The Variable Team Performance

Published Date: 02 Nov 2017

2.0 Introduction

Literature review is a body of text that aims at summarizing critical points of current knowledge including substantive findings as well as theoretical and methodological contributions to a particular topic. It is important to conduct literature review as it brings the readers up to date with current literature on a topic by offering them an overview of significant findings from previous studies in order to form the basis for another goal.

In this chapter, there is 5 parts to be discussed which are namely review of literature, review of theoretical models, proposed theoretical/conceptual framework, hypothesis development and conclusion.

2.1 Review of Literature

2.1.1 Dependence Variable: Team Performance

Performance involves a team’s accountability for delivering high quality outcomes. In general, people in formal organizations are motivated to gain the approval and respect of those to whom they are accountable (Lerner and Tetlock, 1999). In knowledge-intensive environments, team members may be especially motivated to achieve high performance because it offers them the opportunity to demonstrate their knowledge and abilities. Research on individual accountability shows that this motivation translates into effort and task engagement for example when held accountable for their outcome, people tend to spend more time and effort on their tasks and report greater motivation than their non-accountable counterparts (Koonce, Anderson, &Marchant, 1995). When teams are motivated to achieve high performance, willingness of teams to involve in activities so that goal and objective can be achieved will also increase. Besides, as much as team members facing pressure to high performance, this will effectively motivate team to achieve high-quality performance and they will able to acknowledge that they should take actions to focus, engage, and prolong their members’ efforts (Heidi, 2012).

For most of the studies have primarily examined the factors leading to group performance is important, in manyteam contexts, the structure and composition is fluid, ad hoc, and loosely coupled,making it increasingly difficult and less meaningful to assess the performance of theentire collaborative unit (Sarker, Ahuja, Sarker, &Kirkeby, 2011). To examine the performance,the abilities, behaviors, andstatus of teams and team’s member can be recognized and leveraged in distributed contexts todevelop a more effective collaborative unit. When team and members have the ability and ways to perform, performance level of team will link to their ability and way to perform due to the positive relationship of member’s ability and team performance as well as using the correct way to perform (Sarker el at, 2011).

Task planning is one process that focuses a team’s efforts on its present task (Durham, Knight, and Locke, 1997). Performance-driven teams are likely to engage in extensive knowledgecoordination processes because complex problem-solving tasks require team members to work hard to integrate their knowledge, at the end communication are encourage persistence to face the challenges.(Heidi, 2012). Each of the team-level processes also has a demonstrated link to improving team performance, therefore aspressure to high performance increases, team members will increase the frequency of effort-directing actions such as task planning, knowledge coordination, and communications.

Although high performance may motivate teams, some research suggests that, even when small groups have a clear performance goal and are motivated to perform well, they may undermine their own efforts by engaging in suboptimal processes such as failing to integrate members’ relevant knowledge into their collective work (Bunderson and Sutcliffe, 2002). Given that knowledge use is the key to achieving the high performance, these results suggest the need to think more deeply and theoretically about how performance demands influence the actual use of knowledge in work teams.

Individuals frequently make attributional judgments (Taggar&Nuebert, 2004). However, they may be especially likely to do so when they seek to explain poor performance in an achievement context. In interdependent teams, poor performance may considerably impact the behavior of all the members in the team and impact overall team achievements. Therefore attributional judgments may play a prominent role in the responses of team members to a poor performer.

Team members may observe behavior and whether the cause of poor performance is internal or external. If external, the individual is deem not to be responsible for his or her behavior and prosocial behavioral responses from peers are more likely. The reactions to internal significantly more complex, observers look internally to personal characteristics to infer the cause of the performance. However, it can lead to punishment and even make team to failure (LePine& Van Dyne, 2001).

2.1.2 First Independence Variable: Team Communication

Communication in team is a vital issue to be considered in a successful team. According to Chi, Chang, &Tsou (2012), it reveals that communication in team is one of the factors affecting team performance. Teams are a collection of interacting individuals and taking into account the effects of such interaction is important since individual team members tend to influence each other in a way that can affect their performance. The relations between groups members are important factors in understanding how group performance affect individual abilities (Kane &Borgatti, 2011).

Effective communication in teams is essential to lead teams to strong performance. Proper communication in teams can help teams to avoid misunderstanding and conflict which will help in increasing the possibility to success in teams. According to Hartman &McCambridge (2011), communication skill such as oral, written and interpersonal skills of the team member are the keys to lead individual, team and organization to success since good communication skill brings effective communication. Thus, there was some statistic showing that the level of communication effectiveness does lead in high performance no matter to teams or organizations.

Teams have to face the challenges in communication, there were a number of studies that show teams have communication problem the lead to poor performance. Oertig and Buergi (2006) reported communication as a major challenge faced by the leader in teams. Yet, communication has the ability to work in teams, solve problem, and adapt to various viewers, communication are critical to develop solutions in today’s workplace (Levy &Murnane, 2004). These interpersonal skills must be improved in order for them to succeed in the 21st-century workplace.

Individuals in a team belonging to diverse cultures and national backgrounds require motivation to share information. Anderson, Campbell & Nieto (2007) suggest that the "effective use of communication, especially during the early stages of team’s development, plays an equally important role in gaining and maintaining trust". Daily communication between members and team leader is a kind of glue that holds the team together. As in the case of traditional teams, social communication (e.g., exchanging greetings, interests and other personal information) is important in the evolution of trust in teams since communication behaviors are the challenges to develop trust in teams (Jarvenpaa and Leidner, 1999).

Some studies have assumed close proximity to improve team communication on the premise that reduced physical distance increases the chance of contact and information exchange (Chong, Eerde, Rutte& Chai, 2012). Openness among the members can be increase when the relationship between member and member increasingly closer. When the members became closer, trust among them arise, they are more willing to share information together, and this will definitely increase the effectiveness and efficiency of the team. However, research showed that the relationship between team proximity and team communication is not always straightforward and may depend on some circumstantial conditions. Therefore, there will also condition that team performance cannot be affected even the team’s members have close relationship with each other.

Wong and Burton (2000) argue that relations of virtual team members are weak because lack of face-to-face interaction. The relationships connecting virtual members are likely to be lateral but weak due to lack of face-to-face contact and other barriers with regard to cultural and organizational difference. However, different characteristics of team have different team performance, in the study of Bergiel (2008) there are factors leading virtual team into success and also the advantages and disadvantages to join virtual teams. Most of the elements necessary for effective face-to-face teams are also essential for virtual teams as well but the only difference is that virtual teams highly rely on technology. When there is trust between the members of the group, even if they are not in virtual team, it becomes easy to meet the commitments and can be easily reliable. Virtual teams are often self-managed teams without a specific leader. The responsibility lies on the team leader to coordinate team activities. Virtual team members should have proper coordination to achieve performance.

The use of communication technology might pose a negative impact on performance. Henttonen and Blomqvist (2005) introduced the evolution of trust through technology-mediated relational communication. In this research, it shows that the relationship between technology and trust through communication is low compare to the traditional team approach which is face to face. However, there is also research show that technology can provide a lot of advantages as well especially to diverse team. Technology in communication has play important roles nowadays since it enable those team member connect with each other anywhere they wish.

Communication has always been viewed as a key element in any group. In teams, the lack of prior history, and thus an absence of shared understanding make communication "critical".Some researcher suggest that communication affects the level of task conflict in teams, some argue that communication is an important process within teamwork and has important implications in terms of the outcomes. Indeed, Ahuja, Galletta&Carley (2003) have noted that the development of a trusting relationship and task performance necessarily involve communication.

2.1.3 Second Independence Variable: Member’ involvement

According to Lawler (1992), team performance will be higher when members are committed and behaviorally involved in the team. Members besides knowing their individual roles and responsibilities, they also need to able to work with each other to accomplish the common goal. When members are motivated and committed in a team, they will put in effort to make sure job is done effectively. Motivated members will do what is needed to complete their job. They will utilize all their knowledge, experience, problem solving skills and efforts through involvement in the team. Productivity of the team increases when members are actively involved with diversified experienced and knowledge and thus leads to better team performance. High member’s involvement is needed to consider as an investment as it helps to enhance team performance and eventually leads to improvements in organizational effectiveness (Levine &Tyson, 1990).

However, there are also members that will put in lesser effort in the team. They are less likely to involve themselves in the team activities and are not motivated to commit themselves in the team. Some members put in less effort when their works are previously not recognized by other members. Thus they are not motivated to contribute more as they afraid that they will get negative feedbacks from their colleague. These behaviors are known as "social loafing", where individual will put in lesser effort and are less motivated when working in a group. In contrast, social facilitation is where the work of an individual in a team is recognized and valued (Erez&Somech, 1996). When their work is recognized, they are more likely to continue the good behavior. These recognitions help to enhance team motivation and results to good team performance. Individual with social facilitation can perform better in a team than working alone. According to Mulvey, Bowes, &Klein (1998), social loafing in a group will have negative impact on the team’s performance and its effectiveness.

Another form of similar negative behavior regarding lower involvement in a group is known as "free- riding effect". Individual will put in lesser effort in a team as they will try to lean on other member’s work. They want to benefits from other member’s work and insert lesser contribution in the team (Stroebe, Diehl &Abakoumkin, 1996). They restrain themselves from involving much in the team as they expect that other member’s contribution is sufficient enough for the team to perform. According to Kerr (1983), free-riding effect does not directly influence the team’s overall performance for disjunctive task. Disjunctive task is where the group performance depends only on the performance of one best member. In other words, the performance of the best member is also equals to the overall team performance. However, the free- rider will eventually demotivate other contributing members and causes the overall team performance to worsen.

Contributing members that are demotivated will reduce their effort as they do not want to become the "sucker" that are only performing and benefits the other non-contributing members. This phenomenon is known as "sucker effect". Contributing members will be afraid that non- contributing members will free ride on their effort, thus they will withhold their effort and eventually affect team performance negatively. Another form of phenomenon is the "lone-wolf effect". This happens when individual are comfortable to work alone. They involve lesser in team and only achieve superior performance when they work alone. These individual often isolate themselves from other members and prefer to handle all the tasks of the team themselves. Pieterse& Thompson (2010) described that they usually do not respect or value skills and knowledge of other members, they are only concerned on completing the tasks all by their own. Since the results of the tasks done will be only limited to the skills and knowledge of the "loner", the performance of the team is also limited and low.

Member’s involvements are affected by the negative or positive affect of members. According to Staw, Sandelands& Dutton (1981), member’s negative affect such as stress, fear, anger, frustration or sadness will limit their thinking, behavior and attention. They will be less motivated to do any tasks and leads to lesser involvement in the team. Members with negative affect are frustrating or stressful over certain event, they are not able to think and act logically and starts to isolate themselves from other members. They restrain themselves from involving in the team activities and causes team performance to decline. On the contrary, positive affect such as curiosity, love, interest, appreciation or gratitude will broaden member’s thinking, behavior and attention. They will be very motivated to complete tasks given in the team and insert more effort and involves better in the team. Members with positive affect such as interest in events or optimism for future events (Fredrickson, Tugade, Waugh & Larkin, 2003) will be enthusiastic to participate in the team activities, and insert more effort to make sure the job is done effectively and efficiently.

If fellow members get to know with each other during the initial phases of group development, it helps to promote openness and sense of familiarity which leads to trust in the team (Ensley, Pearson &Amason, 2000). Members that trust each other will be comfortable to be more open and cooperative when they need to work as a group. The issue of trust in a team is very important because if members trust each other, they will not hesitate to involve and put in effort to get the job done. They will be motivated as there are sense of belonging and familiarity as a member in the team. These positive behaviors will leads to higher team performance since members are actively involved. All their skills and knowledge are highly utilized through involvement in the team and leads to improved team performance. Members that have previously worked together before also have higher sense of familiarity and are enthusiastic to cooperate again if their previous working experiences are happy and successful. Gretchen, Deborah, Aneil& William (1999) proposed that when members trust each other, they will be more involved in the team activities. Members that trust each other will not fear that their wrongful action will be punished or ridiculed. There is also expectation that promise made will be kept.

2.1.4 Third Independence Variable: Leadership

Leadership is the style that one leader influences, manages, and communicates with their members. It also shows how a leader should perform and lead his/her members towards success. It has been study for many areas to determine it influence on the team and organization performance.

Based on research Wong, Chou, & Jiang (2004), it shows that leadership (especially charismatic behavior leadership style) has influence in the team performance. Besides leadership behaviors, the study also indicated the leader effectiveness is one of the crucial factors that affect a team performance. From the study we found that a charismatic leader has those abilities to fuse the members’ personality, match their ability and yet lead them to achieve the team or organizational mission. This statistic shows that the leadership style has positive relation with one team performance. Researchers also found that the charismatic leadership brings higher team performance.

Team performance in general will be evaluating by members’ performance and net gains produced by the team. According to the Schaubroeck, Lam, & Cha (2007), team members rate that the team leadership have positive relation with the team performance. Leadership has influences with the team performance by the mediating factor: team potency. The leader who can foster team potency will lead the team contribute more toward high performance. Besides that, leader is the model for the team members; the desirable behavior play by the leader can encourage and engage others. Leaders have a strong control in motivating the team to perform better. The concerning behavior of a leader will promote the team belief and support and yet these able to create high level of team confidence and help the team achieve ambitious collective goals.

There is some studies state that the empowerment will lead to higher performance of the team. Empowerment is explained with the power given to team member to make some minor decision on the tasks or complete the tasks independently from the leading. Transformational leaders exist to initiating the team change, to transform the value of followers’ personal values, group and organization cultures. A successful leadership can encourage both the personal development with promoting organization goals accomplishment, transformational leadership is about how the leader matching personal needs with the rewards for goal achievement rather than leading the team to perform. As the Jung &Sosik (2002) stated, transformational leadership has positive relation in team outcomes.

Although there are many researches show that the leadership has link with team performance but it also exists the "black box" from these relationship studies. The study proposed by Dianne, Yammarino, & Leanne E. Atwater (2003), mention that the direct linkage of the teamwork process and the impact of leadership in team performance. The leadership affects the teamwork processes which subsequently manipulate the performance of the team.

As the statement posted by Murry, Avolio, & Jung (2002), the relationship among team, followers and leaders is viewed as a social influence process. Manz and Sims (1987) explain that leadership can be categories as self-management leadership and team-level/ individual-level leadership. The clear vision and central focus can make the team perform in high effective way.

There are several researches being studied for each different leadership and the result show that the leadership does influence the team performance with other mediating factors: team cohesion, team motivation and members’ potency. Those results show that the performance is not directly manipulated by the leadership, but the leadership does affect the mediating factors that directly influence the team performance/outcome. Team performance influenced by leadership since leader plays an important role in binding, motivating and leading the members work toward the goals.

From the research, we also found that there are conflicts among those different studies. The Charismatic leadership support that the leader can provide proper leading and team binding in order to increase team performance. Meanwhile, the transformational leadership proposed that the team performing is due to the matching of the rewards, personal needs and performance. The current literature, the social influence is the one factor that really make different of the team collection but leadership is no more exemplary required for highest motivation and team performance. (Murry, Avolio, & Jung, 2002)

We going to do examination and research on the leadership influence in team performance for the current situation. The appropriate leadership style should be find out and develop in order to increase team performance.