Analysis of work group productivity in an applied setting: Application of a time series panel design

We provide a demonstration of a time series panel analysis applied under ty pical field research conditions characterized by (a) a small number of grou ps (b) all of which experience an intervention (thus there is no traditiona l control group), and (c) perform noncomparable tasks. The time series tech niques allow a direct test of Naylor, Pritchard, and Ilgen's (1980) theory of behavior in organizations applied to work group productivity in a large- scale study of work groups conducted by Pritchard and colleagues (1989), Th e responses of 5 work groups to priority scores for 37 indicators of produc tivity over 23 months were used to predict month-by-month changes in produc tivity for each of the 37 group products, The results show that group produ ctivity improvements can be explained by feedback including priority scores derived from nonlinear contingency functions of the productivity indicator s. Furthermore, groups differed in their response to priority feedback. Goa l setting positively affected productivity gain consistently across work gr oups, after the effects of priority feedback and the interaction of work gr oups with priority feedback were accounted for. implications for group perf ormance strategies and appropriate applications of the time series panel an alysis are discussed.