TEAM TASK INTERDEPENDENCE LEADING TO TEAM
IDENTIFICATION? UNCOVERING THE RELATIONSHIP
Master’s thesis, MscBDK, specialization Human Resource Management University of Groningen, Faculty of Economics and Business
2
ABSTRACT
Given the prominence of organizational teams, substantial efforts have been invested in researching how team task interdependence and team outcomes, such as team member satisfaction and team member commitment, relate. However, the work with regard to team task interdependence and team identification is underrepresented and has given mixed results. Using a sample of 63 work teams in Dutch organizations, I posit that facets of team processes and team leadership moderate the positive relationship between team task interdependence and team identification: information sharing and empowering leadership style, respectively. Contrary to expectations, the results show no support for a positive relationship between team task interdependence and team identification, nor for moderating effects of information sharing or empowering leadership style. Nevertheless, I do find strong, significant main effects of both moderating variables. Implications and recommendations for future research are discussed to conclude this current contribution.
Key words
Team identification, team task interdependence, information sharing, empowering leadership style
Title seminar
3
INTRODUCTION
Team identification is one’s sense of belonging or ‘oneness’ and the accompanying emotional significance one attaches to a work group (Solansky, 2011; Van der Vegt & Bunderson, 2005). A high level of team identification is important as it encourages team members to collaborate, fosters mutual trust and creativity and spurs constructive attainment of mutual team goals (Somech, Desivilya & Lidogoster, 2008; Jansen & Huang, 2008). As such, knowledge on how to foster team identification in organizational work teams is valuable to many organizations nowadays. In the current research, I will investigate the relationship between team task interdependence and team identification. Teams in organizations are by definition interdependent (Van der Vegt, Emans & Van de Vliert, 2001; Van Knippenberg, 2000), however, the extent to which teams are interdependent varies considerably between teams and can have important effects on how team members identify with the team. Task interdependence requires careful planning and frequent interaction with coworkers and peers, and may thus positively affect group members’ feelings towards the group. Analogously, team identification should also be considered an affective response, since its close relationship and resemblance to commitment (Van Knippenberg & Sleebos, 2006).
4 found in their research, in highly interdependent teams, an empowering leadership style benefits these teams by stressing collaboration and mutual interaction. This finding led me to recognize an empowering leadership style as potential moderator. Therefore, I believe that the relationship between team task interdependence and team identification is moderated by information sharing and an empowering leadership style, such that the relationship will be more positive under conditions of high information sharing and a strong empowering leadership style, and vice versa, less positive under conditions of low information sharing and low empowering leadership.
In the current study, I will investigate the moderating effects of both information sharing and empowering leadership on the relationship between team task interdependence and team identification in a field study among 63 work teams in Dutch organizations. As such, this study extends on previous work on team identification (Van der Vegt et al., 2000; 2001; 2005) by introducing two crucial moderators. In doing so, this study provides a deeper understanding of the conditions under which this relationship comes about. However, most importantly, this paper attends to the mixed results found by several authors (e.g. Billings et al., 1977; Brass, 1985; Van der Vegt et al., 2000) by proposing two moderators as explanation for the mixed findings: information sharing and an empowering leadership style. Practically, this research has implications for the design and implementation of information sharing throughout a team and the extent to which an empowering leadership style should be adopted. For example, with regard to information sharing, making salient that information sharing is needed for task completion and initiating more discussion (groups) could be a possible means to increase team identification. Furthermore, by employing an empowering leadership style, and thus stressing team decision-making, team identification will increase. For instance, asking team members for their opinions or explicitly expressing confidence in the team could be interesting means to do so.
5
THEORY
Relationship between team identification and team task interdependence
Following Tajfel (1981) and his social identity theory, team identification is defined as the part of an individual’s self-concept in which one acknowledges and appreciates being part of a team and shares norms, values and behavior codes which develop into some sense of cohesion (Solansky, 2011). In other words, it concerns the emotional significance a person attaches to a collective group (Van der Vegt & Bunderson, 2005). This sense of ‘oneness’ or ‘one-being’ consists of and is elicited by three empirically distinct components, as found by Ellemers, Kortekaas & Ouwerkerk (1999). Namely, individuals identify themselves more strongly with a team once they are truly aware of membership in the group, are emotionally involved with the team and they positively value being part of the team. These three aspects – respectively called ‘cognitive’, ‘emotional’ and ‘evaluative’– prompt individuals to classify and perceive team goals, values, behavior codes and norms as their own (Van der Vegt & Bunderson, 2005; Janssen & Huang, 2008; Ellemers et al., 1999; Van Knippenberg, 2000). It should be noted that, like most previous studies, this study applies a group-level approach to this construct, meaning that identification is considered a characteristic of the team as a collective body; a general ‘morale’.
Team identification develops as a result of becoming socially tighter (Wheelan, 1994; Janssen & Huang, 2008; Gundlach, Zivnuska, & Stoner, 2006). Accordingly, many authors associate identification with team collaboration, team efficiency and decision quality (Jackson, 2002; Van Dick, Wagner, Stellmacher & Christ, 2004). Also, Solansky (2011) found that team identification is beneficial to teams in a sense that a team produces more when team identification is present and high. When people combine their skills and abilities, and increase collaboration, the whole is greater than the sum of its parts and team gains are constituted. In addition, high team identification has been found to increase feelings of pride and respect (Van Dick et al., 2004), enhance display of organizational citizenship behaviors (Janssen & Huang, 2008; Van Dick et al., 2004), foster mutual trust and creativity (Somech et al., 2008) and augment team learning (Van der Vegt & Bunderson, 2005).
6 commitment’ and ‘team satisfaction’. To constitute the uniqueness of ‘team identification’, I will shortly elaborate on team commitment and team satisfaction. Commitment is defined as a strong psychological link between the individual and the team. Ashforth & Mael (1989) propose that the core difference between both constructs lies in the fact that identification reflects an individual’s self-definition, whereas commitment does not. Commitment is more typically viewed as an attitude towards the team (Meyer & Allen, 1997; Pratt, 1998). Specifically, team identification implies that the team and the individual are ‘one’ (i.e. the team is included in the individual’s self-conception), whereas team commitment expresses a relationship in which team and individual are separate identities psychologically (Meyer & Herscovitch, 2001; Van Knippenberg & Sleebos, 2006). Secondly, team satisfaction represents the willingness of team members to work in the same team again as a result of pleasant working experiences (Peeters, Rutte, Van Tuijl & Reymen, 2006; Gladstein, 1984). It is a broad construct that is considered an outcome instead of a process-related characteristic of teamwork. Accordingly, Peeters and colleagues (2006) and Van der Vegt & Bunderson (2005) believe that team satisfaction strongly differs from team identification in that satisfaction does not imply a sense of ‘oneness’, nor a feeling of belonging to the team nor is self-defining in terms of team values and norms. Moreover, team identification is considered to be an antecedent of team satisfaction (Oktug, 2013; Solansky, 2011; Van Knippenberg & Sleebos, 2006; Van der Vegt et al., 2001). So, team identification is considered and constitutes a unique construct in that it implies a strong, thriving and intense sense of psychological one-being of the individual with the team.
7 (Sharma & Yetton, 2003) and most importantly, produce more positive affective responses (Van der Vegt et al., 2000).
Task interdependence thus requires careful planning, collaboration, coordination and frequent interaction with coworkers and peers. This, in turn, leads to team members to be physically closer, influence each other and support one another on a more regular basis (Somech et al., 2008; Gundlach et al., 2006). In addition, frequent interaction with coworkers and cooperating with them on a constant basis gives way to feelings of amity, building relationships and, in terms of Van der Vegt and colleagues (2000), ‘feelings of belonging and attachment to the group’. As Ellemers and colleagues (1999) and Wheelan (1994) found, task interdependence in team ‘demands’ people to relate to one another, become closer and form socially tighter bonds. These behaviors reflect deep and intense feelings of belonging or emotional significance attached to the team and its members. A high level of team task interdependence thus leads to increased team identification. Moreover, team task interdependence deepens and constitutes feelings of belonging and attachment to the group, which demonstrates an intense and thriving feeling of ‘oneness’ with the team (i.e. identification).
8 Considering mentioned studies with positive outcomes, the minority of ‘negative’ studies and evidence for the potential presence of moderators, I propose that:
Hypothesis 1: Team task interdependence and team identification are positively related.
Information sharing and empowering leadership style as moderators
The mentioned mixed findings stress the urgency to examine the role of possible moderators as clarification to these findings. I believe that the positive relationship between team task interdependence and team identification is weaker under low information sharing, and, vice versa, stronger under high information sharing. Information sharing is defined as: ‘the central process through which team members collectively utilize their available informational resources’ (Mesmer-Magnus & DeChurch, 2009: 536). In highly interdependent teams cooperating, being open and pooling resources is key to success. Information sharing then influences task outcomes (e.g. decision quality, efficiency) but also social outcomes (e.g. member commitment, relationships, identification) (Wittenbaum, Hollingshead & Botero, 2004; Constant, Kiesler & Sproull, 1994). The social outcomes are influenced in that information sharing closely relates to the trust a sender has in the receiver of the information; without that trust, information is not shared (Fleig-Palmer, 2011). The more information is being shared, the more will the receiver perceive the sender of the information as open, trustworthy and transparent. Shared information will then help build a common ground and mutual understanding and lead to stronger identification (Wittenbaum et al., 2004). These interactions and this cooperation engender ‘deepened’ feelings for the team, or ‘team identification’ (Van der Vegt et al., 2000). Moreover, coupled with more information sharing, this will increase the tendency to pursue and gather information, and seek alternatives to complete a task by even interacting more often with team members (De Dreu, 2006). This means that extensively sharing information benefits the relationship between task interdependence and identification in a team. However, the reverse would also be true. For example, in task interdependent teams, every team member has the opportunity to not communicate, communicate false information or withhold crucial information, which could thwart the feeling of oneness with the team (Raven, 1992; Steiner, 1972). Successively, this would decrease the perceived identification with the team, and thus neutralize or weaken the aforementioned relationship. Therefore, I propose that:
9 In addition, I argue that the strength of the relationship between team task interdependence and team identification is moderated by an empowering leadership style. An empowering leadership is defined as: the sharing of power with team members and raising their level of autonomy and responsibility (Lorinkova et al., 2013; Zhang & Bartol, 2010). Lorinkova and colleagues (2013: 2) found that ‘teams led by an empowering leader experience higher performance improvement over time due to higher level of team learning, coordination and mental model development’. Additionally, empowering leadership leads to increased team commitment and higher levels of team collaboration and intrinsic motivation (Zaccaro, Rittman & Marks, 2001; Zhang & Bartol, 2010; Cohen, Chang & Ledford, 1997). This means that when power is being shared with team members, and their level of autonomy and responsibility is raised, it will strengthen the possibility of creating feelings of identification. Especially in a highly task interdependent team it is vital to employ a empowering leadership style since ‘… it benefits these teams by establishing participative and collaborative norms among members, encouraging them to contribute ideas, deciding on optimal courses of action and taking responsibility for team performance.’ (Lorinkova et al., 2013: 7). Team members will also more likely share the team’s values and be proud of their team (and its accomplishments) (Kirkman & Rosen, 1999). Likewise, this gives a fair way for team identification to rise. However, as is the case with information sharing, the (extreme) opposite is also true. A strongly directive leadership style (Lorinkova et al., 2013) limits input by team members, hampers communication and tends to focus on individual-level responsibilities instead of feelings of oneness and collectivity (Gibson & Vermeulen, 2003; Pearce et al., 2003). By aiming at structuring the team, assigning tasks and giving directions, there is less opportunity for friendly interactions and associated affective responses to develop. Consequently, this will lower responses such as team identification due to an overly focus on task-related behavior. Therefore, I propose that:
10 Important to note is that this study does not focus on a three-way interaction of empowering leadership on information sharing as moderator of the relationship between task interdependence and team identification. For example, one could argue that task interdependence leads to more information sharing when an empowering leader leads the team and that only in this case it leads to identification. While it has been found that an empowering leadership style is related to information sharing (e.g. Pearce et al., 2003; Zhang & Bartol, 2010), De Dreu (2006) and Constant and colleagues (1994) found that it are the members of the team that initiate and actually do the information sharing, and not necessarily the (empowering) team leader. They acknowledge that employing such style certainly would benefit the sharing of information, but even when the team has a strongly directive or authoritarian leader the sharing of information could also be high. Besides, the question arises why information sharing would always lead to team identification in this case. Therefore, this study considers both moderators to work separately and independently from each other. By doing so, this contribution aims to identify key influences on the aforementioned relationship more strongly and shed light on ‘when’ the relationship comes about. Also, by giving a deeper understanding of key moderators of the relationship, the mixed results as found by others (e.g. Brass, 1985; Van der Vegt et al., 2000) can be explained.
METHODS
Sample and procedure
11 The mean age was 36,19 years (SD = 13.26), ranging from 16 to 63 years. The mean team tenure was 5,3 years (SD = 6.22). The response rate was 90%. From all team leaders, 63.9% was male and 36.1% was female. The mean age was 42.69 years (SD = 10.30), ranging from 20 to 62 years. The mean team tenure was 7.58 years (SD = 8.07). The average span of control was 20 employees. The teams ranged in size from four to ten members (M = 5.54, SD = 1.50). The response rate was 95%. Regarding the education level of the employees and the team leaders, these are specified in table 2.
TABLE 1: BRANCHE OVERVIEW
Branche Team
frequency
Branche Teams
Construction 6 Healthcare 3 Financial services 2 Postal and telecommunications 2 Trading and reparing 13 Governmental 3
IT 2 B2B 4
Industrial 2 Transport 0
Educational 9 Agricultural 0 Real estate 0 Other (e.g. retailing, food/catering) 17
TABLE 2: EDUCATION OVERVIEW
Employees Team leaders
Lager onderwijs (i.e. primary education) 4 1 Middelbaar onderwijs (i.e. secondary education) 27 4 MBO (i.e. intermediate vocational education) 86 13 HBO (i.e. high vocational education) 101 27 Universiteit (i.e. university study) 44 15 Dr. (promotie) (i.e. promoted) 2 1
12 To ensure that the data set was comprised of participants of ‘true’ teams, and thus would be more reliable, the team leaders were asked to complete a team description form after agreeing to participate in the current study. The team description form requested information regarding team tasks and focused on the extent to which the teams meet the definition of (work) teams as introduced by Bell & Kozlowski (2010): having common objectives, interdependent tasks, joint accountability, and lastly, regular team meetings. All 63 teams met these four criteria in a sufficient to high extent.
Measures
- Team identification
Team identification was measured using a six-item scale by Van der Vegt and colleagues (2003). The response set was a 7-point Likert scale (1 = totally disagree, 7 = totally agree). The six items were: ‘I am happy with my current team members’, ‘I strongly identify with the other members of my team’, ‘I would like to continue working with my team’, ‘It is wonderful being part of this team’, ‘I like my team members’, and ‘I feel like part of the family in my team’. The Cronbach’s Alpha of the scale was .92 and the aggregation statistics justified aggregation to the team level (ICC1 = .19, p < .01; ICC2 = .49; Mean Rwg = .88; Median Rwg = .92).
- Team task interdependence
Team task interdependence was measured using a six-item scale by Van der Vegt and colleagues (2001). Respondents responded by rating on a 7-point Likert scale (1 = totally disagree, 7 = totally agree). The items were: ‘in this team, team members have to obtain information and resources from each other to complete their work’, ‘the nature of the team tasks compels team members to cooperate and deliberate in order to do their work properly’, ‘most team members have a one-person job; we rarely have to check or work with others to complete our tasks’ (reverse coded), ‘we are dependent on one another in doing our work’, ‘doing team tasks requires a lot of communication and coordination between team members’, and ‘team members are strongly dependent on one another to do their work properly’. The Cronbach’s Alpha of the scale was .84 and aggregation statistics justified aggregation to the team level (ICC1 = .21, p < .01; ICC2 = .53; Mean Rwg = .77; Median Rwg = .89).
- Information sharing
13 of information sharing is high’, ‘my colleagues share new facts, insights and ideas with me’, and ‘in my team, a lot of information is exchanged’. The Cronbach’s Alpha of the scale was .83 and aggregation statistics justified aggregation to the team level (ICC1 = .19, p < .01; ICC2 = .50; Mean Rwg = .86; Median Rwg = .90).
- Empowering leadership style
Empowering leadership style was measured using a seven-item scale by Lorinkova and colleagues (2013). Participants responded by indicating on a 7-point Likert scale (1 = totally disagree, 7 = totally agree). The items were: our team leader ‘encourages the team to set performance goals’, ‘encourages team members to coordinate their work and cooperate’, ‘encourages team members to express ideas/suggestions’, ‘encourages team members to exchange information with one another’, ‘gives the team freedom and autonomy’, ‘encourages team members to solve problems on their own’, and ‘encourages team members to assume responsibilities on their own.’ The Cronbach’s Alpha of the scale was .89 and aggregation statistics justified aggregation to the team level (ICC1 = .19, p < .01; ICC2 = .51; Mean Rwg = .82; Median Rwg = .94).
- Control variables
An independent sample t-test was conducted with gender and team identification to see whether the team identification of men differed from the team identification of women. This independent samples t-test proved to be non-significant, t(263) = -1.23, p = .22, indicating that the average team identification of men (M = 5.26, SD = 1.04) does not differ from the average team identification of women (M = 5.52, SD = 1.18). The Blau index (Blau, 1977) also supported this notion. Blau’s index of heterogeneity in gender equals 1-Σpk2, where pk represents the fractions of the population in each group (i.e. men or woman). For gender diversity, this index ranges from 0 (i.e. homogeneity, 0/100 gender proportions) to .5 (i.e. maximum diversity, 50/50 gender proportions). This is due to the fact that the theoretical maximum (as calculated by (K-1) / K) is calculated with only two categories (Blau, 1977; Biemann & Kearney, 2009). The overall Blau index in the current data set was 1 - ((51.3% + 63.9% / 2)2 + (48.7% + 32.1% / 2)2) = .49, representing fairly high gender diversity.
14 Lastly, to control for the influence of education level of team members on their team identification, a One-Way ANOVA was conducted with education level and team identification. This One-Way ANOVA also proved to be non-significant, F(5,258) = 2.56, p = .32, indicating that the education level of team members does not influence their level of team identification.
Analysis
I conducted a moderator analysis using the statistical software package SPSS to assess whether a relationship between team task interdependence and team identification could be established, and to test for the moderating effects of information sharing and an empowering leadership style.
To control for multicollinearity (Aiken & West, 1991), I standardized the independent variable (i.e. team task interdependence) as well as both moderating variables (i.e. information sharing and an empowering leadership style). The standardized variables were calculated by subtracting the mean from each of the mentioned variables and dividing it by the standard deviation. To analyze the moderator effect each standardized moderator variable has been multiplied by the standardized independent variable. Afterwards, a multiple regression using PROCESS by A.F. Hayes (2012) has been conducted using six variables: team task interdependence, information sharing, empowering leadership style, interdependence*informationsharing, interdependence*empoweringls and team identification.
RESULTS
Descriptives & correlations
15 matrix shows that empowering leadership style also significantly correlates with team identification. There were no significant effects of the demographics on the relevant variables, indicating an absence of a relationship between these variables.
TABLE 3: CORRELATION TABLE
M SD 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 1. Gender composition1 .74 .18 2. Age 37.83 .86 .11 3. Education level2 3.66 .69 -.30* -.03 4. 5. Team tenure
Team task interdependence
7.58 4.71 5.08 .73 .32* .07 .49** .19 -.37** .15 -.09 (.84) 6. Information sharing 5.13 .68 .09 .32* -.07 .02 .35** (.83)
7. Empowering leadership style 5.09 .68 -.25* .01 .18 -.10 .27* .44** (.89)
8. Team identification 5.46 .68 .03 .12 -.16 .09 .18 .71** .33** (.92) 1 Dummy coded, 0 = male, 1 = female
2 Dummy coded, 1 = lager onderwijs, 2 = middelbaar
onderwijs, 3 = MBO, 4 = HBO, 5 = university * p < .05 (two-tailed)
** p < .01 (two-tailed)
Note: Cronbach’s alpha is in parentheses along the diagonal
Hypothesis testing
The hypotheses were tested by conducting regression analyses. Since the control variables reflecting demographics of the team did not significantly correlate with team identification, these are not shown in the regression analyses. In the first step, a linear regression with team task interdependence and team identification was conducted. The outcomes of this regression, B = .12, SD = .09, t(62) = 1.41, p = .17, model R2 = .03, show that that no significant relationship exists between team task interdependence and team identification. Hypothesis 1 is not supported.
16 A separate but identical set of regressions was performed for the second moderator. The first step of the regression analysis was including the variables ‘team task interdependence’ and ‘empowering leadership style’. These variables accounted for a significant amount of variance in team identification, R2 = .12, F(2,60) = 3.95, p < .05. The second step included adding the interaction term between team task interdependence and empowering leadership style to the regression model. This model was significant, R2 = .12, F(1,59) = 2.69, p < .05, and thus accounted for a higher amount of variance in team identification than team task interdependence and empowering leadership style by themselves. However, the interaction term was not significant, B = .04, SD = .08, t(62) = .51, p = .61, indicating that there is no significant moderation between team task interdependence and team identification by empowering leadership style; hypothesis 3 is not supported. A summary of abovementioned findings is presented in table 4.
As mentioned in the theory section, this study considers information sharing and an empowering leadership style to work separately and independently from each other on the relationship between team task interdependence and team identification. However, one could argue that task interdependence leads to more information sharing when an empowering leader leads the team and that only in this case it leads to team identification. Therefore, a three-way interaction between team task interdependence, information sharing and an empowering leadership style was conducted as means of thoroughness. The outcomes of this regression were non-significant, B = .04, SD = .07, t(62) = .59, p = .56.
17 TABLE 4: HIERARCHICAL REGRESSIONS
DISCUSSION
Overview of findings
The goal of the present study was to clarify and uncover the conditions under which the relationship between team task interdependence and team identification comes about, and as such explain the mixed findings that research with regard to affective responses (e.g. team commitment, team satisfaction, team identification) and team task interdependence has given (Van der Vegt et al., 2000). To improve our understanding of task interdependence and identification in teams, I examined the moderating influences of information sharing and an empowering leadership style on the relationship between team task interdependence and team identification. Contrary to expectations, the results show no support for the general hypothesis that team task interdependence leads to team identification, nor that this relationship is
DV: team identification Predictors Model 1: Linear term Model 2: Moderators Model 3: interactions Model 4: all variables
Team task interdependence .12† (.09) -.05 (.07) -.05 (.06) -.07 (.07) Information sharing .51** (.07) .51** (.07) .54** (.07)
Team task interdependence * Information sharing .08(.06) .11 (.07) Constant 5.45** (.09) 5.46** (.06) 5.44** (.06) - Model R2 .10 .51 .52 - ∆ R2 .03† - .02** - Model F 1.98 30.97 21.64 - VIF 1.00 1.14 1.00 -
Team task interdependence .07 (.09) .07† (.09) -
Empowering leadership style .21* (.09) .21* (.09) .02 (.07)
Team task interdependence * empowering leadership style
.04 (.08) .10 (.07) Constant 5.46** (.08) 5.45** (.09) 5.45** Model R2 .11* .12* .55** ∆ R2 - .00 .04 Model F 3.95 2.69 2.46 VIF 1.01 1.03 1.09
Note: unstandardized B coefficients are reported with (Standard Errors). † p < .10
18 moderated by information sharing or an empowering leadership style. Surprisingly, the regressions show that both main effects of information sharing and an empowering leadership style are strong and significant, indicating that whether the team is interdependent or not, a high level of information sharing and employing an empowering leadership style considerably benefit teams. Also, I found no support for a significant three-way interaction between team task interdependence, information sharing and an empowering leadership style on team identification. These results indicate that there still is much left undiscovered in the relationship between task interdependence and identification in teams.
Implications
19 teams since empowerment leads to establishing and encouraging ideas and cooperative team norms. The current study thus takes this finding a step further by demonstrating that also less interdependent teams strongly benefit from empowering leadership. The same goes for information sharing: in highly interdependent teams, members can only be successful when they share information (Mesmer-Magnus & DeChurch, 2009; De Dreu, 2006). But this study demonstrates that less interdependent teams should also consider information sharing as way of being successful. Conceptually, the findings in this study thus confirm the existing notions of the positive influences of empowering leadership and information sharing, and even extend these notions. A third and final contribution of this study is that it is the first empirical study that takes a group-level approach towards team task interdependence and team identification. In this study, I especially paid attention to the uniqueness of team identification as affective response due to the close resemblance and relation with constructs like ‘commitment’ or ‘satisfaction’. Different authors in the field support this notion (Ashforth & Mael, 1989; Van Knippenberg & Sleebos, 2006; Peeters et al., 2006; Van der Vegt & Bunderson, 2005), but have never zoomed in on the specific relationship between team task interdependence and team identification as group-level constructs.
20 Limitations and future research
This research is bound to a number of limitations. First, in this research I merely extensively consider one –what Cooper, Patel & Thatcher (2014: 648) call– ‘intervening process variable such as communication, debate, information integration and team mental models’ (apart from information sharing). These process variables may help explain whether there is a significant positive relationship between team task interdependence and team identification more in-depth and open the black box between input and output variables (cf. Ilgen, Hollenbeck, Johnson & Jundt, 2005; Campion et al., 1993). Future research should explicitly determine how and/or if team task interdependence influences these processes and how and/or if these processes are linked to team identification. In addition, this research specifically focused on two-way interactions of information sharing and an empowering leadership style on the relationship between team task interdependence and team identification. As means of being thorough, a three-way interaction of empowering leadership style on information sharing as moderator of the relationship between task interdependence and team identification was conducted (Pearce et al., 2003); the results were non-significant. However, it could be that considering other context variables, such as conflict or communication, in concert with information sharing and/or empowering leadership style would yield significant results. It would thus be fascinating to investigate other potential three-way interactions.
21 levels of autonomy and responsibility (Lorinkova et al., 2013; Zhang & Bartol, 2010); it is more a characteristic of a leader. Future research could focus on the quality and mechanisms of empowering leadership and the team members’ contribution to this, instead of relying on the mere presence of an empowering leader.
CONCLUSION
The existing literature on teams has given only modest attention to the importance of understanding how task interdependence in a team influences affective responses, in particular team identification. Moreover, research that has been done on task interdependence and team identification has given mixed results. This contribution attempted to attend to these issues by demonstrating that the context (i.e. team processes and team leadership) could play a moderating role in this relationship. Contrary to expectations, the findings reflect that there is no support for a significant positive relationship between team task interdependence and team identification, nor for moderating effects of information sharing or an empowering leadership style. As such, there still is much left undiscovered in the relationship between task interdependence and identification in teams. However, the results did show strong, significant main effects of information sharing and empowering leadership, implying that organizations should embrace and develop information sharing strategies and empower teams by giving them responsibilities and autonomy. All in all, this contribution opens the door and highlights the need to extend this research. Under which exact conditions does the relationship between team task interdependence and team identification come about? Which team processes and team leadership variables should be tested and why? How do these mechanisms relate to one another and affect each other? Something worth investigating; something worth identifying.
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