Self-efficacy,mental models and team adaptation: A first approach on football and futsal refereeing

ObjectiveWithin the football and futsal refereeing context, even though referees work within teams, there is very little research considering the implications of team dynamics. In response, this study starts to address this gap in the literature by investigating the moderating effect of mental models on the relationship between self-efficacy beliefs and perceptions of team adaptation within the exciting context of professional and national football and futsal refereeing.DesignWe obtained online questionnaires from 339 active football and futsal referees within the National and Professional league at two distinct points (April and May) within the football season.ResultsSelf-efficacy beliefs were positively associated with perceptions of team adaptation (only for football referees). Mental models were positively associated with team adaptation. Likewise, the moderation between mental models and self-efficacy beliefs was positively associated with perceptions of team adaptation. However, such an effect was only significant at the futsal referees’ level.ConclusionThis study emphasises the importance of mental models for team adaptation and the importance of self-efficacy beliefs in predicting perceptions of team adaptation. We hope that this study represents the first step in a greater appreciation of the salience of team dynamics and their impact on football and futsal referees’ performance and that future research can build upon our work.     

Team Science,Justice, and the Co‐Production of Knowledge

Science increasingly consists of interdisciplinary team‐based research to address complex social, biomedical, public health, and global challenges through a practice known as team science. In this article, I discuss the added value of team science, including participatory team science, for generating scientific knowledge. Participatory team science involves the inclusion of public stakeholders on science teams as co‐producers of knowledge. I also discuss how constructivism offers a common philosophical foundation for both community psychology and team science, and how this foundation aligns well with contemporary developments in science that emphasize the co‐production of knowledge. I conclude with a discussion of how the co‐production of knowledge in team science can promote justice.     

The problem of tradition in the work of Anthony Giddens

This paper seeks to problematise the notion of ‘tradition’ presented in the recent sociology of Anthony Giddens on reflexivity and late modernity. Three broad areas of critique are highlighted and discussed: the view of tradition as simultaneously static and reflexive; the view that within the ‘post‐traditional’ world tradition survives and flourishes; and the view that tradition and reflexivity are historically mutually exclusive phenomena. In the final section, Mellor's (1993) conception of ‘reflexive traditions’ is introduced and developed as a possible hermeneutic tool for the study of contemporary traditions with reference to the author's recent ethnographic fieldwork with the Brahma Kumaris World Spiritual University, a millenarian new religious movement of Indian origin.     

The interactive effects of person-focused citizenship behaviour,task interdependence,and virtuality on team performance

A multifactorial between-groups experiment examined the effects of person-focused organizational citizenship behaviours (OCBP) on the performance of teams characterized by different levels of virtuality and task interdependence. Results reveal in low virtual teams the moderating effects of task interdependence on the OCBP–team performance relationship are positive; however, these effects are reversed in high virtual teams. Using social presence and task–technology fit theories, our results indicate that task context affects how OCBP impacts team performance, particularly across different levels of team virtuality. The implications for research on OCB and the management of virtual teams are discussed.     

Klaus B: The success story of an entrepreneur - a case study

Interorganizational teams are rapidly becoming more prevalent as a means to improve organizations' responsiveness. To achieve their objective, interorganizational teams must engage in extensive amounts of boundary spanning activity. This study juxtaposed three structural variables, namely team informational diversity, team boundedness, and extrateam links, in an integrated model aimed at promoting our understanding of how to increase interorganizational team boundary spanning activity and its effectiveness. The model was tested with 49 health promotion teams. Our findings indicated that three types of boundary spanning—scouting, ambassadorial, and coordinating—were positively associated with interorganizational team effectiveness. In addition, for team informational diversity, team boundedness, and extrateam links, scouting and ambassadorial activities fully mediated their relationships with team effectiveness; for team boundedness, coordinating activity also fully mediated its relationship with team effectiveness. These findings highlight the importance of incorporating structural considerations into the management of interorganizational teams.     

Promoting Inter-Relational Reflexivity with Psychosocial Workers in Community Work: A Case Study from Burundi

We explore the practice of creating reflexive spaces within community work with psychosocial workers living in Burundi and the Democratic Republic of the Congo. A central idea is inter-relational reflexivity—reflexivity within relationships that leads to collective action. Theoretical ideas related to inter-relational reflexivity are examined and a case study of the engagement with the psychosocial workers, which used these ideas, is presented. Among the issues explored are: the importance of staying with the lived experiences of people; the challenge of ensuring that inter-relational thinking is transferred to collective social action; and the methodologies that can be used to establish ongoing psychological and social processes that address the structure of power and promote transformation and healing within traumatised communities.     

Sensitive but not sentimental: Emotionally intelligent people can put their emotions aside when necessary

Are emotionally intelligent people sentimental? Does their greater sensitivity handicap them or are they able, as theory would expect, to experience and regulate emotions flexibly, depending on their goals? We examined this issue in organizational settings. Good managers are indeed expected to be both attuned to feelings (theirs as well as their subordinates’) and able to put them aside when needed to take tough (but necessary) decisions. Our results show that emotionally intelligent managers do make better managers, as reflected by greater managerial competencies, higher team efficiency and less stressed subordinates. Moreover, and most importantly, emotionally intelligent managers are not just nicer managers. As our results show, emotional intelligence has nothing to do with sentimentality. Actually, it is managers with low EI who have the greatest difficulties to put their emotions aside and not let them interfere when inappropriate.     

Why individuals in larger teams perform worse

Research shows that individuals in larger teams perform worse than individuals in smaller teams; however, very little field research examines why. The current study of 212 knowledge workers within 26 teams, ranging from 3 to 19 members in size, employs multi-level modeling to examine the underlying mechanisms. The current investigation expands upon Steiner’s (1972) model of individual performance in group contexts identifying one missing element of process loss, namely relational loss. Drawing from the literature on stress and coping, relational loss, a unique form of individual level process, loss occurs when an employee perceives that support is less available in the team as team size increases. In the current study, relational loss mediated the negative relationship between team size and individual performance even when controlling for extrinsic motivation and perceived coordination losses. This suggests that larger teams diminish perceptions of available support which would otherwise buffer stressful experiences and promote performance.     

Teaching critical psychology of ‘race’ issues: problems in promoting anti‐racist practice

The aim of this paper is to illustrate the difficulties faced by teachers of issues related to ‘race’ and racism in psychology when trying to develop anti‐racist practice in their teaching. I argue that the promotion of anti‐racist practice can be impeded by the institutionalised cultures of some psychology departments and that such cultures have developed out of an over‐reliance on positivist ideas. Positivism obscures the fact that knowledge is constructed from positions of power and privilege, which in turn obscures the social and ideological construction of ‘race’. This is clearly a problem when trying to develop anti‐racist practice in teaching. It also leads to fixed ideas about what should be included in teaching content and what can be considered as good pedagogical practice, where notions of ‘balance’ and ‘neutrality’ are advocated, effectively overriding arguments for understanding the dynamics of knowledge production. It also obscures the power and privilege associated with workings of ‘whiteness’. I illustrate this by presenting examples from my own experiences of teaching ‘race’ issues on undergraduate degree courses. I conclude with suggestions for developing anti‐racist teaching by proposing a collective reflexive approach to changing institutional cultures that are currently at odds with anti‐racist practice. I also invite further discussion and suggestions on how best to achieve such collective conscientisation. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.