پتانسیل انگیزش تیم ها : تست و گسترش چن و کانفر (2006) مدل سطح متقابل انگیزه در تیم ها

Although individual- and team-level studies of motivational processes abound, very few have sought to link such phenomena across levels. Filling this gap, we build upon Chen and Kanfer’s (2006) multilevel theoretical model of motivation in teams, to advance and test a cross-level model of relationships between individual and team motivation and performance. Data from two samples of undergraduates performing simulated team tasks supported the direct and mediated cross-level relationships between team-level prior performance, efficacy, and action processes with individual-level self-efficacy, goal striving, and performance. The findings provide support for a multilevel, system-based formulation of motivation and performance in teams. Findings also contribute to the on-going debate on whether motivational processes account for performance once controlling for prior performance.

Despite important differences in team characteristics (larger team size and different team task) and measurement approaches (objective indices of goal striving, action processes, and individual performance), results from Sample 2 largely replicated results from Sample 1. In fact, the only difference in results across the two samples involved suppressor effects detected in Sample 1. However, despite suppressor effects in Sample 1, all hypotheses received support in both samples. Interestingly, results in Sample 2 held even after taking into account the experimental manipulations of feedback. Particularly informative was the finding that prior team and individual performance significantly related to subsequent self-efficacy and team efficacy, over and above individual and team feedback, respectively. This suggests that actual prior performance levels more significantly related to efficacy beliefs than the performance feedback provided to participants via the manipulation. General discussion Building off studies by Chen et al., 2005 and DeShon et al., 2004, which established homology between individual-level and team-level motivation and performance, this research provided consistent evidence for the cross-level pathways by which team and individual motivation are connected, supporting key tenets of the Chen and Kanfer (2006) multilevel model of motivation in teams. More broadly, our findings also contribute unique empirical evidence to a growing recognition that motivation is not just an intra-psychic process, but, rather, involves a more complex set of contextually-grounded, interpersonal, temporal, as well as person-centered phenomena ( Grant, 2007, Kanfer et al., 2008 and Kark and van Dijk, 2007). Findings and contributions The present findings augment extant theory and the research literature in five ways. First, we extend previous research on individual and team homology by demonstrating how motivational processes at the team level influence motivational processes at the individual level. Consistent with Chen and Kanfer (2006), our findings indicate that with the exception of the relationship between team action processes and individual performance, team level motivation constructs exert cross-level influences on individual motivation through mediated pathways, rather than directly. Our findings further show that the mediating pathways linking between team and individual motivation involved overlap in level (i.e., some mediators were at the individual level, as were the outcomes), as well as in content and timing (i.e., other mediators captured similar conceptual meanings and operated simultaneously with the outcomes). Although these results may represent an artifact of design, it is also possible that these findings reflect an important boundary condition on cross-level influences – namely that influences may be limited to contexts that afford intrinsic alignment of multilevel motivation constructs, whether they be experiential (e.g., prior individual and team enactive mastery), cognitive (e.g., team efficacy and self-efficacy), or behavioral (e.g., team action processes and individual goal striving). Our second contribution pertains to the findings that team-level motivation can explain additional variance in individual performance over and above individual-level motivation. The direct cross-level relationships between team action processes and individual performance stands in sharp contrast to the mediated pathway observed in analyses of cross-level relationships at all prior points in the chain. Conceptually, we suggest that team-level action processes, in contrast to team efficacy, for example, operate directly on the context for performance and may be influential due to their environmental (rather than psychological) impact on action. For example, a teammate’s backup behavior may contribute directly to another individual’s performance without necessarily enhancing that person’s self efficacy or goal striving. The third contribution of our findings pertains more generally to the measurement of motivational processes in teams. In particular, we detected strong support for cross-level relationships in our model despite quite different approaches measuring goal striving and team action processes (i.e., self-ratings in Sample 1 vs. objective indices in Sample 2). Regardless of measurement approaches and other differences in team attributes (e.g., 2-member vs. 3-member teams), the findings involving team action process and individual goal striving were quite similar. These results suggest that these measurement approaches all represent viable means of capturing these critical motivational processes. Collectively, the reliance on different measurement approaches and the differences in team characteristics across the studies serve to substantially enhance the validity and generalizability of our findings. Fourth, our findings also contribute to the literature by helping to further inform the controversy regarding the direction of efficacy influences on performance. Heggestad and Kanfer (2005) found that self-efficacy does not predict performance after controlling for prior performance. Findings by Vancouver et al., 2001 and Vancouver et al., 2002 indicate further that when examined from a within-individual perspective, self efficacy exerts a slight negative influence on subsequent performance. In contrast, using a within-individual (and within-team) design in both Samples 1 and 2, we found a positive relation between self-efficacy and subsequent goal striving and performance, even when controlling for prior performance. It is quite possible that the contextual features of task performance in our studies, in which individuals were accountable to teammates, operated to reduce the likelihood of overconfidence (and a resulting reduction in effort). Further, it is reasonable to propose that the significant relationships between self-efficacy and subsequent performance in our studies stemmed primarily from context (cross-level) influences, and that context influences modulated self-efficacy judgments beyond past individual performance alone. Given the ubiquitous nature of teams in modern work, further research is needed to identify the task/team context conditions that may indeed produce the negative relation observed by Vancouver et al., 2001 and Vancouver et al., 2002. For example, team longevity, rewards, leadership, and task interest/meaningfulness can all play important roles in whether or not individuals and teams become overconfident as they perform over repeated episodes. Finally, our findings with respect to cross-level relationships suggest several potential implications for managing teams and individuals working in teams, which, to date, has focused largely on managing team-level motivational processes (Kozlowski & Bell, 2003). Specifically, effective management of team effectiveness can also pay high dividends in terms of influencing the motivation and performance of individual members within the team. Indeed, our findings suggest that interventions and practices directed at improving team efficacy and team action processes translate into more effective individual-level self-regulation and performance. This may prove to be particularly beneficial if members work simultaneously on multiple teams. To the extent that participation in “Team A” helps to promote effective members’ self-regulation processes, organizations may not only reap the benefits of more effective Team A performance, but they may also derive value from more effective performance of those same members in “Teams B, C, D, etc.” as well as, perhaps, in their non-team work activities. Thus, managerial actions that enhance the effectiveness of a team’s operations may prove beneficial far beyond the value of just that team’s performance. Limitations and future research No research is without limitations and two associated with these studies warrant note. First, we investigated cross-level relationships with students performing in the context of two simulations designed to map well to the major time, task, and psychological demands of modern flight and radar teams. Although psychological fidelity was rather high in both samples, replications of our findings using organizational teams in field settings and teams performing different tasks are clearly needed. Another limitation of our study is that we did not experimentally manipulate key constructs in our model. As such, we cannot draw strong causal inferences from our results. Although feedback was manipulated in Sample 2, this manipulation did not seem to affect the processes we studied. Clearly, experimental replications of our findings are needed to strengthen the internal validity of our findings. In addition to strengthening the internal and external validity of our research, additional fruitful avenues for future research include incorporating various predictors of individual and team motivation, beyond prior performance, as well as testing possible boundary conditions for the generalization of motivation theory across levels of analysis. First, researchers should uncover unique and complementary practices that motivate individuals both personally and collectively. For instance, team staffing systems may need to identify individual differences that help drive individual team members’ performance, as well as the best combination or configuration of individual differences at the team-level. Second, it is important to examine the possible moderating effects of certain boundary conditions on the interplay between individual and team motivational processes. For instance, work team characteristics (e.g., reward structure, team composition), as well as the extent to which team-level motivation constructs (such as team efficacy beliefs) are strongly vs. weakly shared among members can moderate the extent to which team and individual motivation processes are related. More research is also needed to enhance our understanding of the individual-level efficacy–performance relationship by considering contextual moderators of this relationship. For example, it is possible that this relationship remains positive and significant over time when individuals perform in a team that has a more learning oriented climate, but that this relationship becomes more negative over time when team climate is more performance oriented, since a more learning oriented climate may encourage team members to be more receptive to changes in the task environment (cf. Audia, Locke, & Smith, 2000). A related issue that deserves additional attention is whether goal striving and team action processes always positively contribute to performance. Research should examine, for example, whether effective allocation of individual and collective effort towards accomplishing a misguided goal (e.g., due to a mismatch between the goal and the environmental requirements) may be harmful in teams. Finally, an underlying assumption in our study was that top-down (contextual) influences are more powerful than bottom-up (emergent) influences. Now that we have clear evidence that team motivational variables can exact strong influences on individual motivation and performance, the time may be ripe to consider more carefully whether, when, and how individual motivation may also exert emergent influences on team outcomes. Indeed, inspection of Table 1 and Table 3 suggests that, in both samples, prior and subsequent individual performance both correlated positively with subsequent team performance, which could be suggestive of plausible upward influences. However, the motivational and social mechanisms through which individual motivation and performance emerge to influence team motivation and performance may be complex, and are not yet clear. Providing some guidance on this issue, Mathieu and Taylor (2007, p. 145) suggested that “upward influences would be more prominent in instances where higher level phenomena have yet to fully crystallize or form, such as during socialization periods, early team interactions, following a major organizational intervention, and so forth.” Thus, research that measures and/or manipulates individual and team motivational processes at critical junctures in the team’s development and compilation process (cf. Kozlowski, Gully, Nason, & Smith, 1999) can shed more light on the relative importance and likely timing of top-down vs. bottom-up motivational influences in teams. Although designing and executing such studies can be quite challenging and complex, such research will no doubt enhance our understanding of the complex, multilevel nature of motivation in teams.