplinary study of coordination. ACM Computing Surveys, 26: 87-119. March, J.G., & Simon, H.A. 1958. Organizations. New York: Wiley. Markus, H.R. & Kitayama, S. 1991. Culture and the self: implications for cognition, emotion, and motivation. Psychological Review, 98(2): 224-253. Overbeck, J., & Park, B. (2001). When power does not corrupt: Superior individuation processes among powerful perceivers. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 81(4), 549-565. Thompson, J.D. 1967. Organizations in action: social science bases of administrative theory. New York: McGraw-Hill. Vogus T.J., & Sutcliffe, K.M. 2007. The safety organizing scale: development and validation of a behavioral measure of safety culture in hospital nursing units. Medical Care. Weick, K.E. 1979. The social psychology of organizing (2nd ed.). Reading, MA: Addison- Wesley. Weick K.E., Roberts K.H. 1993. Collective mind in organizations: heedful interrelating on flight decks. Administrative Science Quarterly, 38: 357-381.

RESEARCH QUESTION

RESEARCH QUESTION

What are the individual level cognitions involved in coordination as heedful

interrelating?