When sports sponsorship incurs brand risk: the roles of team performance, brand familiarity and team identification

PurposeThis study investigated the potential negative effects of a sponsored team's losing performance on audiences' trust and purchase intention toward the sponsoring brand. Shedding light on the moderating role of sponsoring brand familiarity among audiences and audience team identification regarding such negative effects, the study establishes when sports sponsorship may incur risk to a sponsoring brand.Design/methodology/approachThree experimental designs (audience as stimulus of a team's losing vs control condition) were used to indicate whether and when losing performance influences participants' trust and purchase intention toward the sponsoring brand.FindingsThe participants in the losing condition report lower brand trust and purchase intention. Brand trust mediates the relationship between losing results and decreased purchase intention. The negative effects of losing on brand trust and purchase intention only appear when the sponsoring brand has low familiarity among audiences and only for audiences with low identification.Practical implicationsThe strategy of a brand with low familiarity sponsoring a team that frequently loses has risks and is not worth advocating. However, if an unknown brand has already sponsored a team that often loses, the efforts to cultivate audiences' identification with the team can reduce the potential risks.Originality/valueThe affirmed negative effects of losing performance on brand trust and purchase intention have value for firm sponsorship decisions. This study contributes to the sponsorship literature by revealing two boundary conditions (sponsoring brand familiarity and audiences' team identification) for those negative effects.

The Role of Functional Diversity, Collective Team Identification, and Task Cohesion in Influencing Innovation Speed

This article opens up the black box of innovation and examines the relationship between functional diversity in software teams and the often neglected dimension of innovation – speed, over the two phases of innovation: creativity and idea implementation. By combining information processing view and social identity theory, the authors hypothesize that when collective team identification is low, functional diversity positively affects the time spent in the creativity phase; however, when collective team identification is high, this relationship is inverted U-shaped. When task cohesion is high, functional diversity negatively affects the time spent in the idea implementation phase; however, when task cohesion is low, this relationship is U-shaped. Results from 96 IT software-teams confirmed the authors' hypotheses. Theoretical and managerial implications are discussed.

Effects of authentic leadership on follower performance in corporate social responsibility activities

We investigated the effects of authentic leadership on follower performance in corporate social responsibility (CSR) activities by drawing upon social identity theory. With data from 340 participants who took part in CSR activities in a large Korean firm, we tested the hypotheses that team identification would mediate the positive relationship between authentic leadership and follower performance, and that psychological safety would positively moderate this relationship. We used the PROCESS macro (Model 7) for SPSS for data analysis. Our hypotheses were supported by the results, which theoretically contribute to authentic leadership literature and, from a practical standpoint, provide an effective way to enhance follower performance in CSR activities.

The Curvilinear Relationship Between Collective Team Identification and New Venture Performance: The Moderating Effect of Environmental Uncertainty

Many new ventures are founded and developed by teams rather than solo entrepreneurs. Therefore, the extent to which entrepreneurs identify with their teams is likely to have an important impact on the process and outcome of new venture creation in new venture teams. However, most of the relevant studies focus on entrepreneurs’ individual identity, and the identity at the team level has been overlooked. This study seeks to fill this gap by exploring the effect of collective team identification on new venture performance. The relationship between collective team identification and new venture performance was examined using a sample of 54 new venture teams in Internet Technology (IT) industry. The results show that the relationship between collective team identification and new venture performance is inverted U-shaped. Moreover, environmental uncertainty may moderate this curvilinear effect, such that this inverted U-shaped relationship is more salient at a low level of environmental uncertainty rather than at a high level of environmental uncertainty.

Identity Leadership, Employee Burnout and the Mediating Role of Team Identification: Evidence from the Global Identity Leadership Development Project

Do leaders who build a sense of shared social identity in their teams thereby protect them from the adverse effects of workplace stress? This is a question that the present paper explores by testing the hypothesis that identity leadership contributes to stronger team identification among employees and, through this, is associated with reduced burnout. We tested this model with unique datasets from the Global Identity Leadership Development (GILD) project with participants from all inhabited continents. We compared two datasets from 2016/2017 (N = 5290; 20 countries) and 2020/2021 (N = 7294; 28 countries) and found very similar levels of identity leadership, team identification and burnout across the five years. An inspection of the 2020/2021 data at the onset of and later in the COVID-19 pandemic showed stable identity leadership levels and slightly higher levels of both burnout and team identification. Supporting our hypotheses, we found almost identical indirect effects (2016/2017, b = −0.132; 2020/2021, b = −0.133) across the five-year span in both datasets. Using a subset of N = 111 German participants surveyed over two waves, we found the indirect effect confirmed over time with identity leadership (at T1) predicting team identification and, in turn, burnout, three months later. Finally, we explored whether there could be a “too-much-of-a-good-thing” effect for identity leadership. Speaking against this, we found a u-shaped quadratic effect whereby ratings of identity leadership at the upper end of the distribution were related to even stronger team identification and a stronger indirect effect on reduced burnout.

Impact of Team Identification on Fans’ Trust after Negative Incident: Moderating Role of Mass Media

Sports marketing being a new and under researched area is highly dependent on mass media treatment. The purpose of this study is twofold: First to examine the impact of team identification on fans trust after the involvement of a player in a negative incident, and second to examine the impact of media (fans’ perceived content informativeness, content credibility and source credibility of TV cricket talk shows) on this relationship. Data is collected via convenience sampling from a total of 399 respondents belonging to three universities, local markets, and friends from Islamabad and Rawal Pindi twin cities of Pakistan. Simple and moderated multiple regression analysis reveals that team identification positively affects fans’ trust after negative incident. Perceived source credibility, content credibility and informativeness of cricket talk shows on TV (mass media) moderates the relationship of team identification and fans’ trust after negative incident in such a way that the relationship becomes stronger regardless the media is positively or negatively highlighting the negative incident. The results of the current research might help sports marketing and media related organizations to understand sports fans’ behaviors towards sports organizations in connection of the conflict.