Mediating Effect Of Team Efficacy: A Multilevel Analysis Of Team Members' Personality And Team Effectiveness

As teamwork appears to be an important trend within organizations, research interest on team personality composition has resurged in the field of organizational behavior. After reviewed previous studies on the relationship of personality and team effectiveness, researchers in current study employed I-P-O model (Input-Process-Output Model) to analyze the effect of personality on team member's perception. Team efficacy, as an antecedent of team process, sometimes was viewed as an index of team effectiveness. There is a spiral relation between team efficacy and team performance. Based on functions of team efficacy, the current study divided it into two variables: team efficacy expectation, team effectiveness expectation before tasks; team efficacy assessment, team effectiveness evaluation after tasks.After the previous review and analysis, researchers carried out a two-day follow up survey to 14 teams, 176 volunteer MBA students , to analyze how team members' personality affect team process and team members' evaluation on team effectiveness in the framework of I-P-O model, and to explore the effect of team efficacy in team process. In the first day, participants were assigned into different teams, and then were asked to finish a personality scale and to report their expectation about team effectiveness in the following activities. In the second day, participants attended a package of team tasks. After all the tasks, they were required to report their team process and team effectiveness in a questionnaire.Correlation analysis was employed to explore the relationship among all the variables. To demonstrate mediating effect of team efficacy expectation, mediating analysis was used to show that extroversion and agreeableness can positively influence team communication and cohesiveness through increased team efficacy expectation. SEM analysis verified the individual level I-P-O model, and showed that team communication and cohesiveness can mediate the positive relation between team efficacy expectation and efficacy assessment.After analyzed the collected data, researchers came to the following conclusion:To team members, their traits, such as extroversion and agreeableness, can affect team process, and in turn influence their perception about their team;Team process can mediate the effect of team efficacy expectation on team efficacy assessment;Team efficacy expectation acts as a mediator of extraversion and agreeableness on team process;Years of working negatively correlate with team efficacy expectation.In previous studies, researchers claimed that efficacy-performance spirals can explain the mechanism of team efficacy. The finding of the study showed that team input can affect team efficacy, and in turn influence team process, and that team process can mediate the positive relation between team efficacy expectation and efficacy assessment. Based on the findings, we suggested that team efficacy acts as a ladder in team process. Team input and previous team effectiveness both can change team efficacy. Because team input can raise or bring down team efficacy, team efficacy can be used to regulate team process.