Team Reflexivity, Team Adaptive Behavior, and the Role of Tensions in Agile Teams

Abstract

Engaging in reflective practices and consequently adapting their behavior is essential for agile teams to be successful. However, the mechanisms and contextual factors on how team reflexivity translates to team adaptive behavior are still rather unexplored. Building on social cognitive theory, we argue that transactive memory systems (TMS) might have an explanatory impact, i.e., that team reflexivity positively affects team adaptive behavior through TMS, and that this effect is contingent on the level of agile tensions that the teams experience. We draw on a multi-respondent, time-lagged quantitative team study with 100 agile teams working in large German organizations. We find that team reflexivity enhances teams’ TMS, which consequently has a positive effect on team adaptive behavior. Moreover, our results reveal that the relationship between team reflexivity and TMS and the indirect effect are moderated by the level of agile tensions that the studied agile teams experience such that a lower level of agile tensions is more beneficial for agile teams than a higher level.