Team productivity and contradiction of management policy commitments.

What is the relationship between management consistency of policy and team productivity? "A simulated small industrial plant was the setting for an experiment in which a team of Ss worked together on a manufacturing problem. Their assigned task was to produce different kinds of toys at a profit… . Twenty four-man teams were divided into ten consecutive team pairs, each member of a pair being subjected either to (a) a condition under which the team's expectations of management were contradicted by subsequent events or (b) a condition under which the team's expectations were confirmed. The hypothesis that team productivity would be greater under the confirmation condition was supported by the data. Some theoretical implications of the experiment were suggested." (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)