ABSTRACT
Through selection, socialization, social construction, and negotiation processes, individuals working together will form similar understandings or interpretations of events occurring within and around the work unit including those related to their tasks, other individuals, leaders, the work environment, and so on. Similar interpretations or meanings of events are functional for people in groups and for groups of people. For example, they can smooth interactions, facilitate task completion, and enhance knowledge transfer (e.g., Dyer, 1984; Nieva, Fleishman, & Reick, 1985; Rentsch, Delise, & Hutchison, 2008). Indeed, similar interpretations may become reified to the extent that people (and groups and organizations) forget that they, themselves, control their similar interpretations and, instead, become controlled by them (e.g., Berger & Luckmann, 1966). Because of their power, similar meanings have garnered the interest of organizational behavior researchers, who have studied them at the organizational, unit, and team levels of analysis, and who have identified them by such terms as schema similarity, climate, culture, shared mental models, and shared meanings.
