Drawing on the group-norms theory of organizational citizenship behaviors and person-environment fit theory, we introduce and test a multilevel model of the effects of additive and dispersion composition models of team members' personality characteristics on group norms and individual helping behaviors. Our model was tested using regression and random coefficients modeling on 102 research and development teams. Results indicated that high mean levels of extraversion are positively related to individual helping behaviors through the mediating effect of cooperative group norms. Further, low variance on agreeableness (supplementary fit) and high variance on extraversion (complementary fit) promote the enactment of individual helping behaviors, but only the effects of extraversion were mediated by cooperative group norms. Implications of these findings for theories of helping behaviors in teams are discussed.

This article explores antecedents and outcomes of group-level person-group (PG) fit perceptions. Based on the categorization-elaboration model (CEM), the authors explain how social category (gender and age) and informational diversity (education and work experience) in work teams may elicit supplementary and complementary fit perceptions among team members. The authors then examine two mechanisms through which perceived fit might influence leader-rated group performance. Supplementary fit (similarity on values) is hypothesized to work through a relationship-oriented mechanism by influencing social cohesion. Complementary fit (abilities meet job demands) is expected to work through a task-oriented mechanism by influencing the teams’ transactive memory systems. Participants include employees (N = 1,101) and leaders (N = 116) from 116 work teams in two private firms located in Seoul, Korea. Results generally support the hypothesized relationships, with the task-oriented mechanism being more influential of group performance. Post hoc analyses also suggest that a superordinate perception of PG fit may underlie the assessments of the more specific types of fit. The authors conclude that diversity within groups influences an emergent perception of group-level fit, having related supplementary and complementary components, which in turn are associated with group-level outcomes.

Departing from the prevailing focus of the person-environment (P-E) fit literature on individual-level outcomes, we apply the fit concept to the group level and develop a theoretical framework that elaborates the nomological network involving group-level goal fit and ability fit. Specifically, we propose that the positive affect exhibited by leaders and members is a predictor of group-level goal fit and ability fit. We expect two types of group-level fit to predict group performance by shaping intermediate interactive dynamics among members, such as task and relationship conflict. Our analyses based on 96 work teams with 898 members provide empirical support for most of our hypotheses. Of the two group-level fit constructs, only group-level goal fit exerts a significant effect on group performance, which is completely mediated by task and relationship conflict. These theoretical and empirical developments highlight the potential and benefit of the group-level application of the P-E fit theory.

This study describes a multilevel examination of person-group (PG) fit perceptions in a sample of 1023 individuals working in 92 teams at a private sector R&D firm. Using confirmatory factor analysis and multilevel random coefficient modeling, we provide evidence that perceptions of team-level collective fit are unique from aggregated individual-level PG fit perceptions at the individual and team levels. We demonstrate that collective values-based and abilities-based fit perceptions showed unique and positive relationships with team cohesion, team efficacy, and team performance, after accounting for aggregated individual perceptions of PG fit. Results also demonstrate that cohesion partially mediates the relationship between collective fit and team performance. Cross-level effects were also supported, indicating that collective fit explains additional variance in individual-level outcomes, beyond individual-level PG fit perceptions. The usefulness of employing a multilevel approach to studying PG fit is discussed. have begun to establish that such a construct exists, but research has not yet demonstrated that collective fit is differentiable from aggregated individual-level fit perceptions. These studies have also exclusively examined collective fit and team-level outcomes, disregarding possible cross-level effects that these emergent perceptions may have on individual-level outcomes (Bliese, 2000). By ignoring cross-level effects, current estimates of individual-level fit relationships may be biased because they fail to account for variance attributable to fit at higher levels. This study adds to the nascent literature on collective fit by using multilevel analysis to empirically demonstrate its difference from individual-level fit perceptions, and explore its relationships with work-relevant outcomes at both the team and individual levels.By doing so, this study contributes to the fit literature in multiple ways. First, building on early conceptual work distinguish between collective fit perceptions that form through referent-shift consensus (Chan, 1998) as derived from but conceptually distinct from individuals' experiences of fit within the team. We use multilevel confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) to provide evidence of this distinctiveness. Second, we use multilevel random coefficient modeling (MRCM) to test the cross-level effects of collective fit perceptions. The cross-level effects are particularly noteworthy, as they shed new light on possible bias in past estimates of PG fit relationships that did not account for the context of collective fit in the team. Finally, we extend prior work on outcomes of collective fit at the team-level, providing a holistic picture of the influence of collective fit on team-level and individual-level outcomes. Through these analyses, we validate collective fit perceptions as a construct that is unique from individual-level perceptions of PG fit, which has unique and incremental relationships with both team-level and individual-level outcomes.

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