Group member explanatory style as a predictor of group performance and turnover intentions in a manufacturing setting

A field study of 50 three-person work groups in a major division of a large manufacturing operation in the Midwest investigated the potential effect of group explanatory style (optimistic or pessimistic) on group productivity and turnover intentions. Additionally, the moderating effect of group potency, group cohesion, and social identity on these relationships was also investigated. The theoretical foundation for this analysis was drawn from the literatures on learned helplessness, causal attribution, and explanatory style at the individual level of analysis. The extension presented here includes the expansion of self explanatory style to a group level of analysis. Regression analysis indicated that group explanatory style was significantly related to turnover intention. Moderated regression analysis also suggested that group cohesion is significantly related to group performance and turnover intentions. Overall, this study demonstrated that optimistic group explanatory style has a negative main effect on turnover intentions. In addition, group cohesion has also a positive main effect on group performance and a negative main effect on turnover intentions. The hypothesis that group explanatory style is significantly related to group performance was not supported. Further, the hypotheses that group performance was moderated by group cohesion, group potency and social identity was not supported. The other hypotheses that group cohesion, group potency and social identity moderated turnover intentions were also not supported. In regard to group explanatory style, this study suggests that today\u27s organizations should devote particular attention to optimistic and pessimistic explanatory style as factors which are related to turnover intentions of their employees. Training with an optimistic explanatory style can solve some of the problems associated with high turnover as well as high recruitment and training cost. Additionally, an optimistic work culture will contribute to more effective work groups. Suggestions for future research include examining group explanatory style in other settings and varying group size and task interdependence