Administrative Rewards and Coordination among Committee Members.

Members of coordinating committees may develop contrasting and even conflicting intentions: to help their colleagues, to accomplish their individual assignments, and to work on the group's task. A number of coordinating committees in a large business firm were given an experimental task designed to simulate the conceptual characteristics of their committees. The effects of three different experimental conditions were examined, each conceived as likely to generate one or another of the three motives just described, and each representing a feasible emphasis in the reward system of a large organization. The results reveal that the potential rewards for individual success, group success, or both, create quite different styles of interpersonal relations and varied degrees of effectiveness in collaboration among members. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]