Sharing a Team’s Vision: Discretionary Behavioral Expectations, Trust, and Team Autonomy, oh my!

Despite knowing that a shared vision can result in a number of positive outcomes for groups and teams, we have a very limited understanding of what potentially contributes to group and team members sharing the same vision. This study seeks to contribute to our very limited understanding of what potentially contributes to team members sharing their team’s vision by focusing on team members’ expectations of their teammates engaging in discretionary behaviors directed toward the organization, the degree to which team members trust their teammates, and the degree to which team managers provide their teams autonomy. Using 197 team members across 46 teams/team managers and 13 organizations, I find that team members’ expectations of their teammates engaging in citizenship behaviors directed toward the organization is positively associated with team members sharing their team’s vision, but I find no association for team members’ expectations of their teammates engaging in deviant behaviors directed toward the organization and sharing their team’s vision. However, I find that trust weakens and team autonomy strengthens the negative relationship between team members’ expectations of their teammates’ deviant behaviors directed toward the organization and sharing their team’s vision. I find no conditional effects of trust and team autonomy on the relationship between OCBO expectations and shared vision. These results suggest that both properties of individual team members as well as the team may play an important role in sharing a team’s vision.