Institutionalized Involvement: Teams and Stress in 1990s U.S. Steel

Abstract

Is employee involvement universally either good or bad, a “best practice” or an exploitative tool—or do its effects depend on context? To shed light on this issue, I ask the following question: Do organizational–cultural factors determine whether employees are stressed by membership in teams? By constructing mixed‐effects models from a large mid‐1990s survey of U.S. steel employees, I find that team membership is linked to increased stress only when implemented in cultural contexts of conflict and distrust. I conclude that the unintended consequences of institutionalized formal practices depend on organizationally specific cultural conditions.