When Competition is the Loser: The Indirect Effect of Intra-team Competition on Team Performance through Task Complexity, Team Conflict and Psychological Safety

Abstract

With the rise of gamification, competition-inducing game techniques like leader boards have become more commonplace within work teams. This paper investigates how intra-team competition relates to task complexity, psychological safety and level of team conflict. Furthermore, we looked whether mediation effects of task complexity, team conflict and psychological safety had an effect on the relationship between intra-team competition and team performance. To this end, a survey was conducted among 61 different professional work teams in the Netherlands to measure the perceived level of intra-team competition, task complexity, psychological safety, team conflict and team performance. We found that intra-team competition is negatively related to psychological safety and positively related to task complexity and team conflict. Both psychological safety and task complexity showed a positive relationship with team performance. Task complexity was found to positively mediate the relationship between intra-team competition and team performance.