What drives team performance?

A performance goal orientation is usually beneficial for job performance because it drives people to try to outperform others. Researchers from the Netherlands now investigated how the social context at work might influence this effect. They found that for people who highly identify with their team, performance goal orientation is beneficial for team performance. Conversely, for people who do not highly identify with their colleagues, a performance goal orientation motivates more individual performance. These findings imply that a strong individual performance goal orientation is only beneficial for team performance if the members of the team identify with each other.

Dietz, B., van Knippenberg, D., Hirst, G., & Restubog, S. L. D. (2015). Outperforming whom? A multilevel study of performance-prove goal orientation, performance, and the moderating role of shared team identification. Journal of Applied Psychology, 100(6), 1811-1824.