TOWARD A MODEL OF WORK TEAM ALTRUISM

Despite the acknowledged existence of egoism and altruism in human behavior, existing work teams research has primarily used a descriptive approach to summarize team behavior that does not distinguish between egoism and altruism. And despite increasing interest in positive organizational behavior an...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:The Academy of Management review 2014-10, Vol.39 (4), p.541-565
Main Authors: LI, NING, KIRKMAN, BRADLEY L., PORTER, CHRISTOPHER O. L. H.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Altruism
Applied psychology
Attention
Behavior
Biological altruism
Conceptualization
Coordinate systems
Egoism
Human behaviour
Motivation
Motivation research
Multidimensional analysis
Occupational psychology
Organization theory
Organizational behavior
Organizational behaviour
Psychological aspects
Psychological stress
Reciprocal altruism
Studies
Taxonomy
Teamwork
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Summary:Despite the acknowledged existence of egoism and altruism in human behavior, existing work teams research has primarily used a descriptive approach to summarize team behavior that does not distinguish between egoism and altruism. And despite increasing interest in positive organizational behavior and psychology, much more attention has been paid to understanding team egoistic behavior than team altruistic behavior, thus leaving theories of team motivation incomplete. Extending research on team processes and individual-level citizenship behavior, we develop a multilevel, dynamic framework that comprehensively establishes the team altruism construct and identifies its key dimensions. We further discuss the unique motives and evolution of team altruism over time. As a result, our theoretical framework offers a new taxonomy of team altruism, distinguishes team altruism from other related constructs, advances research on team processes by delineating those that are more altruistic from those that are more egoistic, argues that different types of team altruistic behaviors and processes have different antecedents, and generates a number of important directions for future research.
ISSN:0363-7425
1930-3807
DOI:10.5465/amr.2011.0160