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AbstractBacking up behavior has generally been defined as helping other team members perform their roles and is thought to be critical for effective performance in teams. To date, there has been no empirical investigation of backing up in teams, despite its importance. We develop and test an input process output model of backing up behavior in teams, proposing that backing up behavior in teams can be predicted at the team level by two types of team inputs: (1) team composition characteristics in terms of the personality of the members of the team and (2) team task characteristics in terms of the extent to which the nature of the task is one that legitimately calls for backing up behavior by members of the team. Results from a study of 71 teams performing a computerized tactical decision-making task suggest that the legitimacy of the need for back up has an important main effect on the extent to which team members provide assistance to and receive assistance from each other. In addition, legitimacy also has important interactive effects with both the personality of the back up recipient and the personality of the back up providers on backing up behaviors in teams.
Backing Up Others 3 Backing Up Behaviors in Teams:The Role of Personality and Legitimacy of Need While researchers and organizational practitioners have long been aware of the criticality of teamwork to effective team performance, to date, many of the specific aspects of teamwork have received little or no empirical attention. McIntyre and Salas (1995) identified four essential aspects of teamwork (performance monitoring, closed-loop communication, feedback, and backing up behaviors). They further suggested that backing up behaviors, the degree to which team members effectively help each other perform their roles, is perhaps the most critical of these four components of teamwork. Specifically, they noted that, "this skill is at the heart of teamwork, for it makes the team truly operate as more than the sum of its parts" (p. 26).The purpose of the present study was to extend the empirical literature on teamwork by focusing on backing up behaviors in work teams. The model tested here is based on an input process out...