Should Others Really Do The Important Work? The Effect of Self Regulatory Focus on Task Delegation
Julian Mestwerdt - 10891706 Supervisor: Melvyn R. W. Hamstra
Abstract
One function that manager have to perform is to delegate tasks to their subordinates. In this study, we investigated whether self regulatory focus influences which tasks manager choose to perform themselves and which tasks they will delegate to subordinates. 301 participants were presented with a list of 14 tasks, some of which they needed to delegate. They were instructed to choose seven tasks for themselves and seven tasks for their supposed
subordinates. The presented tasks related either to obtaining a gain or to preventing a loss. First, it was hypothesized that participants with high promotion focus will be more likely to delegate tasks that are related to preventing a loss to subordinates. Second, it was
hypothesized that participants with high prevention focus will be more likely to delegate tasks that are related to achieving a gain to subordinates. Third, this relationship should be less strong if the subordinate is liked by the manager.
Should Others Really Do The Important Work? The Effect of Self Regulatory Focus on Task Delegation
The delegation of tasks to subordinates is considered to be an important task for managers, yet research investigating this progress is relatively sparse (Chen & Aryee, 2007). So far, the organizational outcomes of task delegation (Leana, 1986; Schriesheim, Neider, & Scandura, 1998) and the criteria by which managers decide to which subordinate a task will be delegated (Yukl & Fu, 1999) have been investigated. Concerning the outcomes, task
delegation has been contrasted to collaborative work with the manager on a given task (Leana, 1986; Schriesheim, Neider, & Scandura, 1998). It was found that the subordinates’ heightened autonomy to execute delegated tasks increased work performance and satisfaction.
Managers are more likely to delegate tasks toward subordinates who are more competent, who share the same task objectives as the manager, who worked longer for the manager, who are in a managerial position themselves and who have a favorable exchange relationship with the manager (Yukl & Fu, 1999). But to this point, there exists a gap of research investigating how managers make the decision which tasks to delegate and which to perform themselves. The preceding research is based on the reasonable assumption that manager are concerned with the possible outcomes of the tasks that are to be delegated. The question now is whether this concern could influence the decision which tasks to execute yourself and which to delegate to others, as some outcomes might be more valuable subjectively to certain managers than others.
To explain a preference for pursuing certain outcomes the Regulatory focus theory by Higgins (1997) can be utilized. This theory states that (social) decision making can be
influenced by a promotion focus and a prevention focus. Having a high promotion focus means being concerned with obtaining gains, whereas high prevention means being concerned with preventing losses. High promotion focus is therefore associated with approach
tendencies towards achievement. High prevention focus on the other hand is associated with avoidance strategies in regard to preventing failure. Regulatory focus determined by a stable individual predisposition as well as situational influence. One the one hand, chronic
regulatory focus refers to the stable individual preference to act more on either promotion focus or prevention focus (Higgins et al., 2001). On the other hand, regulatory focus can also be induced by situational cues (Shah, Higgins, & Friedman, 1998). It was found that
individuals with higher promotion focus are generally more inclined to take risks in order to achieve success, whereas individuals with higher prevention focus are less willing to take risks (Gino & Margolis, 2011). Important to note is the finding that regulatory focus not only
influences behavior in regard to personal outcomes but also in regard to outcomes for the group one belongs to (Faddegon, Scheepers, & Ellemers, 2008; Sassenberg, Kessler, & Mummendey, 2003).
Achievement of gains or prevention of losses relate to the organizational praxis of goal setting (Latham & Yukl, 1975). It is acknowledged that setting goals for employees is
important for developing motivation and also directing work. These goals can be set for the organizational level, the group level and the individual level (Griffin & Moorhead, 2011). Naturally, organizational goals can relate to obtaining gains (e.g. selling to new customers to increase revenue) or the prevention of losses (e.g. implement new policies to prevent
absenteeism). It is found that the match between regulatory focus and task outcomes increases performance and motivation (Shah, Higgins, & Friedman, 1998), which are desirable
organizational outcomes. According to the regulatory fit hypothesis (Higgins, 2000), pursuing a (potential) gain makes people eager, which fits the preferred strategic means of promotion-focused individuals. In contrast, pursuing the avoidance of a loss makes people vigilant, which fits the preferred strategic means of prevention-focused individuals. Hence, promotion-focused managers will experience fit when tasks imply a potential organizational gain, while prevention-focused managers will experience fit when tasks imply a potential organizational loss. Based on regulatory fit hypothesis, this research assumes that managers will prefer to carry out fitting tasks themselves, and prefer to delegate non-fitting tasks.
Hypothesis 1: Participants with high chronic promotion focus will delegate more tasks related to preventing a loss to subordinates than participants with low chronic
promotion focus.
Hypothesis 2: Participants with high chronic prevention focus will delegate more tasks related to obtaining a gain to subordinates than participants with low chronic
prevention focus.
Furthermore, this is expected to be stronger when the manager decision is primarily motivated by the organizational outcomes and not a favorable relationship with his coworker, as it is postulated in the leader-member exchange theory (Liden, Sparrowe, & Wayne, 1997).
Hypothesis 3: The preceding effects will be less strong for participants that need to delegate tasks to a liked subordinate in contrast to a disliked subordinate.
Method Participants
Our sample consisted of 301 participants (173 male, 128 female) that were recruited via Amazon Mechanical Turk (Mturk). Age ranged from 18 to 74 (M = 35.08, SD = 11.76). A majority of 292 participants indicated English as their native language. From the total sample, 109 participants indicated they hold a managerial position at work, 192 indicated they hold no managerial position at work. Participants received 1€ as compensation for participating in this study.
Materials
Self regulatory focus questionnaire. The regulatory focus questionnaire by Higgins et al. (2001) was utilized in this study. It consists of eleven items measuring chronic regulatory focus of the participant (e.g. “I feel like I have made progress toward being successful in my life”, see Appendix A). Six items constitute the promotion focus subscale and five items constitute the prevention focus subscale. The participants rated each item on a five-point scale (e.g. 1 = certainly false to 5 = certainly true). The internal consistencies for those scales in our sample were good (α = .74 for the promotion scale and α = .85 for the prevention scale).
Task delegation. The list of tasks that the participants had to delegate was created by obtaining task specifications of job descriptions of various managerial positions (e.g.: “Attending a training programs”). Thirty tasks were chosen and then rephrased to be related to either preventing a loss (“Participating in a workshop to prevent falling behind in
knowhow”, see Appendix B) or obtaining a gain (e.g.: “Attending a training program to gain new or improve work related skills”). In a pilot study, these tasks were pretested on how much participants would enjoy to perform them, how high the required competence to complete would be, how high the increase of status by performing those tasks and the decrease of status by delegating those tasks would be. From this list, a total list of 14 tasks was selected from which the two sets of seven (loss-related and gain -related) are equable in enjoyment, competence level, status increase and status decrease. By selecting seven tasks to be delegated and seven tasks to be performed by oneself, this results in one outcome variable representing relative preference for delegating gain related versus loss related tasks.
Procedure
Task delegation was operationalized as the number of tasks that participants decide subordinates have to perform, out of a total number of tasks that are to be performed either by themselves or by the subordinates. Participants took part in this study by completing an online questionnaire. First, they received information about the general procedure and were
reminded that by completing the online study they give consent to usage of their anonymous data. Then, they were presented with the self regulatory focus questionnaire. A manipulation check items was then presented to assess concentration (“We are interested in determining if people read instructions given in the survey. Regardless of whether the statements apply, please select the ‘none’ option below and then go to the next screen”). Subsequently, they performed the task delegation. The participants were instructed to imagine themselves in the role of a manager performing certain tasks with the ability to assign some of those tasks to subordinates. They were assigned randomly to either the like condition or dislike condition (see Appendix C). Then, the participants were presented with a list of 14 tasks, from which they had to indicate seven that will be delegated to subordinates, whereas the other seven would be performed by themselves. Afterwards, they were asked to provide demographical information (age, gender, native language, holding a managerial position). As a last point, an item measuring motivation to complete the questionnaire was presented (“I did not take this very seriously and I would recommend not using my responses”). After completing this, the participants were fully debriefed about the purpose of the study.
Results
To confirm our main hypotheses, we performed a multiple linear regression wherein the number of tasks related to preventing a loss that are delegated to the subordinate will be regressed on promotion scores and prevention scores. Twentynine participants were excluded from the analysis due to inattentive responding as indicated by the manipulation check item or by indicating not being serious in filling out the questionnaire. As we set the number of selected task to be seven, the number of delegated prevention tasks and the number of delegated promotion tasks were inherently perfectly correlated. Therefore, we only
investigated the results in light of the number of delegated prevention tasks. Promotion and prevention scores were calculated as a mean of the respective items in the regulatory focus questionnaire by Higgins et al. (2001), and were centered. In the dislike condition, prevention and promotion score explained 5.2% of the variance in delegation of prevention tasks, F(2, 133) = 3.62, p = .029. In line with our first hypothesis, participants delegated on average 0.39 prevention tasks more for each one-unit increase in promotion score; t(133) = 2.46, p = .015. Contrary to our second hypothesis, there was no significant decrease in prevention task delegation (and hence increase in promotion task delegation) for a one unit increase in prevention score; β = 0.06, t(133) = 0.52, p = .582. In the liking condition, we were not able to find a significant effect of promotion or prevention score influencing the delegation of prevention tasks, R² = .009, F(2, 133) = 0.60, p = .548. Neither the effect of promotion score,
4,00 4,10 4,20 4,30 4,40 4,50 4,60 4,70 4,80 L O W P R O M O T I O N S C O R E H I G H P R O M O T I O N S C O R E
β = -0.01, t(133) = -0.10, p = .923, or the prevention score, β = -0.12, t(133) = -1.08, p = .282, were significant. In line with our third hypothesis, the interaction between condition and effect of promotion score on the delegation of prevention task was significant, β = 0.43, t(268) = 2.10, p = .036, see Figure 1.
Further explanatory analyses did not indicate that age, gender or native language had a significant effect on our findings. However, there was some indication that the effect of promotion focus on task delegation in the dislike condition was less strong for participants that are actually in a managerial position at their actual work, albeit the interaction was not significant β = -0.76, t(264) = -1.70, p = .090.
Figure 1. The interaction of subordinate liking on the relationship between promotion score and delegation of prevention tasks.
Discussion
As hypothesized, promotion focus was found to influence the decision to delegate tasks that are related to the prevention of losses. This was found to be moderated by liking of the subordinate. However, we did not find evidence supporting that prevention focus affects the decision to delegate tasks related to obtaining gains. This raises the question why
delegation in our sample was influenced by promotion focus but not prevention focus. Our results could be seen in light of findings relating regulatory fit to strategic
leadership (Taylor-Bianco & Schermerhorn Jr, 2006). It was postulated that middle managers’ motivation to pursue change goals depends on the fit of their regulatory focus and their
perceptions of top management means of goals attainment. If the perception of top Dislike Condition Like Condition Av er ag e n um ber o f d el eg at ed ta sk s
managements action focus lies in means of eagerness, middle managers with a high
promotion focus experience fit and middle managers with a high promotion focus experience no fit. The opposite pattern was postulated if the perception of top management’s action focus lies in means if vigilance. By arguing that the hypothetical nature of our experimental
manipulation fosters the perception of eagerness but hinders the perception of vigilance (as there is an incentive to finish the experiment, but no penalty for unwary task delegation) this would explain why we found did not find an effect for individuals with high prevention focus. A more naturalistic setting might shed more light on whether the effects are different in the general workforce, possibly with an applied research design. Especially as there was some indication that the effect could be less strong for individuals that are actual managers.
One limitation in our design pertains to the inherent correlation between delegated promotion and prevention tasks. There is the possibility that our results are due to promotion focus having an effect on choosing to delegate loss related tasks, rather than choosing to perform gain related tasks oneself. The question would then be what the initial concern for the delegator is and which the resulting consequence is. We do not expect the first from a
theoretical perspective (Higgins, 2000), but an improved methodology could provide stronger support for our hypothesis. Another limitation pertains to the rather small effect size.
This research is a first step investigation to what extent regulatory focus influences the decision to delegate certain tasks. It is relevant as preceding literature already showed that leaders have an influence on the regulatory focus of their subordinates (Lord, Brown, & Freiberg, 1999; Kark & Van Dijk, 2007). Namely, subordinates are likely to be in the same regulatory focus than their leaders. Therefore, pursuing a match between own regulatory focus and task delegation could result in a mismatch of regulatory focus of the subordinates to which the tasks will be delegated to. This mismatch could have various implications for managers and subordinates alike, for example by negating the otherwise favorable effect of task delegation on subordinates motivation and performance (Leana, 1986; Schriesheim, Neider, & Scandura, 1998). Therefore, it can be argued that the influence of regulatory focus on task delegation should be cautioned for, to ensure the most favourable outcome when managers decide to delegate tasks to subordinates.
References
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Appendix A
Regulatory focus questionnaire
1. Compared to most people, are you typically unable to get what you want out of life?* 2. Growing up, would you ever ``cross the line'' by doing things that your parents would not
tolerate? *
3. How often have you accomplished things that got you “psyched'' to work even harder? 4. Did you get on your parents' nerves often when you were growing up? *
5. How often did you obey rules and regulations that were established by your parents? 6. Growing up, did you ever act in ways that your parents thought were objectionable? * 7. Do you often do well at different things that you try?
8. Not being careful enough has gotten me into trouble at times. *
9. When it comes to achieving things that are important to me, I find that I don't perform as well as I ideally would like to do. *
10. I feel like I have made progress toward being successful in my life.
11. I have found very few hobbies or activities in my life that capture my interest or motivate me to put effort into them. *
___________________________________________________________________________ Note. Items presented in italics indicate promotion subscale.
Appendix B
Tasks used in the task delegation paradigm Tasks related to achieving a gain
1. Presenting new ideas to the board to gain approval for implementing those ideas 2. Attending a training program as the representative of your team to gain new and
improved work-related skills
3. Planning and executing group activities to improve the relationship among the team members
4. Represent your company on fairs in order to gain potential new clients
5. Looking over job applications to ensure that the best candidates are not left out of the selection phase
6. Run business negotiations with a client in order to sign a business contract favorable for your company
7. Determine new business goals to increase revenue Tasks related to preventing a loss
1. Checking and if necessary correcting work done by interns to rule out mistakes they made
2. Drafting monthly reports so that the company does not fall short of business goals 3. Distribute budgetary funds among several projects so that none are underfunded 4. Implement a policy to reduce absenteeism
5. Helping team members that returned from longer absence to catch up on their work 6. Plan and allocate space at the workplace so that every team member has what is
minimally needed to perform effectively
Appendix C
Subordinate liking manipulation as used during task instruction
Like condition
“The particular team member to whom you will be delegating is someone you really like. This person is among those in your work team to whom you feel really close with. You feel at ease interacting with this person and you have a friendly relation that goes beyond the mere collaboration at work.”
Dislike Condition
“The particular team member to whom you will be delegating is someone you really dislike. Despite being a reliable worker, this person is among those to whom you do not feel close at all in your work team. You find it difficult to talk with this person about things other than work and you cannot imagine to relate to this person outside of work.”
