Personal Values and Performance in Teams: An Individual and Team-Level Analysis

Abstract

Two studies involving 107 undergraduate and 54 MBA teams were conducted to examine the effects of personal values on the performance of individual team members and on the performance of the team as a whole. Values with clear relevance to teams and to work were selected for the studies. To capture the relative importance of these values, they were measured within the context of a broader set of personal values. At the individual level, the importance students ascribed a sense of accomplishment had a significant, but unexpected negative, relationship with individual peer-evaluated performance. Students’ prior performance outside their teams had a stronger positive relationship with in-team performance than did their personal values. At the team level, the average importance team members assigned the value of equality had a positive relationship with team performance.The average level of students’ prior performance was also related to team performance, but the average importance given to the value equality was a stronger predictor of this fundamental team outcome. Implications of these results and directions for future research are discussed.