Impact of Team Citizenship Behaviors on Performance in Women's Sports Teams
In organizational psychology literature, organizational citizenship behaviors (OCB) have demonstrated a significant relationship with performance outcomes. However, the existing research has shown some inconsistencies in the strength and direction of this relationship. Moreover, research has not yet explored the actual relationship between OCB and sports team performance (individual- and team-level), nor has research investigated potential moderators of this relationship. The current study examined the relationship between OCB and sports team performance and whether this OCB-performance relationship was moderated by task interdependence (i.e., sport). Two types of collegiate teams--softball and tennis--were utilized to represent two different levels of task interdependence with softball being considered more interdependent than tennis. I surveyed athletes and their respective coaches from these teams. The athletes answered questions pertaining to team citizenship behaviors (helping, civic virtue, and sportsmanship), team cohesiveness (GEQ), athlete satisfaction (ASQ), and perceptions of transformational leadership behaviors (MLQ), while the coaches simply rated each of their athletes on the extent to which that athlete displays team citizenship behaviors (TCBs). The athletes and coaches filled out these questionnaires twice, once at the beginning of the season and again at the end of the season. Performance statistics were collected from each team's website. Results indicated that TCBs sometimes significantly predicted performance with helping behavior being the strongest predictor. However, the effect of TCBs on performance differed between tennis and softball teams. The circumstances under which TCBs might be helpful are discussed.
athlete satisfaction, leadership, performance, task interdependence, team citizenship behaviors, team cohesion, Organizational Behavior and Theory
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