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Shared rewards and goal interdependence for psychological safety among departments in China

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Abstract

Psychological safety has been shown to facilitate learning from experience that can help organizations adapt to the changing marketplace. Shared rewards and cooperative, but not competitive and independent, goals may help department members feel supported and able to discuss open-mindedly their experiences, including mistakes, and learn from them. One hundred and twenty five CEOs and 436 executives from 125 companies in China completed measures of psychological safety, goal interdependence, and shared rewards. The results of two structural equation analyses suggest that shared rewards can convince departments that their goals are cooperative and that this conclusion in turn leads to psychological safety. These results were interpreted as suggesting that shared rewards and cooperative goals are important foundations for organizational psychological safety in China and perhaps other countries as well.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Economics and Management, Tsinghua University, Beijing, China

    Guoquan Chen

  2. Department of Management, Lingnan University, Tuen Mun, Hong Kong

    Dean Tjosvold

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  1. Guoquan Chen
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  2. Dean Tjosvold
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Correspondence to Guoquan Chen.

Additional information

The authors appreciate the support of the able research assistants at Tsinghua University in Beijing, China. This work has been supported by Natural Science Foundation of China (70625003, 70972024, 70890081, 70272007, 70572005, 7032100), Key Research Project Foundation for Humanity & Social Science (06JJD630013), and PhD Research Foundation (20090002110037), of Chinese Education Committee to the first author, and Research Grants Council of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region, China, (LU3404/05H) to the second author.

Appendix

Appendix

Measures

Cooperative goals

Departments ‘swim or sink’ together.

Departments want each other to succeed.

Departments seek compatible goals.

The goals of departments go together.

When departments work together, they usually have common goals.

Competitive goals

Departments structure things in ways that favor their own goals rather than the goals of other team members.

Departments have a ‘win-lose’ relationship.

Departments like to show that they are superior to each other.

Departments’ goals are incompatible with each other.

Departments give high priority to the things they want to accomplish and low priority to the things other departments want to accomplish.

Independent goals

Each department “does his own thing.”

Departments like to be successful through their own individual work.

Departments work for our own independent goals.

The success of one department is unrelated to others success.

Departments are most concerned about what they accomplish when working by themselves.

Profit Sharing within organization

In our company, each department will share material (such as money) reward for its contribution if the whole company achieves good performance and profit.

In our company, each department will share spiritual reward for its contribution if the whole company achieves good performance and profit.

In our company, other departments will share material (such as money) reward for their contributions if one department achieves good performance and profit.

In our company, other departments will share spiritual material reward for its contribution if one department achieves good performance and profit.

Generally speaking, departments share common goal and mutually support each other in our company.

Inter-departmental psychological safety

Departments are able to bring up and discuss problems and tough issues during cooperation with other departments.

Departments seldom reject other departments for being different.

It is safe to for department to take a risk during cooperation with other departments.

It is easy to for department to ask other departments for help.

No department would deliberately act in a way that undermines other departments’ efforts.

Working with other departments, my department’s unique skills and talents are valued and utilized.

If one department makes a mistake during cooperation with other departments, other departments are often held against it.

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Chen, G., Tjosvold, D. Shared rewards and goal interdependence for psychological safety among departments in China. Asia Pac J Manag 29, 433–452 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10490-010-9201-0

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