Leader productivity and people orientations for cooperative goals and effective teams in China

Abstract

Researchers have traditionally distinguished leaders by the extent to which they are oriented to people and productivity, and meta-analytic results indicate that these orientations have consistent and practically important effects. But research is needed to understand the dynamics by which these orientations induce team effectiveness. This study empirically relates leader orientations to teamwork by suggesting that productivity- and people-oriented leaders develop cooperative goals among team members that in turn results in team effectiveness. A total of 146 team leaders from 21 organizations in China completed measures of productivity and people orientations and their encouraging cooperative goals among team members; 1067 team members rated their effectiveness. Results of the structural equation analysis support the theorizing that leader productivity and people values when complemented by strengthening cooperative relationships can contribute to making teams effective in China and perhaps in other countries as well.

Keywords::

• cooperative goals
• leadership
• productivity and people orientations
• team effectiveness

Acknowledgement

This work has been supported by Natural Science Foundation of China (71121001, 70972024, 70625003,70890081, 70272007, 70572005), Key Research Project Foundation for Humanities & Social Science of Chinese Education Committee(06JJD630013) and PhD Research Foundation (20090002110037) of Chinese Education Ministry to the first author.