The Impacts of Competitive Workgroup Climate on Task Performance: Awareness-Motivation-Capability Perspective

Individual-level competition has been widely discussed by organizational psychologists. However, the mechanism between intra-organizational competition and performance is still unclear. The present study aims to investigate the process of influence between intra-organizational competition and individual performance from the perspective of Awareness-Motivation-Capability. A competitive workgroup climate is manifested as competitive awareness, performance-goal orientation is manifested as competitive motivation, networking ability is manifested as competitive capability, and job engagement is manifested as competitive behavior. Using data from surveys of 94 sales teams (403 respondents) and the hierarchical linear modeling (HLM) approach, we find that a competitive workgroup climate increases performance-goal orientation, which in turn advances a salesperson's networking ability. Furthermore, networking ability promotes job engagement, which in turn advances a salesperson's ultimate task performance.