Making a Difference in the Teamwork: Linking Team Prosocial Motivation to Team Processes and Effectiveness

Abstract

Although the importance of team motivation has been increasingly emphasized, few studies have focused on prosocial motivation. Integrating theories on team effectiveness with prosocial motivation, we propose a theoretical model that links team prosocial motivation to team effectiveness as mediated by team processes. Team process is captured through the task-driven process of team cooperation and the affect-based team viability, and team effectiveness is operationalized as team performance, team organizational citizenship behavior (OCB), and team voluntary turnover. The model is tested in Study 1, a field study with three-source data collected from 310 members of 67 work teams over four time periods, and Study 2, a laboratory experiment with 124 four-person teams in which team prosocial motivation is manipulated. In Studies 1 and 2, we find support for indirect effects of team prosocial motivation on team performance and team OCB through the mediating role of team cooperation. Team voluntary turnover is indirectly affected by team prosocial motivation through team viability. Furthermore, in both studies the indirect effects of team prosocial motivation on team performance and team OCB through team cooperation and on team voluntary turnover through team viability are stronger when the nature of the teams' work requires greater task interdependence.

Full text

rAcademy of Management Journal
2015, Vol. 58, No. 4, 1102–1127.
http://dx.doi.org/10.5465/amj.2012.1142
MAKING A DIFFERENCE IN THE TEAMWORK: LINKING
TEAM PROSOCIAL MOTIVATION TO TEAM PROCESSES
AND EFFECTIVENESS
JIA HU
University of Notre Dame
ROBERT C. LIDEN
University of Illinois at Chicago
Although the importance of team motivation has been increasingly emphasized, few
studies have focused on prosocial motivation. Integrating theories on team effectiveness
with prosocial motivation, we propose a theoretical model that links team prosocial
motivation to team effectiveness as mediated by team processes. Team process is cap-
tured through the task-driven process of team cooperation and the affect-based team
viability, and team effectiveness is operationalized as team performance, team organi-
zational citizenship behavior (OCB), and team voluntary turnover. The model is tested
in Study 1, a field study with three-source data collected from 310 members of 67 work
teams over four time periods, and Study 2, a laboratory experiment with 124 four-person
teams in which team prosocial motivation is manipulated. In Studies 1 and 2, we find
support for indirect effects of team prosocial motivation on team performance and team
OCB through the mediating role of team cooperation. Team voluntary turnover is in-
directly affected by team prosocial motivation through team viability. Furthermore, in
both studies the indirect effects of team prosocial motivation on team performance and
team OCB through team cooperation and on team voluntary turnover through team
viability are stronger when the nature of the teams’work requires greater task
interdependence.
Due to their ability to more effectively respond
to the dynamic and complex environments faced
by organizations today, work teams have become
increasingly prevalent in the past two decades
(Mathieu, Maynard, Rapp, & Gilson, 2008). One of
the key drivers of effective team outcomes is the
motivation of team members (Hackman & Walton,
1986; Kozlowski & Bell, 2003). A rich body of re-
search has endorsed the value of team members’
task-related motivational states, such as collective
efficacy and team empowerment, in building effec-
tive teams (see meta-analytic reviews by Seibert,
Wang, & Courtright, 2011; Stajkovic, Lee, & Nyberg,
2009). However, in the team motivation literature,
scant attention has been paid to an important form
of motivation that is especially relevant for team-
work: prosocial motivation, or the desire to exert
efforts to benefit others (Grant, 2007). The omission
of prosocial motivation at the team level is prob-
lematic, as motivation researchers have discovered
that individuals can be motivated to work for dif-
ferent reasons, and many people engage in their
work not for self-advancement alone, but, more
importantly, for the opportunity to have a positive
impact on the lives of others (Batson, 1987; De Dreu,
2006; Grant et al., 2007). These insights suggest that
an integration of prosocial motivation and team
literatures offers a novel perspective for better
We would like to express our sincere gratitude to our
Action Editor Adam Grant and three anonymous reviewers
for their invaluable comments and guidance throughout
the review processes. We are indebted to the participating
companies in the field study, whose executives, leaders,
and employees gave generously of their time and wisdom.
We greatly appreciate the financial support from three
organizations: Society for Industrial & Organizational
Psychology, Greenleaf Center for Servant Leadership, and
International Association for Chinese Management Re-
search. We would like to gratefully acknowledge the help
from the Mendoza behavioral lab at the University of Notre
Dame. We also want to show our appreciation to Emily
Block, Mike Crant, Craig Crossland, Marie Halvorsen-
Ganepola, Sean Handley, Kaifeng Jiang, Tim Judge, Mike
Mannor, Chris Stevens, Ann Tenbrunsel, Mike Whitt, and
Adam Wowak for their meaningful feedback and input into
the lab study.
1102
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understanding team motivation and subsequent
team effectiveness.
Different from other forms of motivation, such as
intrinsic motivation, that have a focus on the self or
the task, prosocial motivation highlights the social
aspect of work by emphasizing individuals’con-
cerns about how their actions can affect others’well-
being (Batson, 1998; Grant, 2007). Prosocially
motivated individuals are described as givers who
are primarily concerned about contributing to ben-
efits to others, rather than calculating personal
returns, and are more likely to achieve success in
the long run (Grant, 2007, 2013). Grant and col-
leagues’(Grant, 2008; Grant & Berry, 2011; Grant &
Sumanth, 2009) empirical studies largely supported
the importance of individual prosocial motivation
in promoting individual performance outcomes.
Extending this line of research, we contend that
prosocial motivation also operates at the team level
and provides positive value for team effective-
ness (De Dreu, 2006). For instance, if members in
a building construction team are not genuinely
concerned about their customers’safety and com-
fort, they may engage in opportunistic behaviors
that enhance short-term benefits but have a poten-
tially detrimental impact on the residents in the
building. Likewise, a lack of prosocial motivation in
a lawyer’s team might damage clients’subsequent
well-being and also hurt the lawyer’s own reputa-
tion. In practice, a wide range of teams, from fire-
fighter squads to legal defense teams, often engage
as a unit in performing prosocial behaviors, which
highlights the value of collective prosocial motiva-
tion to team outcomes. Consistent with these illus-
trations, researchers have suggested that prosocially
motivated, rather than self-interest-oriented, mem-
bers are better able to engage in teamwork that
facilitates team success (Batson, 1998; De Dreu,
2006). Team members’prosocial motivation is
likely to be contagious, because work teams are
highly influential social contexts (Hackman, 2002)
in which team members are exposed to the same
events, policies, and practices and are likely to de-
velop a collective form of motivation to benefit
others through their work (Li, Kirkman, & Porter,
2014). Indeed, due to the uniqueness of prosocial
motivation in team contexts, Grant and Berg (2011:
27) pointed out that “it will be both theoretically
interesting and practically important to explore the
development and impact of collective prosocial
motivation.”
The primary goals of the current study are to ex-
plore how team prosocial motivation relates to team
effectiveness and when the relationship is stronger
or weaker. What makes team prosocial motivation
unique is that it is not simply an aggregation of
individuals’prosocial motivation, but a shared
collective belief regarding the extent to which their
team values making a prosocial impact developed
through interactions among team members (Morgeson
& Hofmann, 1999). Drawing on team effectiveness
theory (Hackman, 1987), we propose that due to
the knowledge that others can be better helped if
team members strive toward producing effective
team outcomes, prosocial motivation of the team
may create positive team synergy, reduce process
losses, and contribute to team effectiveness (Batson,
Ahmad, Powell, & Stocks, 2008; De Dreu, 2006).
We further argue that this positive linkage may be
realized through the mediating role of the team’s
task-related (team cooperation) and affect-based
(team viability) processes. Furthermore, although
team prosocial motivation provides members with
the willingness to engage in effective team processes
and produce quality team outputs, opportunities for
members to do so may vary based on team context.
Task interdependence, a particularly salient aspect
of team context dealing with the degree to which
carrying out the team’s tasks requires close inter-
actions and coordination among its members
(Wageman, 1995), may contribute toward the ex-
tent to which team members have opportunities for
developing a sense of collective prosocial motivation.
We contend that task interdependence amplifies the
positive impact of team prosocial motivation on team
effectiveness.
The current research (summarized in Figure 1)
represents an attempt to advance our knowledge of
prosocial motivation and teams in several ways.
First, we actively respond to Grant and Berg’s (2011)
call for research on collective prosocial motivation
and extend prosocial motivation to the team level.
We also provide a valuable addition to previous
framework on team prosocial behaviors (Li, Kirkman, &
Porter, 2014) and propose and test important
questions concerning how and when team proso-
cial motivation relates to team effectiveness. Sec-
ond, we explain how team prosocial motivation
provides enabling conditions for teams to prosper
through effective team cooperation and to develop
strong emotional ties that act to retain members via
high levels of team viability. Third, by introducing
task interdependence as an important boundary
condition for effects of prosocial motivation in
teams, we actively respond to scholars’warnings
that ignoring team context may hamper progress in
2015 1103Hu and Liden

understanding what factors inhibit or enhance team
effectiveness (Kozlowski & Bell, 2003; West, Borrill,
& Unsworth, 1998). Finally, an overlooked yet im-
portant way to assess the contribution of research is
through its salience to practice (Locke & Golden-
Biddle, 1997). From this perspective, our research
offers a means through which organizations can
enhance social responsibility by designing and
managing teams that encourage a focus on helping
others.
THEORY AND HYPOTHESES
Team Prosocial Motivation
Extending theory on individual prosocial moti-
vation (Grant, 2008), team prosocial motivation is
defined as team members’shared desire to focus
their efforts on benefitting others. Although team
prosocial motivation originates within individual
team members, each team member’s perception
does not exist in a vacuum, but is influenced by the
context of the work team to which he or she belongs
(Hackman, 2002). Individual members’understand-
ing of their team’s prosocial motivation may con-
verge and form a shared collective belief at the team
level, which is referred to as the bottom-up process
in multilevel literature (Kozlowski & Klein, 2000).
From a motivated social information processing
perspective (De Dreu, Nijstad, & Van Knippenberg,
2008), teams can serve as information processors
in which team members gather information from
their teammates to understand each other’svalues
and gradually generate a shared knowledge re-
garding what motivates the team and whether
concern for others’welfare guides their behaviors.
To the extent that members sense other-orientation
in fellow members’motivation, the team as a whole
develops norms focused on shared team prosocial
motivation.
Team Prosocial Motivation, Team Processes, and
Team Effectiveness
We propose that prosocially motivated teams are
more likely to engage in behaviors that contribute to
collective benefits, including team effectiveness. At
the individual level, prosocial motivation is bene-
ficial for task performance, productivity, and orga-
nizational citizenship behavior (OCB), as prosocially
motivated individuals’higher purpose of benefit-
ting others fuels their desire to invest more time and
energy in their work, compared to individuals mo-
tivated through other means (De Dreu & Nauta,
2009; Grant, 2008; Grant & Berry, 2011; Grant &
Sumanth, 2009). Although prosocial motivation
among individual members may help to promote
effective team outcomes through a similar lens,
teamwork is different from individual work, be-
cause it emphasizes the shared purposes for and
FIGURE 1
Overall Theoretical Model
a
a
For the sake of readability, we do not present the control variables in the model. In Study 1, we controlled for country source,
organizational membership (i.e., five dummy-coded variables), team mean tenure, and team size; in Study 2, we controlled for individual-
level prosocial motivation, intrinsic motivation, and impression management motivation.
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the interconnections among all individual members
(Hollenbeck, Beersma, & Schouten, 2012). That is,
prosocially motivated teams may influence team
effectiveness through collective processes that can-
not be realized from prosocially motivated indi-
viduals alone. As West and colleagues (1998: 3)
noted, “teams can integrate and link in ways indi-
viduals cannot.”Teams produce successful out-
comes when they are able to produce synergistic
gains, minimize process losses (Hackman, 1987;
Steiner, 1972), and facilitate team task coordination
and interpersonal bonding (Marks, Mathieu, &
Zaccaro, 2001). We identify two key team processes
through which team prosocial motivation impacts
team effectiveness: the more task- and duty-oriented
dimension of team cooperation, and the more affect-
and emotion-based dimension of team viability
(Mathieu et al., 2008). We focus on three behavioral
criteria of team effectiveness: (1) team in-role
performance, or the extent to which a team accom-
plishes its tasks (Motowidlo, 2003); (2) team extra-
role performance (team OCB), which is team-level
normative and discretionary behavior not recognized
by the formal reward system (Ehrhart & Naumann,
2004); and (3) the aggregate voluntary employee
departures within a work team (Hausknecht &
Trevor, 2011). Team in-role and extra-role perfor-
mance reflect team members’behaviors that con-
tribute to a team’s current effectiveness, and have
long been considered as key dimensions of team
success (Ehrhart & Naumann, 2004; Mathieu et al.,
2008; Podsakoff, MacKenzie, Paine, & Bachrach,
2000). Team voluntary turnover, on the other hand,
signals whether a team will maintain its effectiveness
in the future (Hackman, 1987; Nyberg & Ployhart,
2013). A rich body of empirical evidence has shown
that teams containing members with longer team
tenure have more shared experiences and team-
specific capabilities that help them to produce effec-
tive team outcomes in the long term (e.g., Groysberg,
Lee, & Nanda, 2008; Hausknecht, Trevor, & Howard,
2009; Huckman, Staats, & Upton, 2009; Kacmar,
Andrews, Van Rooy, Steilberg, & Cerrone, 2006).
Team Cooperation as a Mediator
According to team effectiveness theory (Hackman,
1987), team prosocial motivation is expected to
promote team effectiveness through a key behavioral
dimension of team process—team cooperation. A
key prerequisite to effective team outcomes is
the team’s capability to create synergistic gains
(Hackman, 1987), where the collective efforts are
greater than the simple aggregation of what the
independent individuals would achieve (Larson,
2010). Team prosocial motivation may be well
suited for promoting synergistic gains and facili-
tating effective team cooperation, as it helps to ef-
fectively integrate different ideas and perspectives
within the team. Team cooperation tends to
smooth dysfunctional conflicts among team mem-
bers (Kozlowski & Bell, 2003) and boost effective
problem-solving within the team (Podsakoff et al.,
2000), which promote better teamwork outcomes
(Atuahene-Gima, 2003; Devine, Clayton, Philips,
Dunford, & Melner, 1999). Driven by the meaningful
purpose of helping others, team members are will-
ing to share their ideas and may not be afraid to
voice viewpoints that differ from those of others as
long as they believe these inputs can positively
contribute to the collective goals of the team (Grant
& Berry, 2011). At the same time, prosocially moti-
vated team members tend to focus less on calculating
their personal gains or losses (Meglino & Korsgaard,
2004), while being more attentive and open to others’
opinions and needs (De Dreu, 2006). This generates
productive levels of task conflicts and reduces, if
not eliminates, dysfunctional interpersonal conflicts,
thereby creating positive team synergy and pro-
moting effective team cooperation.
In the social psychology literature, team co-
operation is often discussed with respect to social
loafing (Karau & Williams, 1993; Latan ´
e, Williams,
& Harkins, 1979), which is team members’tendency
to reduce their efforts within the work team; and
freeriding, or team members’intention to escape
their own responsibilities by taking advantage of the
shared good (Albanese & Van Fleet, 1985). Teams
with high prosocial motivation are likely to have
smooth team task cooperation and few social loafers
and freeriders, as members are willing to take on
more difficult or less desirable tasks in order to
promote the welfare of potential beneficiaries
within and outside the teams (De Dreu & Nauta,
2009; Grant, 2012; Grant & Sonnentag, 2010).
Accomplishing undesirable yet meaningful tasks
helps to reduce the workload of teammates and
produces better teamwork output that could benefit
clients and customers to a greater extent. Thus,
prosocially motivated team members are less likely
to succumb to the counter-productive interpersonal
conflicts and lack of effort that thwarts team per-
formance (Grant, 2008).
With steady team cooperation, team members are
likely to effectively integrate each member’sefforts,
create positive synergy among members, and produce
2015 1105Hu and Liden

superior team performance (Mathieu, Heffner, Goodwin,
Salas, & Cannon-Bowers, 2000; Mathieu et al., 2008).
Furthermore, the cooperative climate reinforces
mutual support and good working relationships
among team members (Beersma et al., 2009). In this
regard, members are likely to exert extra effort to help
others and to voice suggestions for improving the
collective good (Grant & Mayer, 2009; Morrison,
2011), thereby encouraging more OCBs within the
team. In addition, team cooperation serves to reduce
team voluntary turnover, as, according to turnover
literature, a cooperative and supportive work envi-
ronment helps to prevent a team from losing its
members (Bartunek, Huang, & Walsh, 2008; Heavey,
Holwerda, & Hausknecht, 2013; Nyberg & Ployhart,
2013). When team members effectively cooperate
with others they are likely to perceive their team-
work environment favorably, which reduces the
chances that they will quit their teams.
Team Viability as a Mediator
In addition to its role in promoting task-related
team cooperation, team prosocial motivation pro-
motes team effectiveness through building stronger
emotional ties within the team and enhancing team
members’affect regarding the team, or team viabil-
ity. Team viability, or team members’satisfaction
with team experiences and their intention to con-
tinue membership on the team, has long been seen
as a key condition for effective team processes and
sustained success (Bell & Marentette, 2011; Hackman,
1987; Sundstrom, De Meuse, & Futrell, 1990). Team
viability is likely to be enhanced by team prosocial
motivation. This is because prosocially motivated
team members care about providing advantages
to all beneficiaries of their work, including their
teammates (Grant et al., 2007), which helps strengthen
their interpersonal bonding—a key for promoting
team viability (Barrick, Stewart, Neubert, & Mount,
1998). Specifically, in teams where most members
value making a prosocial contribution, team mem-
bers are benefactors and beneficiaries at the same
time, in such a way that members work together to
produce high-quality products and services to help
other people, while simultaneously receiving help
from and providing help to their fellow teammates.
As a result, members are more likely to feel moved,
inspired, and elevated by each other, which reinfor-
ces their interpersonal ties (Algoe & Haidt, 2009; De
Dreu, Weingart, & Kwon, 2000; Grant & Patil, 2012),
thereby enhancing team viability (Hackman, 1987).
Indeed, as Balkundi and Harrison (2006) found in
their meta-analysis, teams with denser networks of
expressive ties in which members have stronger
emotional relationships demonstrate higher team
viability.
A related theoretical reason for why team prosocial
motivation positively influences team viability is that it
highlights shared group membership and boosts
members’affiliation with the team’s goals (De Dreu
et al., 2000). That is, within prosocially motivated teams,
team members share the same other-oriented values and
have a common purpose of working toward contribut-
ing to the greater good. As social categorization theory
(Turner, 1987) and subsequent empirical results sug-
gest, team members with similar work values are likely
to feel committed to and identify with their teams
(Kirkman & Rosen, 1999; Van der Vegt, Van de Vliert, &
Oosterhof, 2003; Van Dyne, Cummings, & Parks, 1995).
Thus, prosocially motivated team members are more
likely to be affiliated with and committed to their
collective missions and goals, which improves the
quality of their team experience and increases team
viability (Aub´
e & Rousseau, 2005).
We thus propose that prosocially motivated teams
are more likely to have higher levels of team via-
bility, which in turn leads to more effective team
outcomes. The strong emotional ties and bonding
precipitated by team viability serve to motivate
team members to work hard for their teams, and
ultimately results in higher team-performance lev-
els (Bezrukova, Jehn, Zanutto, & Thatcher, 2009;
Kozlowski, Gully, Nason, & Smith, 1999; Van der
Vegt & Bunderson, 2005) than evidenced in teams
with lower team viability. In addition, team viability
is a long-term-oriented construct as it focuses on
a team’s continuous and sustained effectiveness
(Bell & Marentette, 2011). With a common fate and
future in mind, team members are more likely to
exert extra efforts to assist the team and the organi-
zation to build long-term success, and demonstrate
more team OCB. Furthermore, strong interpersonal
ties increase the desirability of staying on the team
(Allen, 2006; Hom & Xiao, 2011; Hulin, Roznowski,
& Hachiya, 1985; Jiang, Liu, McKay, Lee, & Mitchell,
2012; Lee, Mitchell, Sablynski, Burton, & Holtom,
2004) and thus reduce the number of team members
that voluntarily leave the team (Heavey et al., 2013;
Russell, 2013).
Hypothesis 1: Team prosocial motivation is
indirectly and positively related to (a) team
performance and (b) team OCB, and negatively
related to (c) team voluntary turnover via team
cooperation.
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Hypothesis 2: Team prosocial motivation is in-
directly and positively related to (a) team perfor-
mance and (b) team OCB, and negatively related
to (c) team voluntary turnover via team viability.
The Moderating Role of Task Interdependence
While team prosocial motivation provides team
members with the willingness to work effectively with
each other to produce better outputs to benefit more
people, we further contend that team context influ-
ences the opportunity to do so in their work. Team
structure that entails coordination requirements may
offer such opportunities for team members to work
together to realize their prosocial purposes (Grant &
Parker, 2009; Kozlowski et al., 1999). A critical
teamwork characteristic that may alter the impact of
team prosocial motivation on team processes is task
interdependence, or the degree to which team mem-
bers’tasks require them to coordinate activities and
exchange information with each other in order to
accomplish their goals (Kiggundu, 1983; Shea &
Guzzo, 1987; Wageman, 1995). When task in-
terdependence is high, team members need to co-
ordinate closely with each other to accomplish tasks,
whereas when task interdependence is low, in-
dividual members work more independently from
each other (Van der Vegt & Janssen, 2003).
According to the motivated information process-
ing perspective (De Dreu & Carnevale, 2003), task
interdependence provides team members with op-
portunities to better share and process information,
more accurately make collective decisions, and
more effectively and smoothly work with each other
(De Dreu, 2007). Thus, we contend that task in-
terdependence amplifies the positive impact of
team prosocial motivation on team cooperation and
team viability. Specifically, with higher task in-
terdependence, team members may find ample op-
portunities to work together to realize their common
purpose—benefiting others via their work output, as
task interdependence connects team members to-
gether and necessitates frequent interactions, com-
munications, and information sharing among team
members (Kozlowski et al., 1999; Thompson, 1967).
In this way, high task interdependence serves to
trigger positive synergy, in which all members’
inputs are effectively utilized and integrated. Task
interdependence also serves to enhance team
members’felt responsibility of others’work out-
comes (Kiggundu, 1983; Pearce & Gregersen, 1991)
and helps to effectively incorporate each other’s
differentiated ideas, skills, and knowledge (Fragale,
2006; Van der Vegt & Janssen, 2003; Van der Vegt &
Van de Vliert, 2005) to produce high-quality output
to benefit others. Thus, when team tasks require
high interdependence, prosocially motivated team
members are not only willing, but are also able, to
cooperate effectively with each other to work for the
welfare of others. Furthermore, task interdependence
strengthens the emotional ties among prosocially
motivated members by facilitating the coherence and
interconnectivity among team members (Morgeson
& Hofmann, 1999). When task interdependence is
high, members are more likely to spend time to
understand each other’s work and to translate their
collective prosocial desire into reality through
their collective efforts, which develops stronger
interpersonal ties (Johnson & Johnson, 1989; Wageman
& Gordon, 2005), increases their satisfaction with the
teamwork (Shaw, Duffy, & Stark, 2000; Van der Vegt,
Emans, & Van de Vliert, 2001), and enhances team
viability.
Conversely, when task interdependence is low,
even when team members are willing to work hard
to produce quality products and services to benefit
others, they are not provided with a platform for
working closely to share information and create
synergy, resulting in less team cooperation. Addi-
tionally, with low levels of task interdependence,
team members are completing their portions of the
work without the need to frequently interact with
other team members (Saavedra, Earley, & Van Dyne,
1993). As a result, prosocially motivated team mem-
bers may feel frustrated that they are unable to connect
with other teammates to make a bigger contribution to
the welfare of others, and may experience disen-
chantment with the team, which lowers team viability
(Balkundi, Barsness, & Michael, 2009).
Taken together, integrating the above arguments
with Hypotheses 1 and 2, we propose that task in-
terdependence strengthens the indirect effects of
team prosocial motivation on team effective out-
comes via team cooperation and team viability.
Specifically, when task interdependence is high,
prosocially motivated teams are not only willing,
but also have the opportunity to create frequent
interactions and strong interpersonal ties. This
stimulates them to produce high levels of team co-
operation and team viability, which in turn help to
generate high-quality team output, encourage more
team OCB, and reduce voluntary turnover.
Hypothesis 3. Task interdependence moderates
the indirect effects of team prosocial motiva-
tion on (a) team performance, (b) team OCB, and
(c) team voluntary turnover via team cooperation,
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such that these relationships are stronger when
task interdependence is high than when task in-
terdependence is low.
Hypothesis 4. Task interdependence moderates
the indirect effects of team prosocial motivation
on (a) team performance, (b) team OCB, and (c)
team voluntary turnover via team viability, such
that these relationships are stronger when task
interdependence is high than when task in-
terdependence is low.
Overview of the Current Research
To test the overall theoretical model, we designed
two studies. In Study 1, we tested the overall model
with three-source field data collected at four time
points from diverse U.S. and Chinese teams. To con-
structively replicate the test of the overall model and
to assess causality, we conducted a laboratory exper-
iment (Study 2) in which we manipulated the levels of
team prosocial motivation and task interdependence.
STUDY 1 METHODS
Sample and Procedures
We sampled traditional work teams with full-time
employees from three companies in the U.S. and
three companies in China representing diverse in-
dustries (e.g., construction, information technology,
and legal services) and job types (e.g., marketing,
accounting, and customer services) to increase the
external validity of the proposed relationships. All
data were collected on-site during paid working
hours by an author or a research assistant. Team
member and manager surveys and human resource
records were collected at four time points to mini-
mize common method bias. At Time 1 (T1), out of
560 members in 101 teams invited to participate,
474 team members in 85 teams completed surveys
containing questions on team prosocial motivation,
task interdependence, and demographic informa-
tion. At T2, one month after T1, a total of 380
members representing 78 teams provided their
perceptions of team cooperation and viability. At
T3, three months after T1, 24 out of 35 upper-level
managers rated the performance and OCB of teams
under their jurisdiction. Upper-level managers,
rather than team leaders, rated team performance to
reduce potential social desirability bias (Hu &
Liden, 2011). Upper-level managers had sufficient
interactions with their teams and leaders to rate
their performance and OCB. At T4, a year after T1,
the companies provided turnover records for all of
the participating teams. Teams with lower than 60%
within-team response rate, which was established
as the minimum requirement for meaningful ag-
gregation of data to the team level (Timmerman,
2005), or with no matched upper-level managers’
data were excluded. Complete data across the four
time periods were available for 67 teams, containing
310 individual members (55.36% response rate) and
24 upper-level managers (68.57%). In the team
member sample, 52% were males, the average age
was 29 years, 94% had obtained a college level de-
gree or above, and the average tenure with the or-
ganization and team was 3.53 and 2.86 years,
respectively. Team size ranged from two to 11, with
a mean of five.
Measures
Unless otherwise noted, 1 5strongly disagree to
75strongly agree scales were used.
Team prosocial motivation. At T1, team mem-
bers used Grant’s (2008) measure, modified to
capture the team level. Employing Chan’s (1998)
compositional perspective, team prosocial motivation
reflects a referent-shift model that measures the team-
level shared belief regarding team members’desire to
work for the benefit of others. Thus, we changed the
wording from “I/me”to “We/us”to reflect team
members’shared prosocial beliefs, such as “It is im-
portant to our team members to do good for others
through our work”(a5.88). The appropriateness of
aggregating the responses from individual team
members to the team level was supported by an inter-
rater agreement g
wg(j)
mean value of .96, median value
of .97, minimum value of .78, maximum value of 1
(James, Demaree, & Wolf, 1984), and the intraclass
correlation (ICC) values (ICC1 5.24; ICC2 5.59).
Task interdependence. At T1, team members
also provided ratings on their team’s task in-
terdependence via Pearce and Gregersen’s (1991)
five-item scale. A sample item is “Members in our
team frequently must coordinate our efforts with
each other”(a5.77). The aggregation of individual
team members’perceptions of task interdependence
at the team level was justified via the satisfactory
g
wg(j)
mean value of .91, median value of .94, mini-
mum value of .52, maximum value of 1, and com-
parable ICC1 value of .21, and ICC2 value of .55.
Team cooperation. At T2, a month after T1, team
members were asked to provide ratings on their
perceptions of team cooperation using Chatman and
Flynn’s (2001) five-item scale. An example item is
“There is a high level of cooperation between team
1108 AugustAcademy of Management Journal

members”(a5.91). The aggregation of individual
members’responses to the team level was sup-
ported by the acceptable g
wg(j)
mean value of .89,
median value of .97, minimum value of .57, maxi-
mum value of 1; ICC1 value of .47, and ICC2 value
of .80.
Team viability. At T2, team members also pro-
vided ratings on their team viability perceptions
using Barrick and colleagues’(1998) 12-item scale.
A sample item is “I believe that my personal well-
being has been improved as a result of participating
in this team”(a5.91). The aggregation statistics
showed satisfactory results: g
wg(j)
mean value of .95,
median value of .97, minimum value of .71, maxi-
mum value of 1; ICC1 of .51, and ICC2 of .82,
supporting the appropriateness of aggregating
individual members’responses.
Team performance. At T3, upper-level managers
rated the performance of teams they oversee with
a four-item scale modified to the team level (Liden,
Wayne, & Stilwell, 1993; e.g., “rate the overall level
of performance that you observe for this team,”15
unacceptable to 7 5outstanding; a5.74).
Team OCB. At T3, managers also evaluated team
OCB using Ehrhart’s (2004) five-item scale (e.g.,
“Team members help out others who have been
absent and return to work,”a5.92).
Team voluntary turnover. At T4, a year after T1,
the participating companies informed us that 24
people quit their jobs voluntarily, five were fired,
and one passed away. Team voluntary turnover
(number of members within a team quitting
voluntarily/team size) ranged from 0 to 50%. Be-
cause turnover data are positively skewed, which
violates the assumption of normal distribution in
the linear models, we used the square root of turn-
over raw data to represent team voluntary turnover
(e.g., Hofmann & Morgeson, 1999; Hofmann &
Stetzer, 1996).
Control variables. We controlled for country
(dummy coded: 1 5China, 2 5U.S.) due to the
potential effect of cultural differences (Tsui, 2007).
Organizational membership (five dummy-coded
variables) was also controlled due to the potential
influences of pre-existing organization-level cul-
tural or policy-related factors (Grant, 2012). Av-
erage team tenure was controlled, because time
working together may be positively related to team
effectiveness (Schaubroeck, Lam, & Cha, 2007).
Team size was also controlled, because larger teams
tend to have more cognitive resources to reach
higher levels of team performance (Haleblian &
Finkelstein, 1993).
Analytical Strategy
Because every upper-level manager rated multi-
ple teams (M53), these ratings may lack in-
dependence (Bliese, 2002). To account for this
independence and to avoid inflated effect sizes and
spurious findings, we tested all hypotheses using
multilevel structural equation modeling (MSEM)
with Mplus (Muth´
en & Muth´
en, 2012). MSEM is
able to capture the nested nature of the data, ex-
amine multiple mediated and moderated relation-
ships simultaneously, and assess the within and
between effects separately to provide more accurate
estimations of the proposed relationships (Preacher,
Zhang, & Zyphur, 2011; Preacher, Zyphur, & Zhang,
2010). We followed Preacher, Rucker, and Hayes’s
(2007) method to estimate the moderated mediation
model. All of the study variables except country
source and organizational membership were grand
mean centered, and the interaction term was created
by multiplying the centered variables of team pro-
social motivation and task interdependence (Aiken
& West, 1991). The indirect effects (mediation) and
conditional indirect effects (moderated mediation)
require the calculation of compound coefficients,
which are not normally distributed. We handled
this with the bootstrapping-based approach via R
program with 20,000 iterations to calculate bias-
corrected confidence intervals (CI) to estimate in-
direct effects (Edwards & Lambert, 2007; Liu, Zhang,
& Wang, 2012; Preacher & Selig, 2012; Shrout &
Bolger, 2002).
STUDY 1: RESULTS AND DISCUSSION
Confirmatory Factor Analysis
We first sought to examine the discriminant
validity of the study measures. Two separate sets
of confirmatory factor analyses (CFA) were con-
ducted, because measures were provided by dif-
ferent sets of respondents (i.e., team members and
upper-level managers) and common-method bias
most likely occurs among measures rated by the
same source. Supporting the distinctiveness of
the measures (i.e., team prosocial motivation, task
interdependence, team cooperation, and team via-
bility) rated by team members, the results showed
that the four-factor model (i.e., the four employee-
rated variables as four separate factors) provided
a reasonable fit to the data (x
2
(294) 51263.94, p,
.001, CFA 5.95, NFI 5.93, RMSEA 5.10) (Hair,
Anderson, Tatham, & Black, 1998; Hu & Bentler,
1999) and a significantly better fit than a two-factor
2015 1109Hu and Liden

model (i.e., team prosocial motivation and task in-
terdependence measured at T1 combined as one
factor and team cooperation and team viability at T2
as the second factor) (Dx
2
(4) 51624.74, p,.001;
CFA 5.90, NFI 5.89, RMSEA 5.17), and a one-
factor model (i.e., the four variables as a combined
factor) (Dx
2
(5) 52347.80, p,.001; CFA 5.88, NFI 5
.86, RMSEA 5.19). In testing whether the two
variables (i.e., team performance and team OCB)
evaluated by upper-level managers are distinct from
each other, the results revealed that the two-factor
model (i.e., team performance and team OCB as two
separate models) offered an acceptable fit to the data
(x
2
(26) 542.20, p,.05, CFA 5.98, NFI 5.94,
RMSEA 5.10) and yielded a significantly better fit
than the one-factor model (i.e., team performance
and team OCB as a combined factor) (Dx
2
(1) 5
53.51, p,.001; CFA 5.91, NFI 5.88; RMSEA 5
.20). Thus, the results provided support for the
discriminant validity of measures collected from
both team members and upper-level managers.
Mediated Relationships
Table 1 shows the descriptive statistics, reli-
abilities, and correlations among Study 1 variables.
As shown in Figure 2, with all mediation paths de-
scribed in Hypotheses 1 and 2 included, team pro-
social motivation (T1) was positively related to team
cooperation (T2; b5.56, p,.001), which in turn
was positively associated with team performance
(b5.49, p,.001) and team OCB (b5.24, p,.05)
rated by upper-level managers at T3, but not sig-
nificantly related to team voluntary turnover
obtained at T4 (b52.09, ns). Team prosocial mo-
tivation was also shown to be positively related to
team viability (T2; b5.59, p,.001), which was
positively related to team performance at T3 (b5
.24, p,.05) and negatively related to team volun-
tary turnover at T4 (b52.59, p,.001), but not
significantly related to team OCB (b5.13, ns). In
addition, the main effects of team prosocial moti-
vation on team performance (b5.23, ns) and team
voluntary turnover (b52.00, ns) were not signifi-
cant, but team prosocial motivation was positively
related to team OCB (b5.46, p,.01). Thus, team
cooperation fully mediated the relationship be-
tween team prosocial motivation and team perfor-
mance and partially mediated the relationship
between team prosocial motivation and team OCB.
Team viability also fully mediated the relationships
between team prosocial motivation and team per-
formance and voluntary turnover (Baron & Kenny,
1986). Among the control variables, country source
was positively related to team performance (b5.34,
p,.01) and membership with organization 3 was
negatively related to team turnover (b52.22, p,
.01). Using 20,000 resamples via R program
(Preacher & Selig, 2012), we found (Table 2) that the
indirect effects of team prosocial motivation on
team performance (b5.27, bias-corrected 95% CI 5
[.07, .51], excluding zero) and team OCB (b5.13,
bias-corrected 95% CI 5[.00, .29], excluding zero)
via team cooperation were significant. However, the
indirect effect of team prosocial motivation on team
voluntary turnover via team cooperation was not
significant (b52.05, bias-corrected 95% CI5[-.14,
.03], including zero). The indirect effects of team
prosocial motivation on team performance (b5.14,
bias-corrected 95% CI5[.01, .28], excluding zero)
and team voluntary turnover (b52.35, bias-
corrected 95% CI5[-.49, 2.23], excluding zero)
via team viability were supported, but the indirect
effect on team OCB via team viability was not sig-
nificant (b5.08, bias-corrected 95% CI5[-.15, .31],
including zero). Thus, Hypotheses 1a, 2a, and 2c
were fully supported and Hypothesis 1b was par-
tially supported, but Hypotheses 1c and 2b were not
supported.
Moderation of the Mediated Relationships
Hypotheses 3 and 4 describe two first-stage
moderated mediation models (Edwards & Lambert,
2007), where it is proposed that the moderator (task
interdependence) interacts with the independent
variable (team prosocial motivation) in relating to
the mediator (team processes), which in turn relates
to the outcome variables (team effectiveness).
Results for these full moderated mediation models
are revealed in Figure 3: Team prosocial motivation
and task interdependence interacted in relation to
team cooperation (b5.35, p,.01), which in turn
was positively related to team performance (b5.30,
p,.05) and team OCB (b5.24, p,.05), but not
team voluntary turnover (b52.10, ns). The in-
teraction between team prosocial motivation and
task interdependence was significant for team via-
bility (b5.20, p,.05), which in turn was related to
team voluntary turnover (b52.60, p,.001), but
not team performance (b5.19, ns) or team OCB
(b5.10, ns). Country source was positively related
to team performance (b5.34, p5.01) and mem-
bership with organization 3 was negatively related
to team turnover (b52.53, p,.001). Additionally,
the R
2
test results demonstrated that the inclusion of
1110 AugustAcademy of Management Journal

the interaction term (task interdependence * team
prosocial motivation) account for 7% additional
variance in team cooperation (ΔR
2
5.07) and 4% in
team viability (ΔR
2
5.04), which suggests that task
interdependence influenced the first stage of the
mediation. As shown in Table 2, the indirect effect
of team prosocial motivation on team perfor-
mance via team cooperation was stronger under
high (b5.26, p,.05) compared to low (b5.02, ns)
task interdependence. Supporting Hypothesis 3a,
TABLE 1
Study 1: Descriptive Statistics and Correlations
a
Mean SD 1 234 5678
1. Country source 1.49 .50 –
2. Organization 1 .14 .35 –.40** –
3. Organization 2 .17 .38 –.45** –.18 –
4. Organization 3 .20 .40 –.49** –.20 –.22 –
5. Organization 4 .11 .32 .36** –.14 –.16 –.18 –
6. Organization 5 .13 .34 .39** –.15 –.17 –.19 –.14 –
7. Organization 6 .23 .42 .55** –.22 –.24* –.27* –.19 –.21 –
8. Team mean tenure 2.86 1.80 .38** –.30* –.23 .00 .58** .18 –.17 –
9. Team size 4.82 2.01 –.19 –.04 .12 .17 .08 –.16 –.14 –.08
10. Team prosocial motivation (T1T) 5.87 .64 –.11 –.02 .09 .08 .06 –.10 –.05 .10
11. Task interdependence (T1T) 4.88 1.15 .17 –.11 –.12 .00 .04 .03 .03 .15
12. Team cooperation (T2T) 5.60 .84 –.05 .02 .07 –.02 .13 –.10 –.01 –.02
13. Team viability (T2T) 5.34 .96 –.07 .00 .09 .01 .05 –.14 .01 –.01
14. Team performance (T3M) 5.35 .95 .32** –.05 –.23 –.15 .29* .00 .17 .28*
15. Team OCB (T3M) 5.84 .77 .02 .00 .11 –.13 .18 –.02 –.07 .12
16. Team voluntary turnover (T4HR) .08 .14 .08 –.03 –.20 .12 –.14 .09 .04 –.01
aN567 teams. T1 5Time 1; T2 5Time 2, one month after Time 1; T3 5Time 3, three months after Time 1; T4 5Time 4, one year after
Time 1; T 5rated by team members; M 5rated by upper-level managers; HR 5archival data from HR. For country source, 1 5China, 2 5
United States. Organizations 1 to 3 were companies located in China and organizations 4 to 6 were companies located in the United States.
OCB 5organizational citizenship behavior.
*p,.05
** p,.01
Study 1: Descriptive Statistics and Correlations
a
910111213141516
1. Country source
2. Organization 1
3. Organization 2
4. Organization 3
5. Organization 4
6. Organization 5
7. Organization 6
8. Team mean tenure
9. Team size –
10. Team prosocial motivation (T1T) –.10 (.88)
11. Task interdependence (T1T) .06 .19 (.77)
12. Team cooperation (T2T) –.08 .64* .25* (.91)
13. Team viability (T2T) –.12 .59* .37* .47* (.91)
14. Team performance (T3M) –.16 .47* .21 .58* .50* (.74)
15. Team OCB (T3M) –.03 .59* .09 .63* .63* .64* (.92)
16. Team voluntary turnover (T4HR) .03 –.60* –.20 –.57* –.54* –.54* –.60* –
aN567 teams. Coefficient alphas are on the diagonal in parentheses. T1 5Time 1; T2 5Time 2, 1 months after Time 1; T3 5Time 3, 3
months after Time 1; T4 5Time 4, a year after Time 1; T5rated by team members; M 5rated by upper-level managers; HR5archival data
from HR. For country source, 1 5China, 2 5U.S.. Organizations 1 to 3 were companies located in China and organizations 4 to 6 were
companies located in the U.S.. OCB 5organizational citizenship behavior.
*p,.01
2015 1111Hu and Liden

employing the bootstrapping approach in R program
(Liu et al., 2012), the difference in the indirect
effects was significant (b
diff
5.24, bias-corrected
95% CI5[.00, .58], excluding zero). Supporting
Hypothesis 3b, the indirect effect of team prosocial
motivation on team OCB via team cooperation was
stronger when task interdependence was high (b5
.21, p,.05) compared to when it was low (b5.02,
ns), and the difference in these indirect effects was
significant (b
diff
5.19, bias-corrected 95% CI 5[.04,
.40], excluding zero). However, task interdepen-
dence did not moderate the indirect effect of team
prosocial motivation on team voluntary turnover via
team cooperation (b
diff
52.08, bias-corrected 95%
CI5[-.27, .07], including zero); thus, Hypothesis 3c
is not supported. Hypotheses 4a and 4b were not
supported either (Table 2), as task interdependence
did not moderate the indirect effects of team pro-
social motivation on team performance (b
diff
5.09,
bias-corrected 95% CI5[-.08, .34], including zero)
and team OCB (b
diff
5.05, bias-corrected 95% CI5
[-.08, .21], including zero) via team viability.
Supporting Hypothesis 4c, the indirect effect of
team prosocial motivation on team voluntary
turnover via team viability was shown to be
stronger under high (b52.47, p,.01) compared
to low (b52.20, p,.05) task interdependence,
and the difference in these indirect effects was
significant (b
diff
52.27, bias-corrected 95% CI5
[–.57, 2.00], excluding zero). Following the pro-
cedure outlined by Edwards and Lambert (2007),
we plotted the indirect effects of team prosocial
motivation on team outcomes through team pro-
cesses at higher (1 standard deviation (SD)higher)
and lower (1SD lower) levels of task interdependence
in Figures 4, 5, and 6.
Although the results provided major support for
the proposed indirect effects and conditional in-
direct effects, they have several limitations. First,
as a time-lagged field study, causality of the study
relationships cannot be determined, making reverse-
causality a distinct possibility. For instance, a prior
high team performance record may enhance team
members’confidence to succeed and encourage
them to continue working hard to benefit others
through their work, thereby enhancing team proso-
cial motivation. Likewise, from the perspectives of
self-perception (Bem, 1967) and cognitive disso-
nance (Festinger, 1957), team members’perceptions
TABLE 2
Study 1: Summary of Indirect Effects and Conditional
Indirect Effects
a
Team
Performance
Team
OCB
Team
Voluntary
Turnover
Mediator: Team Cooperation
Mediation .27* .13* –.05
Moderated Mediation:
High task interdependence .26* .21* –.09
Low task interdependence .02 .02 –.01
Difference .24* .19* –.08
Mediator: Team Viability
Mediation .14* .08 –.35*
Moderated Mediation:
High task interdependence .15* .08 –.47**
Low task interdependence .06 .03 –.20*
Difference .09 .05 –.27*
aThe indirect effect and conditional indirect effect tests were
based on 20,000 parametric resamples.
*p,.05
** p,.01
FIGURE 2
Study 1: Structural Model Results for the Indirect
Effects of Team Prosocial Motivation on Team
Effectiveness
a
a
N567. T1 5Time 1; T2 5Time 2, one month after Time 1;
T3 5Time 3, three months after Time 1; T4 5Time 4, one year
after Time 1; T 5rated by team members; M 5rated by upper-
level managers; HR 5archival data from HR. Solid lines indicate
significant relationships and dashed lines depict nonsignificant
relationships.
Standardized path estimates are reported. For the ease of read-
ability, we did not present the coefficients of the paths from the
control variables (i.e., country source, organizational membership
or five dummy-coded variables, team size, and team tenure) in the
model. Among the control variables, country source was positively
related to team performance (b5.34, p,.01) and membership
with organization 3 was negatively related to team turnover (b5
–.22, p,.01).
The explained variance was R
2
5.43 for team cooperation,
R
2
5.47 for team viability, R
2
5.54 for team performance, R
2
5
.58 for team OCB, and R
2
5.62 for team voluntary turnover.
*p,.05
**p,.01
***p,.001
1112 AugustAcademy of Management Journal

and attitudes are aligned with their behaviors. Thus,
when team members collectively engage in citizen-
ship behaviors that help others, they are likely to be
prosocially motivated after observing their own
behaviors. Meanwhile, low team voluntary turnover
helps to form team cohesion, and strengthen team
members’interactions and increase their commit-
ment to the team’s goals. This positive teamwork
environment may further motivate team members to
work toward benefiting others.
Second, pre-existing perceptions and organiza-
tional factors may have driven the results (Grant,
2012). For example, it is possible that when teams
form, members with similar prosocial motivation
values are more likely to be attracted and retained in
their teams (Schneider, 1987). Organization-level
factors, such as organizational culture or leadership,
may be important omitted variables that influence
team members’prosocial motivation and team effec-
tive outcomes. Thus, the use of existing work teams
may obscure the effects of some variables that in-
fluence the results of the hypothesized relationships
(Antonakis, Bendahan, Jacquart, & Lalive, 2010).
Third, although the primary focus of the study is
on the linkage between team prosocial motivation
and team effectiveness through team processes, we
did not control for the potential impacts of in-
dividual members’own prosocial motivation or
other forms of motivation, such as intrinsic moti-
vation, on team outcomes. It is important to con-
sider that although teams develop a shared prosocial
motivation state, individual team members may have
developed their own prosocial motivation and other
motivational forces that may have a direct impact on
their behaviors (Grant et al., 2007). To address these
limitations in Study 1, we designed a lab experiment
(Study 2) to replicate the field study findings and
assess causality.
STUDY 2 METHODS
Sample and Procedures
A total of 496 undergraduate business students
(mean age 520 years, 60% male) from a Midwestern
U.S. university participated in the lab study in
exchange for extra course credit. We randomly
assigned participants into 124 four-person groups
and divided these groups evenly into four con-
ditions, in a fully crossed, 2 (high vs. low team
prosocial motivation) 32 (high vs. low task in-
terdependence) factorial design (n531 groups
FIGURE 3
Study 1: Structural Model Results for the Overall
Moderated Mediation Model
a
a
N567. Standardized path estimates are reported. Solid lines
indicate significant relationships and dashed lines depict non-
significant relationships. For the ease of readability, we did not
present the coefficients of the paths from the control variables
(i.e., country source, organizational membership or five dummy-
coded variables, team size, and team tenure) in the model. Among
the control variables, country source was positively related to
team performance (b5.34, p5.01) and organization 3 was
negatively related to team turnover (b5–.53, p,.001). The two
boxes of task interdependence refer to the same measure; it has
been displayed in two separate positions for better presentation of
the proposed moderation.
The explained variance was R
2
5.51 for team cooperation,
R
2
5.56 for team viability, R
2
5.61 for team performance, R
2
5
.64 for team OCB, and R
2
5.64 for team voluntary turnover.
*p,.05
**p,.01
***p,.001
FIGURE 4
Study 1: The Conditional Indirect Effects of Team
Prosocial Motivation on Team Performance via
Team Cooperation at High and Low Levels of
Task Interdependence
2015 1113Hu and Liden

per condition). In all conditions, participants
were told that they were members of a consulting
team and were asked to read a message that
explained the background of the consulting pro-
ject, as follows:
Gina’s Books is a small book retailer in the area. The
store, owned and run by Gina Compton, has been in
business for over 20 years and has benefited many lo-
cal customers. However, compared to three years ago,
the store’s revenue has dropped by 70% and many
people consider bookstores as a dying industry.
The message varied in its information on the
team’s prosocial motivation to help promote the
well-being of the employees from a local struggling
bookstore, and in the degree of task interdepen-
dence required in their team task across the four
conditions. Specifically, in the high team prosocial
motivation conditions, participants received the
following message:
The store’s 25 employees are really worried. They are
all really anxious because they depend on having this
job and many of them have a family to feed. The owner
and employees could really use some help from a con-
sulting team. Using your intelligence and knowledge,
please work with your teammates as a consulting team
to provide some suggestions to help the bookstore. The
main objective of your consulting team should be to
show your concern for the employees of the bookstore
by providing suggestions that can improve the book-
store’s revenues and thus protect the livelihood of each
employee. By caring about the well-being of the clients,
together, you can make a difference in the lives of the
employees of the store.
In the low team prosocial motivation conditions,
the message was:
The store has 25 employees. The store represents
a substantial capital investment and it is difficult to
accept such a steep drop in revenues. Using your
intelligence and knowledge, please work as a con-
sulting team to provide some suggestions to help the
bookstore’s owner. The main objective of your con-
sulting team should be to provide recommendations
for either revitalizing the business or developing
other strategies for solving the problem. Your sug-
gestions should be designed to maximize the owner’s
net worth. One primary benefit of working on the
project is for your consulting team to gain a reputa-
tion which will put you in a position to get consul-
ting contracts with larger companies in the future.
This would enable your team to make more money.
In the high team task interdependence conditions,
the message was as follows:
Thus, in the following 10 minutes, through dis-
cussion and brainstorming, please work closely
with your teammates to develop 12–16 ideas and
recommendations for helping the bookstore. After
completion, please give your team output to the
researchers.
In the low team task interdependence conditions,
the message read as:
Thus, in the following 10 minutes, each member of
the group should independently develop 3–4 ideas
and recommendations for helping the bookstore.
After completion, please give your team output to the
researchers.
FIGURE 5
Study 1: The Conditional Indirect Effects of Team
Prosocial Motivation on Team OCB via Team
Cooperation at High and Low Levels of Task
Interdependence
FIGURE 6
Study 1: The Conditional Indirect Effects of Team
Prosocial Motivation on Team Voluntary Turnover
via Team Viability at High and Low Levels of Task
Interdependence
1114 AugustAcademy of Management Journal

Participants were asked to work with three
teammates to generate ideas for increasing the
company’s revenue. Videotapes of each team were
viewed by independent raters to evaluate each
team’s cooperation and viability (e.g., Burris, 2012).
After they provided their ideas, team members
completed a survey that included measures of the
manipulation checks and their own motivations.
Following completion of the surveys, they were
asked to execute a voluntary task (the OCB measure)
and sign up for another lab study (measuring team
voluntary turnover).
Measures
Unless otherwise noted, 1 5strongly disagree to
75strongly agree scales were used.
Manipulation check 1. For team prosocial moti-
vation, Grant’s (2008) measure was adapted to fit
with the task context (e.g., “Our team was engaged
in this consulting project because we cared about
benefiting Gina’s bookstore through this work”;a5
.89). Aggregation to the team level was supported
(g
wg(j) mean
5.94, g
wg(j) median
5.97, g
wg(j) minimum
5
.28, g
wg(j) maximum
51.0; ICC1 5.56, ICC2 5.84, F5
6.19, p,.001).
Manipulation check 2. For task interdependence,
as in Study 1, Pearce and Gregersen’s (1991) mea-
sure was used (a5.92), and once again aggregation
was supported (g
wg(j) mean
5.95, g
wg(j) median
5.97,
g
wg(j) minimum
5.63, g
wg(j) maximum
51.0; ICC1 5.62,
ICC2 5.87, F57.66, p,.001).
For team cooperation, two trained coders, blind
to the study purposes, used Chatman and Flynn’s
(2001) five-item measure (a5.95) to independently
rate the teams after watching the 10-minute video
tape of each. The raters paid special attention to each
team’s cooperation based on whether teams had
dysfunctional conflicts, and the degree to which
there was collaboration and information sharing
among team members (inter-rater reliability 5.92).
For team viability, the two coders also provided
independent ratings on each team’s viability using
Hackman’s (1988) seven-item scale (e.g., “There is a lot
of unpleasantness among members in the team”
(reverse-coded; a5.83 and inter-rater reliability 5.90).
For team performance, six independent experts
(different than the raters who assessed team co-
operation and viability), all of whom had prior man-
agement consulting or entrepreneurial experience,
each rated the performance levels of an average of 41
teams, with a mixture of teams from all experimental
conditions. In total, each team’s output was rated by
two raters. Raters were told only that we had asked
the teams to provide suggestions for a struggling local
bookstore to enhance its revenue. The raters assessed
the extent to which ideas generated by the team were
of high quality, useful, novel, and effective (a5.96;
inter-rater reliability for rater pairs 5.90).
We assessed team OCB with a direct measure in
which we told the participants that Gina’s Books
would be grateful if the teams could make recom-
mendations to help the bookstore increase revenues,
and we told them that, if they wished, they should
send their ideas directly to Gina via email (gina.
compton70@yahoo.com—an address that we created
for this project). We told the participants that doing so
was completely voluntary. If a team sent the ideas to
this email address, it was considered a form of actual
team OCB (coded as 1) and if not, it was coded as 0.
For team voluntary turnover, at the end of the
experiment we asked participants to sign up for
another group project the following month and
provided them with three options: (1) No, I am not
interested in the next teamwork exercise; (2) Yes, I
am interested, but I would prefer not to work in the
same team; and (3) Yes, I am interested, and I would
like to continue to work in the same team. Respon-
ses to this question were then transformed into the
team’s voluntary turnover rate by calculating:
(number of option 1s 1number of option 2s) /4.
In order to identify the potential impact of in-
dividual members’own motivational forces on
team processes and effectiveness on the team’s
prosocial motivation, we controlled for individual
prosocial motivation (Grant’s (2008) four-item
scale, a5.95), intrinsic motivation (Grant &
Sumanth’s (2009) five-item scale, a5.92), and
impression management motivation (Rioux &
Penner’s (2001) nine-item scale, a5.89).
Analysis Strategy
Because of the multilevel design with substantive
variables at the team level and individual-level
control variables, we applied MSEM via Mplus, and
the bootstrapping-based technique in R program
using 20,000 iterations to obtain the bias-corrected
95% CIs to test indirect and conditional indirect
effects.
STUDY 2: RESULTS AND DISCUSSION
Cell (i.e., low/high team prosocial motivation 3
low/high task interdependence) means and standard
2015 1115Hu and Liden

deviations for all study variables are shown in
Table 3.
Manipulation Checks
Team members rated their prosocial motivation
higher in high (M55.21, SD 5.69) than in low
(M53.89, SD 5.91, F[1,122] 542.34, p,.001)
team prosocial motivation conditions. Furthermore,
teams rated their task interdependence higher in the
high (M55.70, SD 5.64) than in the low (M5
4.04, SD 5.89, F[1,122] 537.72, p,.001) task
interdependence conditions. In addition, the proso-
cial motivation manipulation was not related to the
perceived task interdependence rating (r5.06, ns)
and the task interdependence manipulation was
not related to the prosocial motivation rating
(r5.05, ns), indicating that neither manipulation
biased the other. Finally, the interaction of the
prosocial motivation and task interdependence
conditions with the manipulation checks for pro-
social motivation (F(1,120) 53.12, ns)andtask
interdependence (F(1,120) 5.68, ns) as dependent
variables were not significant. Thus, the results
fully supported the efficacy of both experimental
manipulations.
Hypothesis Testing
Mediated relationships. Table 4 presents the
descriptive statistics and correlations among study
variables. Regarding Hypotheses 1 and 2, as dem-
onstrated in Figure 7, when all mediation paths
were included, team prosocial motivation was pos-
itively related to team cooperation (b5.26, p,.01),
which was in turn positively associated with team
performance (b5.59, p,.001), and team OCB
(b5.25, p,.05), but not team voluntary turnover
(b5.05, n.s.). Team prosocial motivation was also
positively related to team viability (b5.58, p,.001),
which was positively related to team performance
(b5.51, p,.01) and negatively related to team
voluntary turnover (b52.56, p,.001), but not
related to team OCB (b5.04, n.s.). The direct effects
of team prosocial motivation on team performance
(b5.02, n.s.) and team OCB (b5.07, n.s.) were not
significant, but the direct effect on team voluntary
turnover was significant (b52.30, p,.01). Thus,
team cooperation in the relationships between team
prosocial motivation and team performance and
OCB was considered to play a fully mediating role.
In the relationship between team prosocial motiva-
tion and team performance, team viability also
played a fully mediating role, while the mediation
in the relationship between team prosocial motiva-
tion and team voluntary turnover was partial.
Among the control variables, individual intrinsic
motivation was negatively related to team voluntary
turnover (b52.22, p,.05). The results displayed
in Table 5 provide support for the indirect effects of
team prosocial motivation on team performance and
team OCB via team cooperation, and on team per-
formance and team voluntary turnover via team vi-
ability (for team cooperation as the mediator and
team performance as the outcome, b5.15, bias-
corrected 95% CI 5[.01, .31] and for team OCB as
the outcome, b5.07, bias-corrected 95% CI 5[.00, .15];
for team viability as the mediator and team per-
formance as the outcome, b5.30, bias-corrected
95% CI 5[.15, .47], and for team voluntary turnover
as the outcome, b52.32, bias-corrected 95%
CI 5[-.49, 2.19], all excluding zero). Therefore,
Hypotheses 1a, 1b, and 2a were fully supported and
TABLE 3
Study 2: Means and Standard Deviations by Condition for Measured Variables
a
Team
Performance Team OCB
Team Voluntary
Turnover
Team
Cooperation Team Viability
Conditions Mean SD Mean SD Mean SD Mean SD Mean SD
High team prosocial motivation,
high task interdependence
5.90 0.69 0.74 0.44 0.15 0.21 6.57 0.40 6.28 0.86
High team prosocial motivation,
low task interdependence
3.15 0.99 0.16 0.37 0.36 0.18 5.04 1.31 4.73 1.26
Low team prosocial motivation,
high task interdependence
4.42 0.69 0.39 0.50 0.46 0.21 4.74 1.06 4.65 1.27
Low team prosocial motivation,
low task interdependence
2.88 1.23 0.03 0.18 0.87 0.18 2.95 1.36 4.29 1.54
aN531 for each condition.
1116 AugustAcademy of Management Journal

Hypothesis 2c was partially supported, but Hy-
potheses 1c and 2b were not supported.
Moderation of the mediated relationships. As
illustrated in Figure 8, after controlling for the main
effects, the interaction between team prosocial mo-
tivation and task interdependence was significant
for team cooperation (b5.31, p,.01), which was
further positively related to team performance (b5
.26, p,.01) and team OCB (b5.22, p,.05), but not
related to team voluntary turnover (b52.02, n.s.).
The interaction was also significant for team via-
bility (b5.29, p,.01), which was in turn nega-
tively related to team voluntary turnover (b52.58,
p,.001), but not related to team performance (b5
.16, ns) and team OCB (b5.12, n.s.). Among the
control variables, individual prosocial motivation
was positively related to team OCB (b5.25, p,
.01), and individual impression management moti-
vation was negatively related to team voluntary
turnover (b52.40, p,.001). In addition, the R
2
results showed that the interaction term (task in-
terdependence * team prosocial motivation) alone
explained 8% of the variance in team cooperation
(ΔR
2
5.08) and 8% in team viability (ΔR
2
5.08),
which suggests that task interdependence influ-
enced the first stage of the mediation. The results in
Table 5 further reveal that the indirect effects of
team prosocial motivation on team performance and
team OCB via team cooperation differed signifi-
cantly under high and low task interdependence
conditions (for team performance as the outcome,
b
diff
5.08, bias-corrected 95% CI 5[.01, .18]; for
team OCB as the outcome, b
diff
5.07, bias-corrected
95% CI 5[.00, .16], both excluding zero). Likewise,
the indirect effect of team prosocial motivation on
team voluntary turnover via team viability differed
significantly when task interdependence was at
high versus low levels (b
diff
52.17, bias-corrected
95% CI5[–.30, 2.06], excluding zero). Figures 9 to
11 further illustrate the nature of the conditional
indirect effects. Consistent with expectations, the
indirect effects of team prosocial motivation on
team effectiveness were generally stronger under
the high task interdependence condition. Thus,
Hypotheses 3a, 3b, and 4c were supported, but
Hypotheses 3c, 4a, and 4b were not.
In addition, results in Figure 8 reveal that the
manipulations of team prosocial motivation and task
interdependence had a significant and positive in-
teractive effect on team performance (b5.25, p,
.01) and team OCB (b5.28, p,.01), which indicates
that task interdependence strengthened the direct
relationships between team prosocial motivation and
team performance and OCB. However, the interaction
term between team prosocial motivation and task
interdependence manipulations was not significantly
related to team voluntary turnover (b52.15, n.s.).
Taken together, the results suggest that after con-
trolling for individual prosocial motivation, intrinsic
motivation, and impression management motivation,
team prosocial motivation was a significant indicator
of team processes and subsequent team effectiveness.
Furthermore, similar to Study 1’s field results, task
interdependence strengthened the positive indirect
relationships between team prosocial motivation and
team performance and team OCB via team cooperation
TABLE 4
Study 2: Descriptive Statistics and Correlations
a
Mean SD 1234567
Level 1:
1 Individual prosocial motivation 4.77 .84 (.95)
2 Individual intrinsic motivation 4.98 .87 .64** (.92)
3 Individual impression management motivation 3.01 .87 –.15 –.26** (.89)
Level 2:
1 Team prosocial motivation 1.50 .50 –
2 Task interdependence 1.50 .50 .00 –
3 Team cooperation 4.82 1.69 .58** .49** (.95)
4 Team viability 4.99 1.46 .36** .33** .52** (.83)
5 Team performance 4.09 1.51 .29** .61** .52** .47** (.96)
6 Team OCB .33 .47 .32** .56** .56** .37** .57** –
7 Team voluntary turnover .46 .33 –.59** –.52** –.46** –.40** –.46** –.47** –
aN5496 individuals at Level 1 and 124 teams at level 2. Coefficient alphas are on the diagonal in parentheses. OCB 5organizational
citizenship behavior.
** p,.01
2015 1117Hu and Liden

and the negative indirect effect of team prosocial
motivation on team voluntary turnover via team
viability. The experimental design helps to rule out
the potential influence of preexisting organizational
and team factors on the proposed relationships, and
strengthens the veridicality of the results. Table 6
summarizes the results of all hypothesis testing
across the two studies.
GENERAL DISCUSSION
Although prior research has emphasized the im-
portance of team motivation in building team ef-
fectiveness, a critical form of motivation, prosocial
motivation, has been neglected in team contexts.
The current investigation integrated theories of
team effectiveness and prosocial motivation, and
provided evidence from both field and experimen-
tal studies for the salutary effect of team prosocial
motivation on team processes and effectiveness.
Furthermore, team prosocial motivation demon-
strated a stronger impact on team processes and
effectiveness outcomes when team tasks required
higher interdependence among team members. The
results provide several meaningful implications for
theory and practice.
Theoretical Implications
As a key contribution, the current research dem-
onstrates the important value of team prosocial
motivation for overall team effectiveness. The ex-
tant literature on team motivation has primarily fo-
cused on team members’motivation related to the
task, neglecting the fact that rather than being mo-
tivated by financial income or personal enjoyment,
many people are driven by the impact that their
work has on the well-being of others (De Dreu, 2006;
Grant, 2008; Grant et al., 2007). The current research
fills this critical gap in the literature by proposing
and demonstrating the unique value of prosocial
motivation to team effectiveness. We propose that in
work team contexts, prosocial motivation appears to
be especially salient, as teams provide individuals
with direct social stimulation (Hackman, 2002) that
enriches their concerns about the welfare of the
recipients of their work and in turn elevates their
sensitivity to the needs of their teammates, and
willingness to promote effective teamwork (De
Dreu, 2006; Grant, 2008). Indeed, the findings from
the field study and laboratory experiment sup-
port the unique contribution of team prosocial
TABLE 5
Study 2: Summary of Indirect Effects and Conditional
Indirect Effects
a
Team
Performance
Team
OCB
Team
Voluntary
Turnover
Mediator: Team Cooperation
Mediation .15* .07* .01
Moderated Mediation:
High task interdependence .11* .09* –.01
Low task interdependence .03 .02 .00
Difference .08* .07* –.01
Mediator: Team Viability
Mediation .30* .02 –.32*
Moderated Mediation:
High task interdependence .12* .09 –.42**
Low task interdependence .07 .05 –.25*
Difference .05 .04 –.17*
aThe indirect effect and conditional indirect effect tests were
based on 20,000 parametric resamples.
*p,.05
** p,.01
FIGURE 7
Study 2: Structural Model Results for the Indirect
Effects of Team Prosocial Motivation on Team
Effectiveness
a
a
N5124. Standardized path estimates are reported. Solid
lines indicate significant relationships and dashed lines depict
nonsignificant relationships. For the ease of readability, we did
not present the coefficients of the paths from the control variables
(i.e., individual-level intrinsic motivation, prosocial motivation,
and impression management motivation) in the model. Among
the control variables, individual-level intrinsic motivation was
negatively related to team voluntary turnover (b5–.22, p,.05).
The explained variance was R
2
5.37 for team cooperation,
R
2
5.33 for team viability, R
2
5.31 for team performance, R
2
5
.43 for team OCB, and R
2
5.50 for team voluntary turnover.
*p,.05
**p,.01
***p,.001
1118 AugustAcademy of Management Journal

motivation to effective team outcomes, including
high team performance and OCB, and low voluntary
turnover. The compelling evidence thus opens up
a new direction for understanding the underlying
motivational drives for team members to engage in
teamwork (Chen & Kanfer, 2006), presents empirical
support for De Dreu’s (2006) implication that pro-
social motives may be conducive to team success,
and provides a valuable extension to the growing
body of research on the impact of prosocial moti-
vation on performance outcomes (Grant, 2008;
Grant & Berry, 2011; Grant & Sumanth, 2009) at the
team level.
Another unique feature of the current study is the
application of team effectiveness theory (Hackman,
1987, 2002) as a theoretical basis to explain how
team prosocial motivation influences team effec-
tiveness through both the behavioral and emotional
processes within the team. Prior research has dis-
cussed the antecedents of collective prosocial
behaviors within the team (e.g., Li et al., 2014),
while limited attention has been paid to how team
members’prosocial intentions can contribute to
team processes and effectiveness. Extending this
line of research, and consistent with team effec-
tiveness theory (Hackman, 1987), we proposed that
driven by the desire of benefiting the welfare of
others, team members are motivated to work effec-
tively with each other to produce quality products
that benefit more people, and are less likely to cal-
culate personal loss and gains. This helps to create
effective team cooperation, build strong interper-
sonal ties, and enhance team viability. The findings
demonstrate that both team cooperation and team
viability enhance the effect of team prosocial moti-
vation on team effectiveness. Previous team studies
have been criticized for lacking a more complete
account of different team processes that link team-
level stimuli to team effectiveness (Balkundi &
Harrison, 2006; Chen & Gogus, 2008; Zaccaro,
Rittman, & Marks, 2001). By assessing the mediat-
ing roles of both task-oriented and affect-based
team processes in the relation between prosocial
motivation and team effectiveness, the current re-
search addresses this concern.
A further extension of the current research to
the team literature is the inclusion of task in-
terdependence as an important contingency for the
influence of team prosocial motivation on team
effectiveness. The results suggest that when there
is a higher interdependence requirement in team
FIGURE 9
Study 2: The Conditional Indirect Effects of Team
Prosocial Motivation on Team Performance via
Team Cooperation at High and Low Levels of
Task Interdependence
FIGURE 8
Study 2: Structural Model Results for the Overall
Moderated Mediation Model
a
a
N5124. Standardized path estimates are reported. Solid
lines indicate significant relationships and dashed lines depict
nonsignificant relationships. For the sake of easy readability, we
did not present the coefficients of the paths from the control
variables (i.e., individual-level intrinsic motivation, prosocial
motivation, and impression management motivation) in the
model. Among the control variables, individual-level prosocial
motivation was positively related to team OCB (b5.25, p,.01),
individual impression management motivation was negatively
related to team voluntary turnover (b5–.40, p,.001).
The explained variance was R
2
5.45 for team cooperation,
R
2
5.55 for team viability, R
2
5.71 for team performance, R
2
5
.62 for team OCB, and R
2
5.52 for team voluntary turnover.
*p,.05
**p,.01
***p,.001
2015 1119Hu and Liden

tasks, prosocially motivated team members have
more opportunities to cooperate with each other,
foster strong interpersonal ties, and demonstrate
viability, which in turn guides them to build team
effectiveness. These results answer calls to con-
sider team structure characteristics as conditions
for team motivational effects (Chen & Kanfer, 2006;
Chen, Kanfer, DeShon, Mathieu, & Kozlowski,
2009). Interestingly, and not fully supporting our
expectations, it was found in both the field study
and the experiment that with higher task interde-
pendence, team prosocial motivation facilitates
task-driven team cooperation, but not affect-based
team viability, to produce higher levels of team
performance and OCB. This inconsistency suggests
that the outcomes of both team in-role performance
and team extra-role performance rely more on the
task component than on the emotional part of the
team process. A possible explanation for this is
that even though team viability creates the in-
terpersonal impetus for prosocially motivated
members under highly task-interdependent teams
to perform well and engage in OCBs, members in
groups characterized by low task interdependence
face unique obstacles. Specifically, team members
under low task interdependence conditions may
find it more difficult to produce quality output,
help others, and make suggestions to improve team
functioning because a lack of task-driven coop-
eration causes them to obtain insufficient knowl-
edge of other team members’work. Also interesting
is the finding that team viability, but not team
cooperation, mediates the relationship between
team prosocial motivation and team voluntary
turnover, and this indirect effect was moderated
by task interdependence. That is, compared with
the task-related processes shown here to influence
team work outcomes, team members count on their
affective experiences within the team to make re-
tention decisions. This finding is consistent with
traditional turnover theory, which emphasizes
affect-based factors, such as job satisfaction, orga-
nizational commitment, and interpersonal ties,
as key determinants of employee voluntary turn-
over (Hulin et al., 1985; Lee et al., 2004; Russell,
2013). The differentiated results between team
cooperation and team viability are in line with
Balkundi and Harrison’s (2006) contention that
behavior- and affect-based team processes are two
different mechanisms that lead to different team
outcomes. Although intuitively appealing, research
in different contexts is necessary before concluding
that team task processes do not influence team
voluntary turnover as strongly as team affect pro-
cesses, and that team affect processes are less im-
portant for team performance outcomes compared
to team task processes.
Strengths, Limitations, and Future Research
Directions
Unlike most previous studies on team motivation,
which have relied on cross-sectional designs (Chen
et al., 2009), the current investigation included a
field study with three sources of multi-level data
collected over four time points from diverse team
FIGURE 10
Study 2: The Conditional Indirect Effects of Team
Prosocial Motivation on Team OCB via Team
Cooperation at High and Low Levels of
Task Interdependence
FIGURE 11
Study 2: The Conditional Indirect Effects of Team
Prosocial Motivation on Team Voluntary Turnover
via Team Viability at High and Low Levels of
Task Interdependence
1120 AugustAcademy of Management Journal

contexts in both the United States and China. In
addition, the experiment provided the control nec-
essary to rule out alternative explanations and allow
for causal inferences to be made.
Although the field and lab studies provided largely
consistent results to support our hypotheses, there
are some inconsistencies in the findings. Specifi-
cally, the mediation between team prosocial moti-
vation and team OCB through team cooperation is
partial in Study 1 but is full in Study 2, and the
mediation between team prosocial motivation and
team voluntary turnover via team viability is full in
Study 1, but partial in Study 2. This inconsistency may
be due to: (1) the subjective ratings from upper-level
managers in Study 1 versus measures of actual
team extra-role behaviors in Study 2; (2) the actual
turnover data obtained a year later in Study 1 vs.
signing up in another team project in Study 2; (3) the
permanent work teams from real organizations used
in Study 1 versus temporary student project teams
in Study 2; or (4) organization-level factors, such as
culture or pre-existing events.
In addition to empirically assessing these ex-
planations for inconsistencies between our field and
lab results, we recommend future research that delin-
eates alternative task- or affect-based team mecha-
nisms through which team prosocial motivation
promotes team effectiveness. For example, a prosocial
motivation climate within the team makes team
members feel inspired or moved, and then more ex-
cited with and engaged in their work (Grant & Patil,
2012), which may create a positive affective tone
within the team and lead to better outcomes. Another
fertile area for future research pertains to other
boundary conditions for the effects of prosocial moti-
vation in teams, such as exploring at the team level the
influence of opportunities to contact beneficiaries for
amplifying the influence of prosocial motivation on
employee behaviors (Grant, 2007).
Practical Implications
In line with our results, management attention
should be directed toward enhancing team proso-
cial motivation, as teamwork is a coordinated action
TABLE 6
Summary of Results for Studies 1 and 2
a
Hypothesized relationships Study 1 Study 2
H1a: team prosocial motivation →team cooperation
→team performance
Supported Supported
H1b: team prosocial motivation →team cooperation
team →OCB
Partially supported Supported
H1c: team prosocial motivation →team cooperation
→team voluntary turnover
Not supported Not supported
H2a: team prosocial motivation →team viability →
team performance
Supported Supported
H2b: team prosocial motivation →team viability →
team OCB
Not supported Not supported
H2c: team prosocial motivation →team viability →
team voluntary turnover
Supported Partially supported
H3a: team prosocial motivation*task
interdependence →team cooperation →team
performance
Supported Supported
H3b: team prosocial motivation*task
interdependence →team cooperation →team OCB
Supported Supported
H3c: team prosocial motivation*task
interdependence →team cooperation →team
voluntary turnover
Not supported Not supported
H4a: team prosocial motivation*task
interdependence →team viability →team
performance
Not supported Not supported
H4b: team prosocial motivation*task
interdependence →team viability →team OCB
Not supported Not supported
H4c: team prosocial motivation*task
interdependence →team viability →team
voluntary turnover
Supported Supported
aH5Hypothesis.
2015 1121Hu and Liden

and showing concern for others may bring about
smoother interactions and more effective coop-
eration within the team. Organizations should
capitalize on our finding that when team mem-
bers are motivated toward promoting the benefits
of others, they produce higher performance, more
OCB, and stay in their teams for a longer period.
Second, the results draw attention to both the
behavioral and emotional aspects of team pro-
cesses as bridges linking team prosocial motiva-
tion and team effectiveness. Specifically, in order
to build effective team outcomes, management
should guide prosocially motivated team mem-
bers to coordinate their tasks, facilitate smooth
task allocation, reduce dysfunctional conflicts,
and build strong interpersonal ties. Third, our
findings show that team prosocial motivation
interacts with task interdependence in relation to
team processes and effectiveness outcomes. The
highest level of team effectiveness was achieved
when team prosocial motivation and task in-
terdependence were both high. Team outcomes
suffer when high prosocial motivation teams lack
high task interdependenceorwhenhightaskin-
terdependence teams are not prosocially moti-
vated. Thus, for teams with members who are
already prosocially motivated, management should
endeavor to establish coordination requirements
designed to facilitate interactions and communi-
cations within the team. For teams with a high level
of task interdependence, it is critical for manage-
ment to cultivate team members’prosocial moti-
vation. Management interventions, such as increasing
the job impact of the team on potential beneficia-
ries, increasing the opportunities for interactions
with potential beneficiaries of their work, leading
by example, and introducing members with high
prosocial motivation to the team (Grant, 2007,
2012; Grant, Dutton, & Rosso, 2008; Grant & Patil,
2012), are helpful in creating a prosocial culture
within the team and promoting effective team
outcomes.
In summary, the current studies are among the
first efforts to extend prosocial motivation to the
team level and endorse the value of team prosocial
motivation on team processes and team effectiveness.
Furthermore, the current research demonstrated task
interdependence as an important contingency for
the impact prosocial motivation has for teams. The
findings of the current research suggest several
promising research directions for further enriching
our knowledge of the role of prosocial motivation
in teams.
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Jia (Jasmine) Hu (jhu@nd.edu) is an assistant professor of
management at the Mendoza College of Business, Univer-
sity of Notre Dame. She received her PhD with concen-
trations in organizational behavior and human resources
from the University of Illinois at Chicago. Her research
interests focus on understanding work teams, particularly
with respect to team motivation, leadership in teams, team
prosocial behaviors, and team effectiveness.
Robert C. Liden (bobliden@uic.edu) is professor of man-
agement, coordinator of the organizational behavior and
human resource management doctoral program, and di-
rector of doctoral programs for the College of Business
Administration at the University of Illinois at Chicago. He
received his PhD from the University of Cincinnati. His
research focuses on interpersonal processes within the
context of such topics as leadership, groups, and career
progression.
2015 1127Hu and Liden