Who Do You Think You are? An Experimental Study on Shared Identity and Team Performance

Abstract

Relying on teams can lead to better performance than relying on individuals but poor integration or team coordination can undermine performance. While extant research focuses on the role a shared team identity has on team performance, this work investigates whether and how having a shared task-relevant identity and knowledge, like project management, can positively affect behavioral integration, and ultimately team performance. Therefore, the aim of this work is twofold, first, to determine whether and how shared task-relevant identity and knowledge can affect behavioral integration. Second, to understand the process through which shared knowledge can improve team performance. To this end, we implement two field experiments wherein randomly assigned teams work on (1) a short-term project (Study 1); (2) a medium-term project (Study 2). Our study suggests that only shared task-relevant identity levels lead directly to higher behavioral integration and not having shared task-relevant knowledge. However, we show that having task-relevant knowledge motivates team members to take on the task’s identity. Lastly, we find that behavioral integration mediates the shared task-relevant identity and team performance relationship. Overall, our results shed new light on team performance and formation. In particular, we demonstrate that shared identity plays a crucial role in how teams function. The implications of this work are discussed in terms of team selection and management. For instance, when forming teams it may not be enough to select members based on what they know but one should consider who they think they are.