Subgroup Formation And Team Performance

There are some subgroups in real work teams.Many studies have explored the relationship between subgroup formation and team performance,and believed that subgroup formation reduced team performance and proposed relevant solutions.According to social identity theory,after subgroup formation,employees have more interactions with people who are in the same subgroup,and there is a certain repulsion to the people in the other subgroups.Different task characteristics require different methods which employees use in work.In the case of task independence,employees can finish the task by themselves,without collaboration with others.In that way,does the impact of subgroup formation vary depending on job characteristics? If so,how can we alleviate the negative effects of subgroup formation according to the working characteristics?This paper reviewed the previous literature on the relationship between subgroup formation and team performance,and found that it was a new perspective to analyze the impact of subgroup formation from the perspective of work characteristics.Subgroup formation led to changes in the interactions between employees.Employees in the same subgroup had more interactions,while employees from different subgroups had less interactions.Teams with subgroups had low cohesion and employees had difficulty to cooperate.When task independence was high,employees could complete their work without collaboration,and the negative impact of subgroup formation would be weakened to a certain extent.In this paper,119 teams were surveyed by means of questionnaires.Data analysis results supported our hypotheses.After subgroup formation,team performance could be reduced by lower team cohesion.When task independence was high,the relationship between team cohesion and team performance became weaker.Furthermore,this paper proposed a moderated mediation model that subgroup formation affected team performance by affecting team cohesion,and the latter mediation was moderated by task independence.When task independence was high,the mediating role of team cohesion became weaker.And when task independence was low,the mediating role became stronger.In theory,from the view of work characteristics,this paper analyzed the methods of alleviating the negative effects of subgroups,and put forward a new moderating variable,task independence.In addition,this paper put forward team cohesion as a new path of the influence of subgroup formation on team performance.Finally,we further enriched the application of social identity theory in subgroup research.In practice,managers can control subgroups from the perspective of task characteristics.By allowing employees to engage in independent work,we can effectively reduce the negative impact of subgroup formation.We can also enhance team cohesion to alleviate the negative effects of subgroup formation.Finally,managers should be fully aware of the harmfulness of the subgroup formation and inhibit subgroup formation.