ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Psychol.
Sec. Organizational Psychology
Volume 16 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2025.1548846
Diminishing Returns of Task-Oriented Interaction in Digitally-Mediated Dynamic Teams: Evidence from Amateur Sports Organizing
Provisionally accepted
- 1School of Economics and Management, Chengdu Normal University, Chengdu, China
- 2School of Economics and Management, Beihang University, Beijing, China
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Although extant research has emphasized task-oriented processes in teams, its focus on dynamic teams in digital environments remains limited, particularly regarding non-linear effects. Integrating attention capacity theory and activation theory, this study proposes a curvilinear (inverted-U) relationship between task-oriented interaction and team organizing efficiency in digitally-mediated teams. Analyzing 455 spontaneous sports teams from an open-boundary organizational platform revealed support for the proposed curvilinear relationship, with team identification moderating the effect. Specifically, when team identification was low (vs. high), the inverted-U relationship was more salient. With high (vs. low) team identification, teams exhibited relatively higher levels of team organizing efficiency, regardless of task-oriented interaction. These findings establish diminishing returns of task-oriented interaction as a fundamental boundary condition for digitally-mediated organizing efficacy, advancing theory on dynamic team coordination and offering pragmatic guidelines for managing technology-mediated sports collaboration.
Keywords: task-oriented interaction, Diminishing returns, team identification, Team efficiency, Dynamic teams, amateur sports organizing
Received: 20 Dec 2024; Accepted: 24 Jul 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Yang, Yao and Wang. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Tang Yao, School of Economics and Management, Beihang University, Beijing, China
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