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Whereas motivation and coordination losses in teams have been investigated for quite some time, systematic research on performance gains in teams (often called “synergetic effects”) only emerged recently. The purpose of the present paper is to clarify the concept of process gains (or synergy) in teams, and to introduce recent findings from basic psychology that can be very valuable for the management of high performing teams.

Based on the definition of synergy as process gain during teamwork compared with a clear baseline (team potential), this review develops specific requirements for the empirical demonstration of synergetic effects in teams. Moreover, a brief history of research on process gains in teams is provided, followed by an outlook on current and future trends in this field.

Although this research is still in its pioneering days, various triggers of process gains in teams have been already derived theoretically and/or demonstrated empirically, among them social support from fellow team members, perceived indispensability for the team outcome, the development and/or selection of experts for task and team processes, use of multiple perspectives and information, team learning, and social identification processes.

Understanding the preconditions and underlying mechanisms of process gains in teams enables managers to trigger performance levels of teams that exceed what can be expected based on the individual team members' capabilities alone. Moreover, the estimation of a team's potential provides a helpful standard for the assessment of the ongoing team performance.

Process gains in teams and related laboratory research have been largely neglected in the managerial literature so far. This paper and the current special issue are among the first to introduce a clear definition of process gains in teams, and to suggest concrete trigger factors of synergetic effects in teams based on systematic research.

How diversity in management boards affects employer attractiveness has yet to be fully clarified. This paper aims to contrast the two main theoretical rationales – similarity attraction and diversity attraction – and examines whether potential employees are more attracted to an organization with a homogenous board (in terms of gender and ethnicity) or to an organization with a diverse board.

Participants (N = 629) were simultaneously presented with two pictures of management boards, whereby the gender and ethnic composition of the boards were manipulated. Moreover, to examine whether social desirability influences the ratings of an organization’s attractiveness, survey anonymity was varied using an indirect questioning technique.

The findings supported the diversity attraction rationale: organizations with gender-balanced, multicultural boards were seen as more attractive than organizations with monolithic boards. However, this effect seemed to be influenced – at least partially – by social desirability.

Additional research is needed to examine the extents to which people care about the degree of similarity between themselves and a management board.

The findings illustrate board composition as an employer branding strategy. Specifically, the results indicate that an organization can benefit from a diverse management board when this information is communicated to applicants.

People’s attitudes toward organizations with diverse boards seem – in part – to be rooted in their motivation to comply with social norms.

Theoretical accounts (similarity attraction theory vs diversity attraction) lead to somewhat contradicting predictions, and the available empirical evidence was rather indirect and correlational. This study provides a controlled empirical investigation contrasting the two contradicting predictions.

Social support from fellow team members has been neglected as a unique source of process gains in teams. This paper seeks to introduce the Model of Social Support within Teams (MSST) that explicates testable hypotheses on effects of team partners' affective and task‐related support on team performance.

A theoretical model is proposed that specifies the psychological mechanisms by which affective and task‐related support from fellow team members evoke process gains in teams compared with individual work. Moreover, moderators and potential limits of these beneficial effects are described. The model integrates results from experimental research on behaviour in small groups with findings from field studies on organisational citizenship behaviour, team cognition, and efficacy beliefs at the individual and team level.

It is predicted that affective support predominantly increases individual members' motivation, while task‐related support predominantly improves coordination within teams. Moreover, various moderators (team members' dispositions, task design, team characteristics) are considered.

According to this analysis, social support can be an effective measure to trigger process gains in teams, and thus to increase team performance and organisational success. Concrete interventions to foster social support in teams are derived from the model, among them task design, consideration of social attitudes in selection and staffing, and team training.

This paper introduces a theoretical model explicating a previously neglected source of process gains in teams. In contrast with other sources of process gains, social support relates to the interaction among team members and integrates both motivation and coordination gains.

Due to demographic changes in most industrialized countries, the average age of working people is continuously increasing, and the workforce is becoming more age-diverse. This review, together with the earlier JMP Special Issue “Facilitating age diversity in organizations – part I: challenging popular misbeliefs”, aims to summarize new empirical research on age diversity in organizations, and on potential ways to support beneficial effects of age diversity in teams and organizations. The second part of the Special Issue focusses on managing mutual perceptions and interactions between different age groups.

A literature review is provided summarizing and discussing relevant empirical research on managing mutual perceptions and interactions between different age groups at work.

The summarized research revealed a number of challenges to benefit from age diversity in organizations, such as in-group favoritism, age norms about appropriate behavior of older workers, intentional and unintentional age discrimination, differences in communication styles, and difference in attitudes towards age diversity. At the same time, managerial strategies to address these challenges are developed.

Together with the first part of this Special Issue, this is one of the first reviews on ways to address the increasing age diversity in work organizations based on sound empirical research.

In recent years, significant demographic changes in most industrial countries have tremendously affected the age distribution of workers in organizations. In general, the workforce has become more age-diverse, providing significant and new challenges for human resource management and leadership processes. The current paper aims to address age-related stereotypes as a major factor that might impede potential benefits of age diversity in organizations.

After a brief review of potential detrimental effects of age-related stereotyping at work, the authors discuss the validity of typical age stereotypes based on new findings from large-scale empirical research with more than 160,000 workers overall.

Although the research summarized in this review is based on large samples including several thousand workers, the cross-sectional nature of the studies does not control for cohort or generational effects, nor for (self-)selection biases. However, the summarized results still provide important guidelines given that challenges due to age diversity in modern organizations today have to be dealt with regardless of the concrete origins of the age-related differences.

This is one of the first reviews challenging popular misbeliefs about older workers based on large-scale empirical research.

The ongoing demographic changes in many industrialized countries affect managerial decisions in many ways, and require sound knowledge of systematic age differences in central work-related variables. The current paper aims to address age differences in the experience of work-related stress. Based on life-span approaches, the authors focus on age differences in different components of the work-related stress process and meta-analyze existing empirical studies on the relationship between age and short-term indicators of work-related stress (i.e. irritation).

The authors conduct both a literature review and a meta-analysis of age and indicators of work-related stress.

The literature review revealed that age might affect several components of the stress process at work. However, as these effects are partly conflicting, they might nullify each other in the overall relation between age and stress. Indeed, the conducted meta-analysis showed no general correlation between age and irritation as a short-term indicator of work-related stress. Instead, this relationship was significantly moderated by type of occupation and gender.

The meta-analytic results are limited to short-term indicators of stress. Based on both the literature review and the meta-analytical findings, the authors introduce a research agenda for future research, including a call for more thorough research on the whole work-stress process and the integration of life-span theories.

A more differentiated understanding of age differences in different stages of the stress process at work facilitates the implementation of age-differentiated stress prevention and intervention strategies.

This study is the first meta-analysis on the relationship between age and short-term consequences of work-related stress.

The purpose of this paper is to report on new research that explores the effect of co‐worker friendship and performance norms on the Köhler motivation gain effect.

Females worked at a motor persistence task with either a more capable coactor or with a more capable team‐mate (where the group's task had conjunctive task demands; i.e. the performance of the weaker team‐mate defined the group's score). The co‐workers (coactors or team‐mates) were either friends or strangers. Participants were also led to believe that their co‐workers and peers endorsed social norms prescribing either high or low level of effort at the task.

Compared to comparable individual control workers, the inferior‐ability coactors showed a significant motivation gain (attributable to social‐comparison processes); this gain was not moderated by either friendship or performance norms. Inferior‐ability members of the collaborative teams worked significantly harder than the coactors (attributable to the indispensability of their efforts under these work conditions), but only when their partners were friends or the performance norms prescribed high effort.

The research focuses on short‐term laboratory groups of females working together for a very brief period. The applicability of the findings to more typical work teams will require further research.

The research suggests that the task motivation of particular team members (namely, those with the least ability) can be increased by strengthening social ties between team‐mates and promoting high effort social norms.

The research adds to a growing literature that identifies when and why members of work groups will work harder than comparable individual workers.

The purpose of this paper is to challenge the assumption that process losses of individuals working in teams are unavoidable. The paper aims to challenge this assumption on the basis of social identity theory and recent research.

The approach adopted in this paper is to review the mainstream literature providing strong evidence for motivation problems of individuals working in groups. Based on more recent literature, innovative ways to overcome these problems are discussed.

A social identity‐based analysis and recent findings summarized in this paper show that social loafing can be overcome and that even motivation gains in group work can be expected when groups are important for the individual group members' self‐concepts.

The paper provides human resource professionals and front‐line managers with suggestions as to how individual motivation and performance might be increased when working in teams.

The paper contributes to the literature by challenging the existing approach to reducing social loafing, i.e. individualizing workers as much as possible, and proposes a team‐based approach instead to overcome motivation problems.

The purpose of this paper is to compare effects of different monetary team‐based reward strategies on performance, pay satisfaction, and communication behavior in computer‐mediated groups.

In a laboratory experiment, 32 groups of undergraduate students, each consisting of three individuals, interacted electronically and performed a consensus‐reaching task. Team‐based incentives were distributed either equally (each team member received an equal share) or equitably (each team member's share depended on her/his individual contribution). A control group received no team‐based (or other) incentives.

Hierarchical multilevel analyses revealed that both types of team‐based rewards increased team members' motivation and pay satisfaction compared to the control condition. Moreover, the effects of team‐based rewards on performance were moderated by group members' assertiveness. In addition, team‐based rewards lead to more cooperative and task‐oriented communication in the computer‐mediated groups. Finally, equally divided rewards led to higher pay satisfaction on average than equitably divided incentives.

On a research level, this study shows that team‐based rewards have positive effects not only on performance but also on communication behavior in computer‐mediated groups. As a practical implication, reward effects should be considered cautiously as they might be influenced by team members’ personality. Moreover, whereas no major differences were found between equity and equality principles in terms of performance, the latter seems to be preferable when satisfaction is a major issue in virtual teams.

The purpose of this paper is to establish a theory‐based and empirically grounded platform to assess age‐related changes in work motivation, and to derive motivational interventions in personnel management.

The general approach is one of conceptual transfer: to cast work psychological phenomena in lifespan psychological terms to generate the tenets.

Rather than declining uniformly, older workers' motivation develops in a multidirectional, multilevel way. Motivation decline in certain types of work tasks goes with stable motivation and even motivation gains in other tasks as a function of a variety of task characteristics. These age‐related changes may be captured in a worker's motivation profile, which is functional for positive affect regulation.

The conceptualisation suggests a more differentiated approach to job design and human resource management, considering age‐related changes at multiple levels simultaneously instead of focusing on major age effects only.

The conceptual clarity of work motivation research is enhanced by distinguishing global and task‐specific levels of motivation that may dissociate in older workers. By transferring up‐to‐date findings and concepts from Lifespan Psychology to Organisational Psychology, further research is stipulated in both fields.