The role of decision influence and team performance in member self-efficacy, withdrawal, satisfaction with the leader, and willingness to return

Eminence of Leader Humility for Follower Creativity During COVID-19: The Role of Self-Efficacy and Proactive Personality

The purpose of this study is to understand how leader humility effectively stimulates follower creativity in the workplace during the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) scenario. Relying on social cognitive and social information processing theories, this study investigates how leader humility cultivates follower self-efficacy and follower creativity. Furthermore, it explores an intervening mechanism of follower self-efficacy and examines a moderating role of leader proactive personality. The hypothesized model is empirically tested by collecting the data from 405 employees and 87 managers working in the banking sector of Pakistan. The results indicate that leader humility is positively related to follower self-efficacy and follower creativity, which improve the organization’s innovation climate and an environment for social sustainability. Follower self-efficacy is also significantly related to follower creativity. The mediation analysis shows that follower self-efficacy mediates the relationship between leader humility and follower creativity. Additionally, leader proactive personality moderates the relation between follower self-efficacy and follower creativity. This study highlights the importance of leader humility for creativity and extends the literature by explaining the role of self-efficacy. Furthermore, the findings may assist the policymakers in how a humble leader heightens employee creativity and social sustainability in COVID-19.

Self-efficacy and emotional intelligence

Purpose

This study aims to examine empirically the effect of emotional intelligence of the team, as calculated by the average of all team members’ individual emotional intelligence measurements, on the cohesiveness of the team, and the effect of the perception of self-efficacy of the team members on the relationship between emotional intelligence and team cohesion. Finally, certain financial indicators were analyzed to evaluate team performance.

Design/methodology/approach

This study used quasi-experimental design. Participated in the experiment a total of 146 students (35 teams) who were senior business major students in the mid-sized university in the USA. In the experiment, the participants played a business simulation game over an eight-year simulated time frame. After the final round of the simulation game, the variables of emotional intelligence, self-efficacy and team cohesion were measured using the survey questionnaire and team performance and participation data were collected from the business simulation game. In the support of the quantitative data analysis, the current study also collected and analyzed qualitative data comments on other group members’ contribution to the group task.

Findings

Results indicated that team cohesion was highest when team members demonstrated greater emotional intelligence. Self-efficacy also had a positive influence on team cohesion. High self-efficacy was found to be an important mediator of the relationship between emotional intelligence and team cohesion. High emotional intelligence promoted the development of self-efficacy, resulting in increased team cohesion. Increased team cohesion resulted in improved team performance and participation.

Research limitations/implications

The current study has several limitations. First, the sample is mostly business major students in the mid-sized university in the USA. There is a limitation in generalizing the findings into other populations. Second, this study accessed information on 35 teams comprising a total of 146 students. While the number of students and teams is sufficient for a study, more data would improve the robustness of the results. Third, this study collected and analyzed cross-sectional data, so there is the possibility for the reversed causal relationship in the findings. Although the authors concluded that team cohesion had a positive impact on team performance and participation, they also found the reverse relationship from the additional analysis. Fourth, the validity of the construct for emotional intelligence has some detractors, mainly because of the subjective nature of the measurement that tends to overlap existing personality measures and the objective measurement which involves a consensual scoring method with poor reliability.

Practical implications

This paper implies practical strategies to manage teams and team members for enhanced team productivity. Teams are critical resources within companies. This study demonstrates that high team cohesion leads to better team performance. As team cohesion is important for team performance, the authors found that two antecedents for team cohesion are emotional intelligence and self-efficacy within team members. Therefore, it is important for managers to hire and select team members with high levels of emotional intelligence and self-efficacy. Managers can train employees to internalize increased levels of these traits.

Originality/value

The current study demonstrated that self-efficacy mediated emotional intelligence and team cohesion during a research project lasting one semester. There have been few studies examining the mediating effect of self-efficacy on the relationship between emotional intelligence and team cohesion. In particular, unlike many other studies that use short-term laboratory experiments, the duration of this study could provide enough time to more thoroughly develop cohesion among members. The current study collected both quantitative and qualitative data. In addition to the quantitative data analysis, the analysis of qualitative data reinforced the findings of the quantitative data analysis.

Team Psychological Safety and Conflict Trajectories’ Effect on Individual’s Team Identification and Satisfaction

Using a multilevel field study with data collected over a 9-month period, we tested how team psychological safety interacts with levels of team relationship conflict to influence an individual’s team identification and satisfaction with their team. We propose that team psychological safety measured early in a team’s time together influences what team members can expect to experience in subsequent team interactions. We use identification and team conflict theory to theorize that through sense-making processes, team members evaluate early experiences with their team relative to initial levels of team psychological safety, which then influences their levels of team identification. When team members experience high levels of team psychological safety initially followed by an increasing trajectory of relationship conflict within the team over time, we predicted and found that individual’s team identification decreased, resulting in lower satisfaction with their team. The theoretical and practical implications for aligning early perceptions of team’s psychological safety with patterns of perceived relationship conflict and its effect on team identification and satisfaction with the team are discussed.

Antecedents and Consequences of Procedural Justice Perceptions in Hierarchical Decision-Making Teams

A model is presented that posits positive and independent effects for process control and decision control on procedural justice perceptions in hierarchical decision-making teams with distributed expertise. It is proposed that procedural justice perceptions will be positively related to staff member self-efficacy and satisfaction with the leader, which will be negatively related to task withdrawal. A laboratory experiment was conducted with 126 participants performing a computerized decision-making task in 42 teams. Each team consisted of a leader in addition to 3 participants performing as subordinates. Path analysis results support the proposed model. Implications for applying justice theory to team effectiveness and leadership are discussed.

The Adequacy of Repeated-Measures Regression for Multilevel Research

The authors assess the suitability of repeated-measures regression (RMR) to analyze multilevel data in four popular multilevel research designs by comparing results of RMR analyses to results of analyses using techniques known to produce correct results in these designs. The findings indicate that RMR may be suitable for only a small number of situations and that repeated-measures ANOVA, multivariate repeated-measures ANOVA, and multilevel modeling may be better suited to analyze multilevel data under most circumstances. The authors conclude by offering recommendations regarding the appropriateness of the different techniques given the different research designs.

Teams in organizations: from input-process-output models to IMOI models

This review examines research and theory relevant to work groups and teams typically embedded in organizations and existing over time, although many studies reviewed were conducted in other settings, including the laboratory. Research was organized around a two-dimensional system based on time and the nature of explanatory mechanisms that mediated between team inputs and outcomes. These mechanisms were affective, behavioral, cognitive, or some combination of the three. Recent theoretical and methodological work is discussed that has advanced our understanding of teams as complex, multilevel systems that function over time, tasks, and contexts. The state of both the empirical and theoretical work is compared as to its impact on present knowledge and future directions.