Abstract:

As the internal and external environment becomes more complex and ambiguous, team reflexivity becomes increasingly important for team development. Team reflexivity refers to the behaviour of team members who reflect together on team goals, strategies, methods and implementation processes so that the team can adapt to changes in the environment.

Team reflexivity is closely related to important team-level variables such as team learning, team knowledge sharing, team task performance, and team innovation. Although research on the impact of team reflexivity has been extensive, several issues still require attention: (1) The direction and strength of the effect of team reflexivity on outcome variables still exhibit inconsistencies. (2) Verification of cross-cultural differences in the effect of team reflexivity has not yet been established. (3) The majority of the current studies concerning the mechanism of team reflexivity's impact have only explored a single mediator in isolation, and there is a lack of comparative and testing studies for multiple mediating mechanisms under the same framework.

We thus conducted a meta-analysis to investigate the correlation between team reflexivity and team resources development, team resources utilization, and team outcomes (team task performance, team creativity, and team innovation performance). We also examined the moderating impact of national culture, specifically collectivism, long-term orientation, masculinity, and power distance. Additionally, we analysed the mediating mechanisms between team reflexivity and team outcomes. In this study, we used four steps to search and screen studies about team reflexivity. Following these steps, 96 independent studies (N = 9,052) from 95 cases were included. Based on these studies, we conducted publication bias analysis, main effect analysis, meta-regression analysis, and meta-analytic structural equation modeling (MASEM). Specifically, we first used Egger’s regression and fail-safe number to test publication bias. Second, Hunter and Schmidt’s method was used to analyze the main effects of team reflexivity. Third, we conducted meta-regression analysis to examine the moderating effects of national culture. Finally, we examined and compared the mediating effects of team resource development and team resource utilisation.

Publication bias analysis suggested that the meta-analytic relationships examined were robust to publication bias. There is a more than moderate positive relationship between team reflexivity and team resources development, team resources utilization, team task performance, team creativity, and team innovation performance. Collectivism positively moderated the relationship between team reflexivity and team resources utilization, team task performance, and team innovation performance. Long-term orientation positively moderated the relationship between team reflexivity and team task performance. Masculinity positively moderated the relationship between team reflexivity and team resources utilization. Power distance positively moderated the relationship between team reflexivity and team resources utilization and team task performance. Both team resources utilization and team resources development can act as mediators between team reflexivity and team outcomes. Team resources utilization exhibited a stronger mediating effect between team reflexivity and team task performance than team resources development. Team resources development exhibited a stronger mediating effect between team reflexivity and team creativity than team resources utilization. No significant difference was found in the mediating effects on the relationship between team reflexivity and team innovation performance.

This study contributes to the team reflexivity literature in several ways. First, we integrated previous empirical studies and reported more precise relationships between team reflexivity and team resources development, team resources utilization, and team outcomes (team task performance, team creativity, and team innovation performance), which advances research on the outcomes of team reflexivity. We then evaluated the impact of cultural contexts, specifically collectivism, long-term orientation, masculinity, and power distance, which increases our comprehension of the variation in cross-cultural influence of team reflexivity roles. Moreover, we tested and compared the dual-mediation mechanism between team reflexivity and team outcomes.

Overall, our contribution is to integrate the literature on team reflexivity and its outcomes, to examine the mediating mechanisms through which team reflexivity affects team outcomes, and to conclude that national cultural context moderates the relationship between team reflexivity and outcome variables. These findings contribute to a better understanding of the complex relationship between team reflexivity and team resources development, utilization, and team outcomes, while considering cross-cultural variations.

Key words: team reflexivity, meta-analysis, team resources development, team resources utilization, team outcomes, AMO theory