IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/plo/pone00/0213795.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

When those who know do share: Group goals facilitate information sharing, but social power does not undermine it

Author

Listed:
  • Annika Scholl
  • Florian Landkammer
  • Kai Sassenberg

Abstract

Good team decisions require that team members share information with each other. Yet, members often tend to selfishly withhold important information. Does this tendency depend on their power within the team? Power-holders frequently act more selfishly (than the powerless)—accordingly, they might be tempted to withhold information. We predicted that given a task goal to ‘solve a task’, power-holders would selfishly share less information than the powerless. However, a group goal to ‘solve the task together’ would compensate for this selfishness, heightening particularly power-holders’ information sharing. In parallel, an individual goal to ‘solve the task alone’ may heighten selfishness and lower information sharing (even) among the powerless. We report five experiments (N = 1305), comprising all studies conducted in their original order. Analyses yielded weak to no evidence for these predictions; the findings rather supported the beneficial role of a group goal to ensure information sharing for both the powerful and the powerless.

Suggested Citation

  • Annika Scholl & Florian Landkammer & Kai Sassenberg, 2019. "When those who know do share: Group goals facilitate information sharing, but social power does not undermine it," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 14(3), pages 1-17, March.
    • Handle: RePEc:plo:pone00:0213795
    DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0213795
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0213795
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article/file?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0213795&type=printable
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1371/journal.pone.0213795?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. See, Kelly E. & Morrison, Elizabeth W. & Rothman, Naomi B. & Soll, Jack B., 2011. "The detrimental effects of power on confidence, advice taking, and accuracy," Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, Elsevier, vol. 116(2), pages 272-285.
    2. David Dubois & Ena Inesi & Simona Botti & Derek D. Rucker & Adam D. Galinsky, 2011. "Power and Choice: Their Dynamic Interplay in Quenching the Thirst for Personal Control," Post-Print hal-00696608, HAL.
    3. Steinel, Wolfgang & Utz, Sonja & Koning, Lukas, 2010. "The good, the bad and the ugly thing to do when sharing information: Revealing, concealing and lying depend on social motivation, distribution and importance of information," Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, Elsevier, vol. 113(2), pages 85-96, November.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Yunyue YANG & Jie LI & Tomoki SEKIGUCHI, 2018. "Supervisors’Responses to Employee Voice Behavior: An Experimental Study in China and Japan," Discussion papers e-18-006, Graduate School of Economics , Kyoto University.
    2. Palmeira, Mauricio, 2020. "Advice in the presence of external cues: The impact of conflicting judgments on perceptions of expertise," Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, Elsevier, vol. 156(C), pages 82-96.
    3. Ma, Anyi & Yang, Yu & Savani, Krishna, 2019. "“Take it or leave it!” A choice mindset leads to greater persistence and better outcomes in negotiations," Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, Elsevier, vol. 153(C), pages 1-12.
    4. Hattula, Johannes D. & Schmitz, Christian & Schmidt, Martin & Reinecke, Sven, 2015. "Is more always better? An investigation into the relationship between marketing influence and managers' market intelligence dissemination," International Journal of Research in Marketing, Elsevier, vol. 32(2), pages 179-186.
    5. Joseph P. Gaspar & Maurice E. Schweitzer, 2021. "Confident and Cunning: Negotiator Self-Efficacy Promotes Deception in Negotiations," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 171(1), pages 139-155, June.
    6. Kausel, Edgar E. & Culbertson, Satoris S. & Leiva, Pedro I. & Slaughter, Jerel E. & Jackson, Alexander T., 2015. "Too arrogant for their own good? Why and when narcissists dismiss advice," Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, Elsevier, vol. 131(C), pages 33-50.
    7. Lu, Zhi & Bolton, Lisa E. & Ng, Sharon & Chen, Haipeng (Allan), 2020. "The Price of Power: How Firm’s Market Power Affects Perceived Fairness of Price Increases," Journal of Retailing, Elsevier, vol. 96(2), pages 220-234.
    8. Vincenz Frey & Arnout van de Rijt, 2021. "Social Influence Undermines the Wisdom of the Crowd in Sequential Decision Making," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 67(7), pages 4273-4286, July.
    9. Camacho, N.M.A. & de Jong, M.G. & Stremersch, S., 2014. "The Effect of Customer Empowerment on Adherence to Expert Advice," ERIM Report Series Research in Management ERS-2014-005-MKT, Erasmus Research Institute of Management (ERIM), ERIM is the joint research institute of the Rotterdam School of Management, Erasmus University and the Erasmus School of Economics (ESE) at Erasmus University Rotterdam.
    10. Kang, Haiying & Wang, Ying & Wu, Chia-Huei & Shaffer, Margaret A., 2024. "When and why host country nationals give advice to expatriates: A relational work context perspective," International Business Review, Elsevier, vol. 33(6).
    11. Hoever, Inga J. & Betancourt, Nathan E. & Chen, Guoquan & Zhou, Jing, 2023. "How others light the creative spark: Low power accentuates the benefits of diversity for individual inspiration and creativity," Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, Elsevier, vol. 176(C).
    12. Wu, Linwan, 2019. "Website interactivity may compensate for consumers’ reduced control in E-Commerce," Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services, Elsevier, vol. 49(C), pages 253-266.
    13. Ammeling, Jonas & Aubreville, Marc & Fritz, Alexis & Kießig, Angelika & Krügel, Sebastian & Uhl, Matthias, 2025. "An interdisciplinary perspective on AI-supported decision making in medicine," Technology in Society, Elsevier, vol. 81(C).
    14. Zhang, Mingyue & Chen, Haipeng (Allan), 2024. "Risk-taking to restore negative self-view: The effect of autonomy and subjective business on financial risk-taking," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 176(C).
    15. Joshua T Beck & Ryan Rahinel & Alexander Bleier & Simona Botti & Darren W Dahl & J Jeffrey Inman, 2020. "Company Worth Keeping: Personal Control and Preferences for Brand Leaders [Measuring Brand Equity across Products and Markets]," Journal of Consumer Research, Journal of Consumer Research Inc., vol. 46(5), pages 871-886.
    16. Glikson, Ella & Erez, Miriam, 2020. "The emergence of a communication climate in global virtual teams," Journal of World Business, Elsevier, vol. 55(6).
    17. Pereira, Vijay & Mohiya, Mohamed, 2021. "Share or hide? Investigating positive and negative employee intentions and organizational support in the context of knowledge sharing and hiding," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 129(C), pages 368-381.
    18. Yonatan Shertzer & Yael Brender-Ilan, 2023. "Why Do Leaders Escalate Their Commitment to a Failed Course of Action? A Moderated-Mediation Personality Traits Model," SAGE Open, , vol. 13(1), pages 21582440231, February.
    19. Yu Zhou & Hongzhang Zhu & Jun Yang & Yunqing Zou, 2021. "Does CEO Power Backfire? The Impact of CEO Power on Corporate Strategic Change," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 13(16), pages 1-19, August.
    20. Dinesh Bhugra & Antonio Ventriglio, 2024. "An age of rage, victimhood and entitlement," International Journal of Social Psychiatry, , vol. 70(4), pages 636-638, June.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:plo:pone00:0213795. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: plosone (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/ .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.