Behavioral and emotional outcomes of leadership in task groups

High performance in organizations is often accompanied by high dissatisfact ion. This call occur for several reasons. Workers may feel that their work is underappreciated or underrewarded; they may feel that they are bearing m ore than their fair share of the work load; and they may resent workers who perform less than they do. The result is that high performers often become more likely to leave the organization voluntarily or to lessen their commi tment to the organization and begin to perform at a lower level. Analysis u sing expectation states theory suggests that dysfunctional turnover may be decreased through assigning high-performing members of work teams job title s indicating high status. Two experiments examine the impact of a high-stat us job title on the satisfaction, commitment, performance, and turnover of subjects who believed they were high performers on work teams. Members were led to believe that they were high performers and were then assigned title s indicating high status. These group members displayed greater satisfactio n, commitment, and performance and lower turnover intentions than did high performers not given a high-status assignment. Thus, organizations may be a ble to increase satisfaction and productivity in workers by carefully monit oring status processes.