Do we all agree on our goals? A graduation research about the mediating effect of team identification on the relation between goal consensus and team performance

摘要

AbstractFor most organizations dealing with change, it means dealing with changing goals. New goals can provide a different organizational course which might influence the dynamics in teams. As a result, the structure of teams can change and this influences the inter-team dynamics. What is the result of this on the performance of the team? The relevance of this question is in normal economical conditions present, but in times of economic crises even more.This thesis is about team dynamics, researched in several different organizations where the focus is on goal consensus, team identification and team performance. The research question is: ‘how does team identification (partially) mediate the positive relation between goal consensus and team performance?’. Goal consensus is not measured directly like team identification and team performance, it is constructed from two components, goal understanding and goal commitment.A cross-sectional research is used to provide answers, with two different surveys (one for team members and one for team managers) collected personal and by mail in 59 teams. Because a mediating effect is researched, an additional macro in SPSS is used to calculate the effects. The effects are presented for team performance rated by team members and separately for team performance rated by team managers. Both theoretical and practical answers are given to the research question.Results show that goal understanding and goal commitment are correlated which each other. Together they provide a level of goal consensus which can be plotted to gain insight for both team members and managers. For team members’ rated team performance, results show that team identification partially mediates the positive relation between goal consensus and team performance. This means that the effect of goal consensus on team performance is reduced due to the intervene of team identification. For team managers’ rated team performance, a fully mediating effect has been found. This means that the effect of goal consensus on team performance disappears under influence of team identification. The influence of constituents is clearly present, which might be caused by introspection. The control variable team tenure is significantly and positively related to team identification. However, in both models, the influence of team tenure is very small.Although this research seems to give clear answers, the question about the effect size remains. There are strong indications that a larger effect size results in more power to the mediating effect which might cause different results. Another recommendation for further research is due to developments in the last decade: the development of virtual teams. These teams are not researched in this thesis but it is interesting to see if the results also comply in these teams, especially because these teams are not geographically in close proximity.Keywords:Thesis Do we all agree on our goals? J.G. Hofstee, 850998461