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Based on Mitchell and Silver's (1990) tower-building paradigm, the authors performed two experiments on multilevel quantity goals, strategies, and performance in task-interdependent groups. The study compared four goal types: IG (individual goal), GG (group goal), IG + GG (individual + group goal), and NSG (nonspecific goal). IG yielded low cooperation and performance, whereas, unexpectedly, NSG yielded high cooperation and performance. To explain this finding, we discerned two goal-setting components: Goal referent (performance-level targeted; individual/group) and goal specificity. Mediation analyses suggest that referent triggers a cooperation/competition mechanism, explaining the lower IG performance, whereas specificity triggers a speed/ accuracy mechanism, explaining the higher NSG performance. We conclude that individual goals can interfere with cooperative processes and group performance, and, for time-constrained interdependent tasks requiring speed and accuracy, specific difficult quantity goals may promote risk taking, thereby obstructing goal attainment.

This study focuses on team achievement goals and performance outcomes in interdependent sports teams. Team achievement goals reflect shared motivational states that exist exclusively at the team level. In a survey among 310 members of 29 premier-league field-hockey teams, team-level performance-approach, performance-avoidance, mastery-approach, and mastery-avoidance achievement goals explained 69% of the overall variance in team performance and 16% after controlling for previous performance. Teams performed better to the extent they were more approach- and less avoidance oriented in terms of both mastery and performance, although mastery-approach goals related to early-season team performance rather than predicting later changes in team performance.

While achievement goal theory is well-represented in the individual motivation literature, we know little about its role in groups. In 2001, Elliot and McGregor proposed a 2 × 2 achievement goal framework, which consists of a mastery-performance goal distinction and an approach-avoidance goal distinction. In the present study, we define this 2 × 2 framework at the group level and examine antecedents and collective motivational outcomes of group-level achievement goals in a longitudinal study among 125 small student groups engaged in a debating course. Results support the group-level 2 × 2 framework, although the shared nature of group-level performance-avoidance requires further attention. Individual dispositional achievement goals, measured before group formation, predicted subsequent group-level achievement goals. Concerning group-level motivational outcomes, a group climate focused on learning and improvement seems especially beneficial, as it related positively to sustained collective effort, group reflexivity, and group task strategy effectiveness, and mitigated adverse effects of group performance-approach achievement goals.

Group-level constructs are often derived from individual-level data. This procedure requires a composition model, specifying how the lower level data can be combined to compose the higher level construct. Two common composition methods are direct consensus composition, where items refer to the individual, and referent-shift consensus composition, where items refer to the group. The use and selection of composition methods is subject to a number of problems, calling for more systematic work on the empirical properties of and distinction between constructs composed by different methods. To facilitate and encourage such work, the authors present a methodological framework for addressing the distinction between and the baseline psychometric quality of composed group constructs, illustrated by an empirical example in the group job-design domain. The framework primarily represents a developmental tool with applications in multilevel theory building and scale construction, but also in meta-analysis or secondary analysis, and more general, the validation of group constructs.

In this article, we present a qualitative discussion of 28 empirical studies on self-managing team-work and psychological well-being. We address three questions: (a) Which variables did they include and which results did they obtain?; (b) How did authors deal with issues of level of theory, measurement, and analysis?; and (c) Do such level issues affect the results of the studies? This review demonstrates that only job satisfaction is consistently related to self-managing teamwork. In addition, authors often fail to specify the level of their theory, thereby impeding judgment on the appropriateness of analysis procedures. Finally, we present preliminary evidence that level issues may affect the results. We plead for the incorporation of multilevel theory andanalysistechniquesintothefieldofself-managingteamworkandpsychologicalwell-being.