Structural Empowerment,Interdependence,and Out-Role Interactive Behavior In Inter-Organizational Teams:A Comparison Of Different Employment Types

In the sharing economy,the mode of sharing human resources with professionals from external organizations to form interorganizational teams has become increasingly common,and has become an important way for enterprises to quickly respond to market demands and achieve innovation goals at low cost.However,as the interorganizational team members are composed of both the regular employees of the client organization and the outsourced employees of the supplier organization,there are differences and contradictions in the status,goals and interests of the employees of both sides.How to strengthen the positive interaction behavior between the employees of both organizations has become a key way to promote the cooperation performance of the project-based team.Combined with corporate practice,this study notes that as an important way of interorganizational team management practice,structural empowerment can exert a significant impact on team members’ cognition,emotion and habits,which can furthermore affect the relationship and interaction between team members.However,few studies have explored the effect of structure empowerment in interorganizational team on the construction of interdependent relationship and interaction behavior.Based on the interdependence theory,this study believes that building the interdependent relationship between employees of both organizations can promote their positive interaction,which is an important way to promote team performance.However,the current research on interdependence theory still has some limitations,which are reflected in the following aspects:neglecting the further refinement of the dependency relationship in specific context,and paying little attention to the differences in the content of the dependency relationship between the two parties;Lacking of discussion on the process mechanism of building interdependence in specific situations;and lacking of attention to the constraints and balance of the dependency between the two sides.To remedy the above limitations and provide guidance for promoting positive interaction among team members,this study focuses on the following issues:(1)What is the specific content of interdependence in the context of interorganizational team,and what is the internal mechanism of structural empowerment to promote the construction of interdependence?(2)Are there differences in the contents and construction paths of interdependence among different types of employees?(3)How does the one-way dependence of different types of employees affect their interaction performance,and how to strengthen the positive role of interdependence?In order to solve the above problems,this study conducted three research designs.Specifically,sub-study 1,this study subdivide the interdependence in the inter-organization team to knowledge dependence and emotional dependence,proved that the structure empowerment can positively affect the build of interdependent relationship,the activation of achievement motivation and affiliation motivation play an moderation role on the relationship between structural empowerment and the interdependence.Furthermore,this study uses the multi-group analysis method to compare and analyze the construction paths of the interdependence relationship between employees of different employment types(regular employees vs.outsourced employees).The hypothesis was tested by the data collected from a two-stage questionnaire of 335 employees(153 regular employees and 182 outsourced employees)from 55 interorganizational teams.Sub-study 2 and sub-study 3 are the extensions of sub-study 1,respectively,to explore the influence of one-way dependence on their interaction behavior,and to open up the boundary conditions of positive effects of dependence from the perspective of maintaining the balance of interdependence.The sub-study 2 focus on regular employees and investigates the influence of knowledge dependence on their helping behavior for outsourced employees,and proposed the boundary effect of employment likelihood of outsourced employees and job insecurity of regular employees.The hypotheses were tested by using questionnaire data from 47 team leaders and 251 regular employees.Sub-study3 focus on outsourced employees and discusses the influence of emotional dependence on knowledge sharing behavior.We propose the boundary effect of perceived status similarity and contingent self-esteem of outsourced employees,and test our hypotheses with questionnaire data from 53 team leaders and 277 outsourced employees.Results show that:(1)Perceived structural empowerment contributes to the establishment of emotional and knowledge dependence relationships between employees of both organizations,and activates achievement motivation and affiliation motivation of employees mediates the relationship between perceived structural empowerment and interdependence.There are differences in the content and construction path of interdependence among different types of employees.For regular employees,perceptual structure empowerment strengthens knowledge dependence by activating their achievement motivation.For the outsourced employees,the Perceived structure empowerment can strengthen the outsourced employees’ emotional dependence on the regular employees by activating the outsourced employees’ affiliation motivation.(2)Structure empowerment in interorganizational team can promote the helping behavior of regular employees by strengthening their knowledge dependence on outsourced employees.The employment likelihood of outsourced employees weakens the positive relationship between knowledge dependence and helping behavior by enhancing job insecurity of regular employees.(3)Structure empowerment in interorganizational team can promote knowledge sharing of outsourced employees by strengthening the emotional dependence of outsourced employees on regular employees.Perceived status similarity promoted the positive relationship between emotional dependence and knowledge sharing by positively affecting the contingent self-esteem of outsourced employees.The innovation of this study lies in:(1)this study expends interdependence theory to interorganizational context,which can provide important insight to solve the difficulties in cooperative interaction between different organizational employees.Furthermore,we also subdivided the interdependent relationship between in interorganizational team to knowledge dependence and emotional dependence,which can help to better understand the construction of interdependence.(2)this study verifies the positive impact of structural empowerment on interdependent relationship,and opens the "black box" between the relationship between structural empowerment and interdependent relationship from the perspective of activate achievement motivation and affiliation motivation of team members.(3)This study finds the differences in the contents of the dependence relationship between the two parties,and identify the differences in the construction paths of the interdependence relationship between different employment types.That is to say,the structural empowerment promotes the knowledge dependence of the regular employees by strengthening their achievement motivation;Whereas the structural empowerment promotes the emotional dependence of outsourced employees by activating their affiliation motivation.(4)This study found the positive effect of one-way dependence between different types of employees on extra-role interaction behaviors,and proposed that the boundary conditions of interdependence based on the perspective of maintaining the balance of interdependence.