Team-level goal orientation: an emergent state and its relationships with team inputs, process, and outcomes

Interteam Cooperation and Competition and Boundary Activities: The Cross-Level Mediation of Team Goal Orientations

Drawing on Dragoni’s cross-level model of state goal orientation, this research aims to examine the cross-level mediating effect of team goal orientation on the relationships between interteam cooperation and competition and three forms of boundary activities. Study 1 tested the proposed mediating relationships by collecting survey data from 249 members of 45 South Korean work teams. Additionally, we conducted a two-wave longitudinal study (Study 2) on 188 undergraduate students to replicate the relationships between three types of team goal orientation and their relevant forms of boundary activities. In Study 1, we found positive associations between interteam cooperation and team learning goal orientation, and between interteam competition and team performance-prove and performance-avoid goal orientations. Team learning and performance-prove goal orientations were positively related to boundary spanning and reinforcement. As predicted, team learning goal orientation had a stronger relationship with boundary spanning than team performance-prove goal orientation, whereas team performance-prove goal orientation had a stronger relationship with boundary reinforcement than team learning goal orientation. While team learning goal orientation mediated the relationship between interteam cooperation and boundary spanning and reinforcement, team performance-prove goal orientation mediated the relationship between interteam competition and boundary spanning and reinforcement. The results of Study 2 demonstrated the positive lagged effects of team performance-prove goal orientation on boundary reinforcement and of team performance-avoid goal orientation on boundary buffering.

Goal orientations, absorptive capacity, and NPD team performance: evidence from China

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the relationships between different types of team goal orientations (team learning orientation, team prove orientation and team avoid orientation) and team performance in new product development (NPD) and how these relationships are mediated by team absorptive capacity.

Design/methodology/approach

Data were collected through two surveys from 71 NPD teams and analyzed by the confirmatory factor analysis, correlation and hierarchical regression analysis methods.

Findings

The authors find that both teams’ learning and prove orientations are positively related to their absorptive capacity, which leads to increasing team performance in NPD. Further, the authors find support for the mediating role of team absorptive capacity in connecting team learning orientation and team prove orientation with team performance in NPD.

Practical implications

For practitioners, this paper suggests that to benefit from their NPD team efforts, firms with innovative aspirations should consider their existing and desired access to external knowledge sources and particularly the extent to which they can successfully integrate external knowledge with their internal knowledge structure.

Originality/value

The explication of team absorptive capacity is as a key mechanism through which different goal orientations of NPD teams inform the ability to successfully develop new products. By integrating the concepts of team goal orientations, team absorptive capacity and team performance in NPD, the authors seek to gain a better understanding of why some firms are more likely to do better than others in NPD. Findings of this paper extend concept of the nomological network on how absorptive capacity may serve as a direct outcome of different goal orientations. This paper responds to how Chinese firms can increase their innovative performance by infusing their current knowledge bases with external knowledge and extends the literature on knowledge management and managerial ties on innovation.

When Teams Fail to Self-Regulate: Predictors and Outcomes of Team Procrastination Among Debating Teams

Models of team development have indicated that teams typically engage in task delay during the first stages of the team’s life cycle. An important question is to what extent this equally applies to all teams, or whether there is variation across teams in the amount of task delay. The present study introduces the concept of team procrastination as a lens through which we can examine whether teams collectively engage in unplanned, voluntary, and irrational delay of team tasks. Based on theory and research on self-regulation, team processes, and team motivation we developed a conceptual multilevel model of predictors and outcomes of team procrastination. In a sample of 209 student debating teams, we investigated whether and why teams engage in collective procrastination as a team, and what consequences team procrastination has in terms of team member well-being and team performance. The results supported the existence of team procrastination as a team-level construct that has some stability over time. The teams’ composition in terms of individual-level trait procrastination, as well as the teams’ motivational states (i.e., team learning goal orientation, team performance-approach goal orientation in interaction with team efficacy) predicted team procrastination. Team procrastination related positively to team members’ stress levels, especially for those low on trait procrastination. Furthermore, team procrastination had an indirect negative relationship with team performance, through teams’ collective stress levels. These findings add to the theoretical understanding of self-regulatory processes of teams, and highlight the practical importance of paying attention to team-level states and processes such as team goal orientation and team procrastination.

Shared Leadership Improves Team Novelty: The Mechanism and Its Boundary Condition

Previous research has revealed the significant impact of shared leadership on team creativity, yet the mechanism underlying this relationship has rarely been investigated. The current research examined how shared leadership influenced team creativity (novelty and usefulness) across 3 studies using both long-term project teams and temporal task teams in the laboratory. The results showed that shared leadership enhanced the novelty dimension of team creativity by improving constructive controversy. Furthermore, team goal orientation moderated this effect. The indirect effect of constructive controversy holds for teams with learning goal orientation but not for those with performance goal orientation. Such patterns were not found in the usefulness dimension of team creativity.