Team Efficiency in Organizations: A Group Perspective on Initiative

Ana Lisbona, Abel Las-Hayas, Francisco J. Palací, Miguel Bernabé, Francisco J. Morales and Alexander Haslam
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Ana Lisbona: Departamento de Psicología Social y de las Organizaciones, Universidad Nacional de Educación a Distancia, Juan del Rosal 10, 28040 Madrid, Spain
Abel Las-Hayas: Departamento de Psicología Social y de las Organizaciones, Universidad Nacional de Educación a Distancia, Juan del Rosal 10, 28040 Madrid, Spain
Francisco J. Palací: Departamento de Psicología Social y de las Organizaciones, Universidad Nacional de Educación a Distancia, Juan del Rosal 10, 28040 Madrid, Spain
Miguel Bernabé: Departamento de Psicología Social y de las Organizaciones, Universidad Nacional de Educación a Distancia, Juan del Rosal 10, 28040 Madrid, Spain
Francisco J. Morales: Departamento de Psicología Social y de las Organizaciones, Universidad Nacional de Educación a Distancia, Juan del Rosal 10, 28040 Madrid, Spain
Alexander Haslam: University of Queensland, School of Psychology, St Lucia QLD 4072, Australia

IJERPH, 2020, vol. 17, issue 6, 1-17

Abstract: Organizational research has shown that personal initiative is related to both climate for initiative and work engagement. Yet little is known about what happens to this relationship once the focus shifts to the team level. When organizational and team goals are involved this renders the relationship more complex, and team identification and organizational identification are likely to be key to understanding it. In this paper we develop a model to deal with these complexities. This predicts (a) that team identification will impact on team initiative through team work engagement while (b) organizational identification will impact on team initiative through climate for initiative. It is also expected that team initiative will, in turn, impact on team productivity, and on radical innovation as evaluated by the team leader. This model was tested in a field study with 327 participants of 76 workteams belonging to 50 organizations. Results of SEM and regression analysis supported our main hypotheses. Findings showed that initiative is related to performance and also underline the importance of initiative at a team level. At the same time they suggest that to develop teams with high levels of initiative it is important to promote both organizational and team identification.

Keywords: personal initiative; climate for initiative; social identification; team work engagement; innovation; productivity; teams (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I I1 I3 Q Q5 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020
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