Too much of a good thing: Examining the curvilinear relationship between team-level proactive personality and team performance

Research has largely shown a positive linear relationship between proactive personality and job performance at the individual level. However, it remains unknown whether the same relationship holds at the team level. In this research, we propose and test a curvilinear relationship between team mean level of proactive personality and team performance. We also examine team potency and team cohesion as the explanatory mechanisms and the dispersion of proactive personality as a boundary condition for the relationship. We conducted two studies to test these ideas. In Study 1, we collected data from 93 teams in four companies from different industries. In Study 2, we collected data from 101 nursing teams in three hospitals. We found a curvilinear relationship between team mean level of proactive personality and team performance in Study 1 and replicated it in Study 2. We further demonstrated in Study 2 the moderating role of dispersion of proactive personality and the mediating role of team potency and team cohesion, respectively, in this curvilinear relationship. The positive trend of the curvilinear relationship is strengthened (weakened) when the dispersion of proactive personality is high (low). The negative trend is mitigated under high dispersion of proactive personality but is not significant under low dispersion of proactive personality. Practically, managers must be aware that team mean level of proactive personality benefits team performance only up to a certain point.