Abstract

Organizations are increasingly making their decisions through multifunctional teams that must interpret, prioritize and discuss an issue to respond to it. Research on achievement goals and framing are each instructive for understanding part of this process. The literature on achievement goals, high-level priorities, is important for understanding team discussions and decisions but it has not found any actionable antecedents to those goals. Studies on frames, cognitive structures, demonstrates that most issues are interpreted as threats or opportunities, which impacts individual and organizational actions. However, framing research does not show how those interpretations impact team priorities or behaviors. The purpose of this dissertation is to merge the two literatures to further both of them and knowledge about team decision making. The theoretical integration suggests that frames activate achievement goals thereby affecting the collaborative behaviors that determine team decision quality. This proposition is tested in an experiment that finds that opportunity framing improves decision quality and increases interdisciplinary collaboration but that it does so through perspective taking instead of achievement goals.

Committee Chair

J. Stuart Bunderson

Committee Members

Kurt T Dirks, Michelle M Duguid, Nicholas S Argyres, Andrew P Knight, Raymond Sparrowe, G.S. (Gerben) van der Vegt

Comments

Permanent URL: https://doi.org/10.7936/K7TD9VH9

Degree

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Author's Department

Business Administration

Author's School

Graduate School of Arts and Sciences

Document Type

Dissertation

Date of Award

Summer 8-15-2015

Language

English (en)

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Business Commons

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