In working teams, each member has an individual understanding of the social rules and norms that underlie social relationships in the team, as well as about what behavior is appropriate and what behavior can be expected from others. What happens if the members of a team are not “on the same page” with respect to these social rules and norms? Drawing on relational models theory, which posits four elemental relational models that people use to coordinate their social interactions, we examined the effects of a common understanding of relational models in teams (i.e., “shared relational models”) on various aspects of cooperative and uncooperative behaviors. We hypothesized that a shared understanding of relational models in a team is positively related to justice perception and negatively related to relationship conflict, which are in turn related to helping behavior and knowledge hiding. We conducted a field study, collecting data from 46 work teams (N = 189 total participants) in various organizations, and found support for all proposed hypotheses. Our findings emphasize the importance of a shared understanding of relational models for (un)cooperative behavior in teams, thereby opening a new door for research on relational models in organizations.

在工作团队中，每个成员对构成团队中社会关系的社会规则和规范，以及什么行为是适当的，以及可以从其他人那里得到什么行为都有各自的理解。如果团队成员在这些社会规则和规范方面没有“一致”，会发生什么？利用关系模型理论，该理论提出了人们用来协调他们的社会互动的四种基本关系模型，我们研究了团队中对关系模型的共同理解（即“共享关系模型”）对合作和不合作的各个方面的影响行为。我们假设团队中对关系模型的共同理解与正义感知正相关，与关系冲突负相关，这反过来又与帮助行为和知识隐藏有关。我们进行了实地研究，收集了来自 46 个工作团队的数据（N = 189 名参与者）在各个组织中，并为所有提出的假设找到了支持。我们的研究结果强调了对团队中（不）合作行为的关系模型的共同理解的重要性，从而为组织中的关系模型研究打开了一扇新的大门。