Being an excellent team: understanding how politics influence team performance

Abstract

This research develops a model based on the transaction cost theory and resource allocation theory to predict how politics (i.e. autocracy and opportunism) affect team performance in technology industries. Directly related to resource adequacy, team performance is associated with top management autocracy and peer teams' opportunism indirectly via the mediation of collective affective commitment. The relationships between collective affective commitment and team performance and between resource adequacy and team performance are moderated by top management autocracy and peer teams' opportunism, respectively. Empirical testing of this model, by investigating personnel of work teams in high-tech firms, explores changes in politics in technology industries. Lastly, this study provides managerial implications and research limitations based on its empirical findings.