Exploring emotional regulation and team politics in teams: team learning and educational practices

To learn about teamwork, research has widely discussed cohesion as a key bridge between team performance and its predictors, yet ‘blind’ cohesion often hampers a team’s achievement. Without thoroughly understanding cohesion and its relevant variables, managers’ initiatives developed at improving cohesion and team performance will remain practically ineffective based on misapprehension or blind faith. To open the black box of cohesion, this study draws upon the social exchange theory and social cognitive theory to explore the development of cohesion and team performance. The empirical results of hierarchical regression analysis reveal that collective efficacy moderates the positive relationship between social cohesion and task cohesion and the negative relationship between team politics and task cohesion. Finally, this study discusses research and managerial implications based on its empirical results.