Collective orientation and its implications for coordination and team performance in interdependent work contexts

Purpose – This paper aims to explore the influence of collective orientation (CO) on coordination and team performance for interdependently working teams while controlling for person-related and team variables.
Design/methodology/approach – A total of 58 two-person-teams participated in a simulation-based
firefighting task. The laboratory study took 2 h for each team. The effects of CO in tasks of increasing
complexity were investigated under the consideration of control variables, and the relations between CO,
coordination and team performance were assessed using a multivariate latent growth curve modeling
approach and by estimating indirect effects in simple mediation models.
Findings – Teammembers high on CO performed significantly better than low-scoring members. The effect
of CO on team performance was independent from an increasing task complexity, whereas the effect of CO on
coordination was not. The effect of CO on team performance was mediated by coordination within the team,
and the positive relation between CO and performance persists when including group efficacy into the model.
Research limitations/implications – As CO is a modifiable person-related variable and important for
effective team processes, additional research on factors influencing this attitude during work is assumed to be
valuable.
Practical implications – CO is especially important for highly interdependently working teams in highrisk-
organizations such as the fire service or nuclear power plants, where errors lead to severe consequences
for human beings or the environment.
Originality/value – No other studies showed the importance of CO for coordination and team performance
while considering teamwork-relevant variables and the interdependence of work.