Leader-member skill distance, team cooperation, and team performance: A cross-culture study in a context of sport teams

Team heterogeneity research has been traditionally dominated by atomistic or single-culture assumptions. This study extends this stream by investigating the influences of cooperation and culture on the link between leader-member skill distance (one special type of team heterogeneity) and team performance. Building upon input-process-output framework from the perspective of individualist and collectivist cultures, we propose that the association between leader-member skill distance and team performance has an inverted-U shape in individualist cultures. Further, in such cultures, team cooperation can augment the positive effect of leader-member skill distance on team performance. In contrast, in collectivist cultures, the association between leader-member skill distance and team performance has a monotonic and positive shape, and team cooperation will attenuate the positive effect of leader-member skill distance on team performance. We find the empirical support for our views with a mixed-methods design: a qualitative study interviewing informants in different cultures to clarify the psychological mechanisms, and also a quantitative study analyzing the data from US's National Basketball Association (NBA) and China Basketball Association (CBA).