Conclusion and Managerial Implication

This study has contributed to the literature of agility in teams in several ways. First, the focus of this study is to determine if cooperation, competition, and team empowerment are significant mediators that have not been previously studied. Our findings confirm high collectivism will bring high team performance and high team agility by team cooperation.

This is a key finding for team leader whose team seeks a better performance. The effect of team politics on the team performance and team agility is mediated by cooperation and competition. The result is high team politics produces low team performance, but leads to high team agility via competition. Therefore, team leaders should take care of the politics in their team. Collectivism helps to balance the negative impact of team politics on cooperation because collectivism deters team members from unscrupulously achieving their goal. Given that team politics are sometimes inevitable in a team or an organization, it is important for management to make good use of collectivism to lever the suppressed cooperation into a better position. It is important to note that team politics are not always bad to a team. Second, our study suggests transformational leadership has significant influences on team performance and team agility via the mediation of cooperation and team empowerment, while the relationship is positive. In the same way, the findings also indicate transactional leadership has a positive impact on team performance and team agility by cooperation and competition. That is to say, both leaderships are good for the team outcomes. And our study confirms the importance of team empowerment again. We find team empowerment is positively related to team performance and team agility. This suggests the perception of team empowerment has a strong and direct link with team‟s

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outcomes (Liden, Wayne, & Sparrowe, 2000; Mitchell & Daniels, 2003; Pinder, 1998).

Finally, the significant influence of team agility on both team cooperation and competition in coworkers implies cooperation and competition are not polar ends of one continuum;

instead, within any relationship, competition and cooperation are two separate but interrelated aspects of that relationship. The implication is that within any given relationship, both competition and cooperation can, and often do, coexist and that the combination of the two leads to enhanced agility for the team (Lado, Boyd, & Hanlon, 1997; Gnyawali &

Madhavan, 2001).

The unsupported hypothesis is surprising. Particularly, this study hypothesizes that the transactional leadership is supposed to be negatively related to competition, but the test result actually show that the influence of transactional leadership on competition is positively significant. Such contradictory phenomenon may occur perhaps due to organizational climate, team punitive systems or other factors, which are not controlled herein. For example, transactional leaders may focus on employee mistakes to meet the standards or wait until a problem becomes severe before they intervene that contribute to the behaviors such as questioning, clarifications, and assessment of each member‟s contribution and cause the team competition. Nevertheless, the unexpected results for the unsupported hypothesis may warrant further study so that the insights behind the hypothesis can be interpreted accurately.

A majority of previous studies have mostly focused on either cooperation or competition. Some of the studies revealed mixed results regarding competition. For example, while Hammond and Goldman (1961) concluded that competition may not motivate performance and can be detrimental to team processes, Stanne et al. (1999) stressed some positive outcomes of competition on performance. Another research with

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mixed results concluded that competition facilitates motivation, productivity, and quality (Julian & Perry, 1967). These mixed results imply that some critical mediators associated with competition and team performance (e.g., team empowerment and team agility) should be carefully examined so that our understanding about coopetition can be greatly improved.

Indeed. The empirical results show that competition has a direct and negative effect on team performance and an indirect and positive effect on the team performance via the mediation of team agility. These findings provide a very strong explanation about why the effects of competition on team performance in previous studies are sometimes positive and sometimes negative, depending on their various viewpoints. The findings of this study strongly suggest that competition can have the pros and cons for teams, striking management to plan out balanced measures to maintain certain competition under the rules of the team. It would be very much mistaken for management that any competition should be eliminated. Instead, having cooperation with acceptable competition is good for the team, because the cooperation becomes more important and valued by employees when competition increases to a certain extent. The degree to which organizations should emphasize cooperation or competition among the members of work teams is an age-old controversy, and many studies have debated whether activities should be structured in a cooperative or competitive manner to promote motivation and performance (e.g., Deutsch, 1949; Johnson & Johnson, 1989, 1990; Slavin, 1996), but our research believe that the answer may lie in a combination of these two contexts. For that reason, this study examining two critical team outcomes (e.g., performance and agility) from a perspective of coopetition can substantially complement previous research with similar issues.

Organizations now face an unstable and turbulent environment. The marketplace for products and services is dominated by rapid changes in customer needs, fierce competition, globalization and technical innovations. At the same time, organizations are increasingly

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using work teams to streamline processes, enhance employee participation, and improve performance. This lets us start with the issues concerning team agility and there are two implications from this study for team and team leader.

A practical implication is that, both team cooperation and competition are helpful to team agility. This implies a team leader can enhance team agility through increase the mediators of team cooperation and competition. For example, teams may seek to shape collectivistic culture that support team agility through team cooperation. Team members who observe, learn and imitate the culture of collectivism from team, based on the norm of cooperation, can enhance team agility. On the opposite, team members who work in political environments develop an emotional alienation from work as a result of inequity and unfair team climate. Such a psychological state may lead team members to suffer high levels of stress, strain, tension, which may eventually translate into aggressive behaviors and team competition. Thus, produce high team agility. But one should be careful is team competition may also harm team performance. Some previous studies have shown that intrateam competition is destructive (Deutsch, 1973; Johnson & Johnson, 1989; Johnson et al., 1981). In competing, individuals or subgroups place their own benefits first, and the gains achieved by one are often obtained at the expense of another. Therefore, when a manager wants to promote team agility must think about the benefits and damages of competition.

Another implication of this study is that both leaderships are good for team performance and agility via the mediating roles of cooperation, competition and team empowerment. When a leader is a transformational leader, he should pay more attention on team cooperation and empowerment. For example, a transformational leader should respect every team members, emphasizes team work and mission. In contrast, a transactional leader

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should take notice of team cooperation and competition. For instance, a transactional leader should let team members know about it when they perform poorly or give them reward when they exceed the standard. Just like the literature has shown before, leaderships are often viewed as situational. Our research findings also indicate that management should learn and transfer various and flexible leadership styles to balance team coopetition and team empowerment.