Influence Team Members Research Articles

I Believe I Can Do Better with Leader’s Helping: A Cross-Level Mediated Moderation Model

Drawing upon the theoretical lenses of social cognitive theory, this study aims to explore whether, when and how team leader’s helping behavior can influence team member’s individual work performance (in terms of individual task proficiency, task adaptivity, and task proactivity) via team member’s self-efficacy. The consequences of different types of leader’s helping are unfolded in this study. By proposing a cross-level mediated moderation model and using valid data of 303 team members from 39 work teams, I found both autonomy-oriented help and dependency-oriented help from team leaders have differential effects on team member’s individual work performance via team member’s self-efficacy. Moreover, the path analysis of moderation uncovered that leader-member exchange relationships at the team level engender the boundary conditions on the main effect of this model.

Team ability disparity and goal interdependence influence team members’ affective and informational states.

Team ability disparity and goal interdependence influence team members’ affective and informational states.

Unlocking the performance potential of functionally diverse teams: The paradoxical role of leader mood

In a multisource, lagged design field study of 66 consulting teams, we investigated the role of leader mood in unlocking the performance potential of functionally diverse teams. In line with our hypotheses, we found that, given high levels of leader positive mood, functional diversity was positively related to collective team identification. In contrast, given high levels of leader negative mood, functional diversity was positively associated with information elaboration in teams. Furthermore, results showed that functional diversity was most strongly related to team performance when both leader positive mood and leader negative mood were high. This study highlights the value of examining seemingly contradictory leadership aspects in the effort to gain a fuller understanding of how to foster performance in diverse teams.Practitioner points To effectively lead diverse teams, leaders need to navigate between the need to promote unique ideas (i.e., information elaboration) and the simultaneous need to pull together diverse members towards a common identity. Leader mood addresses both of these needs. When the team leader exhibited a positive mood, team functional diversity was positively related to members’ identification with the team. By contrast, when the team leader displayed a negative mood, team functional diversity was positively related to information elaboration. Over a 12‐day period, diverse teams performed best when the leader showed both positive and negative mood. Leaders of diverse teams are required to be sensitive to the affective tone of their team and aware of how their emotional displays influence team members’ moods and behaviours as well as team processes.

Exploring the puzzle of civility: Whether and when team civil communication influences team members’ role performance

Does ‘being nice’ to each other always improve employee performance? Although research on workplace incivility has been growing, little is known about the flip side of it – workplace civility. In fact, different theoretical perspectives have suggested that civility could have positive (i.e. the flexibility perspective) or negative (i.e. the heuristics perspective) cognitive implications. In the current research, we examined whether and when workplace civility (operationalized as team civil communication) influences team members’ role performance in two studies. In Study 1, we recorded team civil communication among 108 teams of students who participated in a team-based simulation, and found that team civil communication enhanced team members’ role performance. In Study 2, we observed and coded 186 real-time surgeries conducted by surgical teams from a health-care center. Results showed a more nuanced and complex pattern regarding the influence of team civil communication, insofar as it enhanced team members’ role performance in teams with less complex tasks, but the effect decreased or even flipped to negative when team task complexity increased. These findings suggest that civility can have both positive and negative influences on performance, with the net effect being contingent upon the broader environmental demands faced by the team.

Individual and contextual predictors of team member proactivity: what do we know and where do we go from here?

Contemporary organizations are placing greater emphasis on team work in order to meet the challenges of an increasingly turbulent business environment. In this context, the relationship between team member proactivity and overall team performance has been the focus of growing interest among management scholars and practitioners alike. Whereas extant scholarship acknowledges that team member proactivity is different from other forms of proactivity (i.e., individual and organization member proactivity), there is still only limited understanding of the factors that predict team member proactivity. Therefore, this paper extends current scholarship by identifying the individual and contextual predictors of team member proactivity and explaining how, taken together, they jointly influence team member proactivity. Building on these findings, the paper also identifies gaps in the current literature and proposes a model of team member proactivity to be tested in future research.

How Leader’s Power Affects Citizenship Behavior: A Moderated Mediation Model

Applying social identity theory, we examine how leader’s power perceived by team members influences team members’ citizenship behaviors. We argue that leader’s power positively influences the exten...

Does leader-affective presence influence communication of creative ideas within work teams?

Affective presence is a novel, emotion-related personality trait, supported in experimental studies, concerning the extent to which a person makes his or her interaction partners feel the same way (Eisenkraft & Elfenbein, 2010). Applying this concept to an applied teamwork context, we proposed that team-leader-affective presence would influence team members' communication of creative ideas. Multilevel modeling analysis of data from a survey study conducted with teams from a consultancy firm confirmed that team-leader-affective presence interacted with team-member creative idea generation to predict inhibition of voicing their ideas. Specifically, withholding of ideas was less likely when team members generated creative ideas and their team leader had higher positive affective presence or lower negative affective presence. These findings contribute to emotion research by showing affective presence as a trait with interpersonal meaning, which can shape how cognition is translated into social behavior in applied performance contexts, such as teamwork in organizations. (PsycINFO Database Record

How Software Development Group Leaders Influence Team Members' Innovative Behavior

Evidence in the literature from several business sectors shows that exploratory and exploitative innovation strategies are complementarily important for competitiveness. Our empirical findings reinforced those evidences in the context of software development companies. The innovative behaviour of individuals is an essential ingredient to success in both types of innovations strategies and leaders can have a big influence on this behaviour. Adopting a leadership style that combines transactional and transformational practices is more likely to produce effective results in supporting innovative behaviour. In software development, project managers and other group leaders should be stimulated and supported in adopting such practices to create the conditions for innovative behaviour to thrive.

Using wikis in team collaboration: A media capability perspective

Wikis are widely acknowledged to be capable of promoting team collaboration. However, previous studies have not examined how the characteristics of the wiki media influence team members’ perceived collaboration effectiveness in the educational context. Drawing on media synchronicity theory, we examine five wiki capabilities and whether these capabilities are perceived to be effective in facilitating collaboration. Results based on data from 83 undergraduate students in 15 teams show that reprocessability, no other wiki capabilities, plays a dominant role in securing a more favorable evaluation of collaboration effectiveness by students. The findings and their implications on theory and practice are discussed.

Two Ways of Linking Team Leaders’ Positive Affect and Team Members’ Voice Behavior

Employees are likely to ‘read the wind’ as to whether it is secure to speak out to challenge the status quo in organizations, accordingly, research on employees’ voice behavior highlights the importance of leaders to employees’ decisions over whether to express their voices. However, scarce research has investigated how team leaders’ positive affect, and thereby unconsciously transmitted signals, might influence team members’ voice behavior. In addition to showing this direct effect, this study improves the understanding of this link by revealing a sequential mediating effect of team leaders’ downward voice behavior and trust in the team leader. The study was carried out with 81 team leader / team member dyads within branch management teams of a world-renowned logistics firm. The findings offer important implications for research and practice.

"Social Capital, Social Exchange, and Team Member Deviance"

We integrate social capital and social exchange frameworks to better understand how team-level factors influence team member deviance. Using a sample of 259 team members across 67 teams and 18 orga...

Human factors in East Asian virtual teamwork: a comparative study of Indonesia, Taiwan and Vietnam

There has been considerable research into the technical aspects of virtual teams. By contrast, few studies have focused on their ‘human factors’, such as the way team members cooperate within the context of cross-national boundaries. This study applies a ‘mixed method’ approach to research virtual teams in three Asian economies: Indonesia, Taiwan and Vietnam. We find that critical human factors, including individual cultural intelligence, cultural openness and self-efficacy, significantly influence team member knowledge sharing willingness in cross-national virtual teams. However, a positive relationship between team member knowledge sharing willingness and knowledge sharing behaviour is not supported because other elements, such as interpersonal trust, leadership, team interaction and member language ability, can significantly affect the effect of the above mentioned factors on virtual team knowledge sharing. Our study offers a new model to improve the study of virtual teamwork and provides practical applications for managing cross-national teams, especially in the selection, training and development of team members.

Influence tactics in virtual teams

Most current studies of influence tactics in virtual teams assume that these constructs operate in a similar manner as they do in the face-to-face (FtF) environment. However, important differences between these contexts may alter how influence tactics are expressed in virtual teams. Using status characteristics as the theoretical lens, this study intensively examines how influence tactics are manifested in virtual teams and which are most successful. Twenty-three members of different virtual teams were interviewed about their previous attempts to influence team members. The main findings are that while some influence tactics are present in both FtF and online environments, there is a tendency to use harder (i.e., more assertive) influence tactics in virtual teams. Second, some influence tactics used in both FtF and virtual environments are enacted in novel ways in virtual teams. Further, virtual team members have developed a new technique which reduces the ambiguity of virtual communications in order to influence their team members. Finally, status affects influence success in novel and unexpected ways.

"I Can Do It" Versus "We Can Do It": Effects of Different References of Motivational Self-Talk on Pre-Competition Anxiety

"I Can Do It" Versus "We Can Do It": Effects of Different References of Motivational Self-Talk on Pre-Competition Anxiety The purpose of this study was to examine how modifying the referent of self-talk statements with respect to level of agency (i.e., individual versus group) may influence team members’ self-confidence and performance anxiety within a team-based novel dart-throwing task. In addition, this investigation sought to explore the way in which one’s relative performance within the team (i.e., superior performer versus inferior performer) may influence the effect of self-talk on performance anxiety. Collegiate undergraduate participants (N=93) were randomly assigned to three-person teams and then were allocated to one of three self-talk conditions, specifically (a) selftalk statements that focused upon one’s personal capabilities, (b) self-talk statements emphasizing the group’s capabilities, or (c) irrelevant self-talk. Based on their practice performance, students were ranked as a superior or inferior performer within a team. Only the top ranked and bottom ranked members of the triad were used in analysis. Results showed that inferior team members reported lower somatic anxiety when group-oriented self-talk was used, compared to when individual-oriented self-talk was used. For superior performers within a team, however, somatic anxiety was higher when they used group-oriented self-talk than when individualoriented self-talk was implemented. Regarding self-confidence, no significant effect of self-talk was found. These findings are considered with respect to their novel theoretical contribution to the anxiety literature in a group setting and their practical implications for decreasing pre-competition anxiety.

A replicated quasi-experimental study on the influence of personality and team climate in software development

This article reports a replication of a quasi-experimental study analyzing how personality factors and team climate influence software development team effectiveness, product quality and team member satisfaction. The replication was designed on the basis of the original quasi-experimental study, both of which were run in an academic setting. In the original study, data were collected from a sample of 35 three-member developer teams. All these teams used an adaptation of extreme programming (XP) to the academic environment to develop the same software system. In the replication, the data were collected from a sample of 34 three- or four-member developer teams working on the same software project. Student teams used a common object-oriented software development paradigm to solve the set problem and applied the Unified Process. In both studies all teams were formed at random, and their members were blind to the quasi-experimental conditions and hypotheses. The replication of this empirical study aims to verify the results of the original quasi-experiment. It examines, first, whether personality factors (neuroticism, extroversion, agreeableness, openness to experience and conscientiousness) are related to the quality of the developed software and team member satisfaction and, second, whether the preferences, perceptions and preferences-perceptions fit for the four team climate factors (participative safety, support for innovation, team vision and task orientation) are related to the quality of the developed software and team member satisfaction. The results of the replication corroborate some of the findings of the original study. On the one hand, the results revealed that there is a significant correlation between the extroversion personality factor and software quality, but no significant correlation between the extroversion personality factor and team satisfaction. Also, we found that the perception of team climate where participative safety is high is related to better quality software. We observed significant relationships between the perception of the four team climate factors and team member satisfaction. Additionally, the results showed a positive relationship between software quality and teams in which the real climate perception at the end of the project is better than preferences stated by team members at the outset of the project for the participative safety factor. Finally, we found that teams where the real climate is better than the stated preferences for the team orientation factor exhibit a direct and positive relationship to team member satisfaction.

Authentic leadership, creativity, and innovation: A multilevel perspective

This study aims to propose and empirically test a multilevel model of cross-level interactions between authentic leadership and innovation at the team level, and perception of support for innovation and creativity at the individual level. We use data from 23 team leaders and 289 team members in a Slovenian manufacturing and processing firm engaged in producing innovative products and customer solutions and conduct a multilevel analysis using hierarchical linear modelling (HLM). The results indicate that whereas perceived team leaders’ authentic leadership directly influences team members’ individual creativity and team innovation, the impact of self-ascribed team leaders’ authentic leadership was not significant. In addition to that, the relationship between team leaders’ authenticity and creativity is mediated by perception of support for innovation. Using a multilevel approach, this is the first study to our knowledge to quantitatively examine the relationship between authentic leadership and creativity and innovation. In addition, unlike previous research on related topics that relied solely on one source of information, we examine authentic leadership with empirical data gathered from both team leaders and their employees.

Transformational leadership as a moderator of the relationship between psychological safety and learning behaviour in work teams in Ghana

Orientation: Transformational team leadership is an important variable that influences team members’ perception of the team as psychologically safe enough to engage in learning behaviours.Research purpose: The study was aimed at investigating the relationship between psychological safety and learning behaviour in teams, as well as the moderating role of transformational team leadership in this relationship.Motivation for the study: For a team to be effective, adaptive and innovative and engage in learning behaviours, the transformational team leader must set the right climate in the team, where he or she welcomes the team members’ opinions, questions and feedback at no risk to their image. An understanding of this will be important in team leader selection and training.Research design, approach and method: Using a cross-sectional survey design, 57 work teams comprising 456 respondents in teams of 7–9 members were purposively sampled from five financial institutions in Accra, Ghana. Hierarchical regression and moderation analyses were run on the data at the team level.Main findings: Results indicated a positive relationship between team psychological safety and team learning behaviour, with transformational team leadership moderating this relationship.Practical/managerial implication: Transformational team leadership is important in creating a climate of psychological safety that will enable team members to engage in learning behaviours.Contribution/value-add: The study provided theoretical and empirical evidence that, in organisational contexts, transformational team leadership is an important variable that can facilitate psychological safety and learning behaviour in teams.

Empowering team leadership and safety performance in nuclear power plants: A multilevel approach

Despite the large body of work on team leadership, hardly any literature has dealt with team leadership in safety performance settings. The goal of the present study is to analyze how team leader behaviors influence team members’ safety performance in nuclear power plants. For this purpose, an empowering leadership approach was assessed. We consider a multilevel model in which safety performance is divided into three types of behaviors. The sample was composed of 479 workers in 54 groups from two Spanish nuclear power plants. The results suggested that leaders’ empowering behaviors generated higher safety compliance behaviors and higher safety participation behaviors by team members, whereas risky behaviors were reduced. Empirical support was found for hierarchical linear modeling linking leadership and safety performance behaviors. Practical implications, study limitations and directions for future research are discussed.

Catching Leaders’ Mood: Contagion Effects in Teams

Much of the behavior at work takes place within teams. Leaders of teams experience different feelings that, in turn, can have an impact on how team members feel and perform. This study examined the effects of leaders’ mood on individual team members’ mood, group affective tone, and team outcomes (actual team performance, potency, and goal commitment) in a laboratory study, with a sample of 63 students working in three-person teams. Furthermore, the study investigated the mediating role of group affective tone in the leaders’ mood–team outcomes relationship. Results demonstrated that leaders influence team members’ individual mood, group affective tone, actual team performance, and potency. Moreover, group affective tone mediated the relationship between team leaders’ mood and potency. Taken together, the findings suggest that in order to enhance subordinates’ work experience and to attain desired outcomes, leaders should be aware of their mood and its potential effects.

Respectful or Rude? How Small Differences in Negative Emotional Expression Affect Individuals in Teams and Team Viability

Teamwork has advantages (e.g., coordination), but also presents challenges of interdependence (e.g., social loafing), which can make teamwork frustrating. Expressing frustration (a negative emotion) with another team member can motivate better performance, but can also backfire, triggering outcomes with serious implications for the team’s viability, such as withdrawal and reduced cooperation. We argue that how negative emotions are expressed in these contexts can mitigate the potential negative consequences for the team’s viability. In two studies (one vignette and one interactive group experiment) we investigate how expressing one’s frustration respectfully (versus rudely) triggers affective and inferential processes that differentially influence team member reactions (withdrawal, evaluations, willingness to work together) to the expresser as well as to other team members uninvolved in the dyadic emotional interaction. Our findings suggest that expressing negative emotions respectfully can convey both frustration and dissatisfaction while mitigating the potential negative consequences for team viability.