Justice Fosters the Effect of Team-Building Interventions on Viability and Performance

Abstract

Building viable teams provides a sustainable organizational culture and supports efforts to overcome challenges and maintain a long-lasting and growing business. This study analyzed the role of organizational distributive justice on the relationship between team-building interventions and team viability, alongside team performance. As we understand the underlying concepts of viability and performance better, we can build more resilient teams. An empirical study was conducted on a sample of 402 employees in different teams in organizations. A research model was built with viability and performance as the dependent variables and team-building as the independent variable. The perception of distributive justice was the mediator. Team-building was measured by four variables, where the results of the factor analysis suggested that problem-solving and interpersonal relationships converged into one variable, whereas goal-setting and role clarification represented the second factor of team-building. Regression and mediation analysis showed that problem-solving and interpersonal relationships had a stronger influence on teams’ viability and performance. More remarkably, distributive justice mediated this strong relationship. Throughout the challenging business environment, improving the problem-solving abilities of our teams and encouraging them to build strong interpersonal relationships integrated with a perception of justice would improve the teams’ sustainability significantly. Independent of the strength of the relationship between the team-building factors of viability and performance, organizational distributive justice fosters performance and sustainability. The observed influence of distributive justice was stronger on the goal-setting and role clarification components, whereas direct effects were relatively weaker. The high correlation between team viability and performance should encourage leaders to give equal importance to these concepts when building and motivating their teams, measuring the outcomes, and taking necessary actions.

1. Introduction

The way we build the teams in our organizations and their ability to cooperate for a long time, overcome challenges, and show high performance, are crucial for organizational sustainability. In the post-pandemic era, the world has been undergoing significant economic, political, and social changes; consequently, the capacity for adaptation and sustainability has become more important for nations, organizations, and individuals. On the international level, countries have already established mechanisms to support sustainable development and mitigate hazardous environmental effects [1]. Consequently, organizations have been implementing and adopting their structures to keep up with international sustainability and trade agreements [2]. Recent developments are putting more pressure not only on countries by forcing them to take measures against global and local risks such as increasing energy costs, inflation, and supply shortages [3], but also on organizations to build strategies for maintaining their vitality [4]. Organizations have gained momentum in developing projects and traits, driven mainly by teamwork, for implementing and adapting to these challenges. Building viable teams and promoting them to achieve their goals with high performance is therefore one of the key aspects and missions of organizations and leaders. Understanding the factors affecting the teams’ viability and performance would help leaders to expand sustainability from the team level out to the organizational level [5].

This study examined the factors affecting a team’s viability and aimed to contribute to our understanding of the underlying constructs. What factors of team-building interventions influence the teams’ viability? Do all the factors have the same importance? If not, how do the effects of these factors differ? Does justice have a mediating effect on the viability and performance of the teams? If yes, how? These are some questions we worked to answer in our study.

Organizational justice and its components have been studied mostly in relation to organizational constructs such as job satisfaction, helping behavior, collective esteem, rule compliance, and evaluations of the leader. However, to the best of the authors’ knowledge and a thorough search of the databases, previous studies have not empirically explored the effects of organizational justice on teams’ sustainability. As viability is a measure of sustainability, by analyzing how justice and viability are related, we extended the limited research on our understanding of team viability and the impact of distributive justice on it. Second, previous research has evaluated team-building, despite its complexity, as one variable. Converging the factors into one variable limits our understanding of the individual effects of its components on different employee- and team-related outcomes. In practice, the resources of organizations are limited, and Pareto analysis is used to achieve the most for the effort spent. The generalization of team-building from a broader perspective provides a restricted context showing how team-building can be handled in managing teams. We, therefore, aimed to see how these separate team-building factors influenced viability and how justice mediates them.

Data were obtained from 402 team members from different Turkish industries and analyzed, and the relationship between the factors of team-building and team viability was evaluated with distributive justice as the mediating factor. The regression analysis showed that the viability of teams is significantly mediated by organizational distributive justice.

As the factor analysis suggested, we converged the four factors of team-building into two: (1) problem-solving and interpersonal relationships, and (2) goal-setting and role clarification.

We then looked separately into the influence of justice on the effects of these two factors on viability and performance. The different roles and effects added to the theoretical development of both distributive justice and viability.

The regression model showed that problem-solving and interpersonal relationships had a greater direct effect on viability than goal-setting and role clarification. As performance and viability are highly correlated, the teams with better problem-solving ability and interpersonal relationships showed relatively better performance. It is notable that distributive justice significantly mediated the effects of these two team-building factors on viability and performance, even with the stronger effect of problem-solving and interpersonal relations.

The different effects of these two team-building constructs and the partial mediation of distributive justice justified our model and separate analysis. Although viability and performance are correlated and are both quite important for today’s organizations, the results showed that the underlying factors and the mediation role of distributive justice are different. However, in any case, it became evident that organizations can foster the viability and performance of teams by increasing the effectiveness of distributive justice.

The more the teams become viable and effective, the more they can withstand the aforementioned challenges. As we increase the perceptions of justice in the teams, we will achieve increased outcomes over a sustained period of time. This mediating effect is notably stronger on the relationship between the goal-setting and role clarification component of team-building because the direct effects of other components, namely problem-solving and interpersonal relationships, are much stronger. In this respect, organizational distributive justice can be considered to be a tool for managing VUCA (volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity) [6]. Indirectly, by improving performance, justice in teams even partially helps avoid the costs of systemic and behavioral failures [7,8].

2. Materials and Methods

2.1. Literature Review

2.1.1. Team Viability as a Definition of Future Sustainability

“Coming together is the beginning. Keeping together is progress. Working together is success,” claimed Henry Ford, laying the foundations of mass production and the strategies of conceptual management [9].

The initial definition of team effectiveness was defined based on the output of the group and the impact of the group experience on individual members. Hackman [10] added another criterion, namely the state of the group. Regarding the state of the group, Hackman considered the group as a performing unit and focused on the process that is carried out to achieve the desired output. Although not explicitly using the term team viability or team sustainability, this process was proposed to maintain or enhance the capability of members to work together on future tasks. Shortly afterward, to have a broader perspective and understanding of team effectiveness [11,12], the concept of team viability was introduced. The advancement of studies on teamwork and teams’ effectiveness between 1997 and 2007 can be said to have failed to have a clear and common understanding by researchers of the concept of team viability [13]. Although researchers had attempted to measure the viability of teams [14,15], the reflected phenomena had differences. Bell and Marentette [16] conceptually analyzed team viability and proposed a redefined, unique and meaningful definition, using the terms sustainability and growth. They discussed also how team viability differs from and relates to team satisfaction, team performance, and team cohesion. Cooperstein [17] reviewed the development of research on team viability and proposed an initial content validation of a measure of team viability using the views of experts and their feedback on the subject. Measuring the viability was a way to express the teams’ sustainability, which is one of the fundamental aspects of a sustainable organization.

2.1.2. Organizational Distributive Justice

Justice has attracted attention in philosophy and literature, and in numerous works and writings. Plato said that “Justice is equality”. Aristotle took a more social perspective: ”Justice is the bond of men in states”.

Following World War II, dissatisfaction among military staff stimulated sociologists and social psychologists to start searching for what explained the underlying factors. Stouffer et al. [18] and Thibaut [19] introduced relative deprivation as the discrepancy between expectations and achievement, or the unfair violation of expectations. Later studies laid the foundation of the theory of justice, where the terms “inequity”, “inequality”, and “injustice” gradually became explicit [20,21,22].

“Justice is a curious mixture of equality within inequality,” noted Homans [22]. Although the members of society have been developing and having complex relationships, he explained that distributive justice is obtained during this relationship of exchange if the profits of each are proportional to their investments. Therefore, distributive justice becomes a motivating factor as the social exchange becomes more intense and individuals care more about the cost of or reward for their activities, in both tangible and intangible exchanges. Cost is considered in terms of alternative activities or opportunities. Reward and cost are also the means of Blau’s [23] micro-exchange theory, whereas Emerson [24,25,26] developed a psychological basis for social exchange under the same principles. Adams [27] used the term “inequity” instead of “injustice” and explained that inequity exists for a person whenever she/he perceives that the ratio of her/his outcomes to her/his inputs and the ratio of the other’s outcomes to the other’s inputs are unequal.

The initial studies, which laid the foundation of theories of justice, focused mainly on distributive justice, which concerns the justice of the allocation of outcomes [22,27,28,29,30]. Other forms of organizational justice have emerged as different needs of society and organizations have increased; however, distributive justice is still one of the fundamentals of the theory that has been well established and proven, and this was our focus in this study.

A short review of other types of organizational justice gives hints for future work. Thibaut and Walker [31], in their observations of courtrooms, analyzed the process that led to the verdict. They conceptualized the process itself, separately from the fairness of the verdict. The process and the outcome were considered to be two different phenomena, leading to two different definitions of justice. Leventhal et al. [32] expanded the studies to non-legal cases. Procedural justice, emerging from these works, assesses the procedural rules in an organization in the context of expressing views, influencing the outcome, consistency, being free of bias, and complying with ethical and moral standards. This outcome found support from later researchers [33,34]. Further research models have measured justice by integrating distributive and procedural factors through conceptualizing organizational justice [35,36,37]. Through globalization and expanding the business to different regions, organizations have to consistently apply and keep to the procedures and maintain their fairness when these procedures and interactions have effects on employees’ attitudes, behaviors, and the desired standard outputs [38]. The development of studies on leader–employee relationships, monitoring leaders, employees’ perceptions of workplace justice, and employees’ citizenship made it necessary to introduce another form of justice, which was called interactional justice [39,40]. Colquitt’s [41] construct of organizational justice, with a four-factor structure, provided today’s basic distinct dimensions, which are distributive, procedural, interpersonal, and informational justice.

2.1.3. Team-Building

The complexity of today’s projects has increased the importance of teamwork, as large projects are becoming almost impossible to manage individually. Organizational structures, therefore, depend on teams. Large organizations act as teams of larger communities and clusters to handle diversified complex projects. Improved team competency and performance provides organizations with many benefits in terms of competition and sustainability. Team development interventions, providing a systematic approach for improving the teams’ competencies, help organizations to achieve their aims through teamwork [42,43]. In the light of theoretical and empirical evidence in support of its efficacy, four types of team development interventions have gained common support, namely (i) team training, (ii) leadership training, (iii) team-building, and (iv) team debriefing [44].

In developing the concept of process consultation, Schein [45,46] described team-building as part of a group process intervention for improving interpersonal relationships and social interactions. Beer [47] proposed four basic approaches to team-building: (i) the goal-setting and problem-solving model, (ii) the interpersonal model, (iii) the role model, and (iv) the managerial grid [48] model. Buller et al. [49] evaluated problem-solving as a separate subject and noted that when the team-building models were studied using different factors, better results could be achieved compared with methods taking team-building as a single construct. For example, referring to Dyer’s [50] problem-solving framework, Buller [51] proposed a general problem-solving model, which could be used as a factor of team-building. Later this multifactor approach gained ground but a consensus about defining the factors was not reached. Klein et al. [52], in a review of the different approaches to team-building [47,50,51,53,54], proposed a definition of team-building with four distinct models: goal-setting, developing interpersonal relationships, clarifying roles, and creating additional capacity for problem-solving. In Figure 1, we extended the concept of team-building with these four concepts to have a general overview of team development interventions.

2.1.4. Team Performance

The components of this complex concept can be extended to the functional differentiation between the project’s team members, the dependencies among the systems and subsystems, and the effects of decision fields [55]. The definition of what team performance is and finding agreed-upon metrics for quantifying it have become a challenge [56]. With different objectives of defining a team’s performance, organizations consider numerous factors: size, interdependence and interrelationships, goals and objectives, stakeholders, management practices, the division of labor, technology, concurrent engineering, globalization and dependence on the context, diversity, ambiguity, and flux [57].

Organizations track various KPIs and implement actions as a continuous loop of planning, doing, checking (or studying), and acting. This cycle cannot be completed without assessing their relative effectiveness on a team’s cognitive, affective, process-related, and performance outcomes. Measuring a team’s performance is important to ensure the development and improvement of team-focused organizations [58], where self-assessments and observer-based techniques are still among the most commonly used methods. Over the past 30 years, there have been a significant number of studies on measuring a team’s performance and evaluating the effect on different social constructs, where it is evident that the measures of team performance are important in many industries [59].

2.2. Hypothesis

How does justice influence first viability and then performance?

Research on a team’s effectiveness and team-building revealed a positive relationship between these two interventions [60]. Team-building positively improves the team’s KPIs, specifically the affective and process outcomes [52]. It is not only the effectiveness of team-building on outcomes that is evident, but also that of other team-developing interventions such as training the team and leadership, and team debriefing, which increase effective team competencies and processes in a wide range of areas such as education, health care, military, aviation and sport [44,61]. A team’s performance outcomes can be assessed through self-evaluations by the team members [62] or can be based on the results of projects that the teams work on [63].

The viability of a team contributes to the performance of the team by maintaining task motivation, building and achieving performance strategies, and increasing the effectiveness of teamwork and interpersonal relationships [17]. Long-term common work on routine activities and continuously improving these activities requires the same capabilities, yielding better team performance [16]. This is why we hypothetically linked viability to performance. Team-building practices positively affect team performance [63] and team viability [64]. Due to their common nature, and the expectation that viable teams would have better performance, viability, and performance were added to our model in parallel. When performance is concerned, research has shown the evident influence of team-level contextual factors such as leadership, individual empowerment, team empowerment, and leadership traits [65,66,67]. However, how viability is affected by these factors has not been widely explored in the literature.

Aspects of organizational justice, in a broader context, are known to have positive correlations with organizational constructs. Distributive justice is related to satisfaction with the outcomes. Interpersonal justice is related to evaluations of the leader, whereas procedural justice and role compliance in an organization has positive relationships, and as informational justice improves, so does collective esteem [41]. Similar concepts such as work engagement and organizational commitment are known to be related to organizational justice. Ha and Moon [68] suggested that through organizational justice and employees’ motivational traits, employees’ voluntary absences can be reduced, and organizational performance can be improved. Drawing on social exchange theory, their subsequent study [69] examined the direct effects of distributive justice and goal clarity on organizational citizenship behavior, based on two motivation theories, namely equity theory and goal-setting theory, with the moderating role of transactional and transformational leadership. The similar positive effects of perceptions of organizational justice on employees’ performance via organizational citizenship behavior were also analyzed [70]. However, as there are many other factors influencing teamwork and project outcomes, research on the relationships between overall organizational justice and team effectiveness has led to discussions and the lack of a clear explanation of the relationship [71,72]. Due to this complexity, rather than taking all four individual items of organizational justice, in our research, we focused only on distributive justice as a mediator. Future research could analyze the effect of other elements of organizational justice on viability or performance. The research helped us to understand that how justice affects behaviors, traits, and team-level outcomes depends greatly on external factors, which inspired us to have it as a mediator, rather than an independent variable.

We built our research model, shown in Figure 2, to analyze the relationships of the four elements of team-building with viability and performance, with distributive justice as the mediator.

Hypothesis 1.

Distributive justice mediates the relationship between team-building and viability.

In the case of the partial mediation of distributive justice, we would expect to see a similar partial mediating effect on performance to than on viability, because team performance is expected to be strongly and positively correlated with viability [16,17,63,64].

Hypothesis 2.

Distributive justice mediates the relationship between team-building and performance.

2.3. Data Collection and Sampling

We performed an empirical study and collected data from 440 participants working at different organizations in Turkey. The data were based on self-reporting questionnaires. Thirty-eight results were eliminated because the participants were not involved in teamwork, and the remaining 402 responses were considered. The average age of the participants was 34 years old, and the standard deviation (SD) was 8.5. Twenty-nine percent of the attendants worked in the production sector, and the remainder were employed in services and construction. The majority (72%) were white-collar workers and 58% were female employees.

Table 1. Demographics of attendants.

Title	Item	Counts	Total	Proportion
Collar	White collar	288	402	0.716
	Blue collar	114	402	0.284
Experience	0–5 years	151	402	0.376
	6–10 years	102	402	0.254
	11–20 years	106	402	0.264
	21 years and over	43	402	0.107
Team size	less than 5 members	99	402	0.246
	6–10 members	110	402	0.274
	11–20 members	72	402	0.179
	20–30 members	121	402	0.301
Sector	Production	115	402	0.286
	Services, constr. and other	287	402	0.714
Gender	Female	232	402	0.577
	Male	170	402	0.423

shows the demographics of the participants.

2.4. Measurement and Scaled

The scale of viability was adopted from the measurement scales of Hackmann [73] and Cooperstein [17]. In total, 7 items were derived, such as “The members of this team could work for a long time together” and “This team has the capacity for long-term success”.

The measures of distributive justice from Colquitt [41] were used. Four items were used for distributive justice, such as “Is your (outcome) appropriate for the work you have completed?” and “Is your (outcome) justified, given your performance?”

Team-building was measured in four dimensions: goal-setting, interpersonal relations, role clarification, and problem-solving. The measures developed by Aga et al. [63] based on the analysis by Klein et al. [52] were used. In total, 17 items were used to rate the four dimensions: goal-setting (4 items), interpersonal relationships (5 items), role clarification (3 items), and problem-solving (5 items).

Team performance was measured by the items developed by Conger et al. [62]. Five items were used, such as “Most of our tasks are accomplished quickly and efficiently” and “We always achieve a high standard of task accomplishment”.

All items were rated on a Likert scale of 1–5, ranging between “strongly disagree” and “strongly agree”. The full questionnaire based on all measures is listed in Appendix A.

3. Results

3.1. Factor Analysis

An exploratory factor analysis (EFA) was performed based on principal component factor analysis (PCA) with varimax rotation being applied [74].

The team-building variable was divided into two components: (i) goal-setting and role clarification, and (ii) problem-solving and interpersonal relationships. Two items, one from problem-solving”, which was “Problem-solving Item 4”, and one from interpersonal relationships, which was “Interpersonal relationships Item 5” were outside the factor loadings because their factor loadings were below 0.45, which is the cutoff of factor loading.

Performance, distributive justice, and viability formed the other three components in this factor analysis. The results of the EFA’s component loadings and the components’ characteristics are presented in

Table 2. Loadings of the components.

	PC1	PC2	PC3	PC4	PC5	Uniqueness
Role clarification 3	0.780					0.240
Role clarification 1	0.770					0.228
Role clarification 2	0.744					0.279
Goal-setting 2	0.678					0.256
Goal-setting 3	0.675					0.299
Goal-setting 4	0.582					0.344
Goal-setting 1	0.545					0.408
Viability 2		0.752				0.231
Viability 4		0.728				0.206
Viability 3		0.709				0.176
Viability 1		0.698				0.292
Viability 6		0.682				0.197
Viability 5		0.678				0.499
Viability 7		0.538				0.369
Interpersonal relationships 4			0.718			0.402
Interpersonal relationships 3			0.635			0.265
Interpersonal relationships 2			0.597			0.243
Interpersonal relationships 1			0.582			0.478
Problem-solving 5			0.579			0.312
Problem-solving 2			0.569			0.362
Problem-solving 3			0.477			0.292
Problem-solving 1			0.461			0.495
Performance 4				0.797		0.197
Performance 2				0.702		0.187
Performance 5				0.695		0.232
Performance 3				0.693		0.269
Performance 1				0.636		0.219
Distributive justice 3					0.797	0.170
Distributive justice 2					0.783	0.125
Distributive justice 1					0.762	0.171
Distributive justice 4					0.760	0.183

Note: The varimax rotation method was applied.

.

These five components explained 72% of the variance (

Table 3. Characteristics of the components.

	Unrotated Solution			Rotated Solution
	Eigenvalue	Proportion Var.	Cumulative	SumSq. Loadings	Proportion Var.	Cumulative
Component 1 (Role C. and Goal S.)	16.952	0.547	0.547	5.310	0.171	0.171
Component 2 (Viability)	1.705	0.055	0.602	4.997	0.161	0.332
Component 3 (Int. Rel. and Prob. Sol.)	1.428	0.046	0.648	4.311	0.139	0.472
Component 4 (Performance)	1.157	0.037	0.685	4.112	0.133	0.604
Component 5 (Distributive justice)	1.131	0.036	0.722	3.644	0.118	0.722

).

The reliability statistics of components, i.e., the values of Cronbach’s α, were above 0.90. The means and standard deviations (SD) of the components are listed in

Table 4. Frequentist statistics of the scales’ reliability.

Estimate	Cronbach’s α	Mean	SD
1. Viability	0.920	3.844	0.898
2. Role clarification and goal-setting	0.927	4.076	0.802
3. Performance	0.922	3.968	0.831
4. Interpersonal Rel. and problem-solving	0.907	3.734	0.854
5. Distributive justice	0.928	3.808	1.022

.

Further statistics are provided here for convenience. The fit indices of the confirmatory factor analysis of the five-factor model also showed acceptable figures: χ²/df, 2.94; CFI, 0.937; TLI, 0.930; GFI, 0.953. The root mean square error of approximation (RMSEA) was 0.070 and the standardized root mean square residual (SRMSR) was 0.041. The result of the overall Kaiser–Meyer–Olkin test measuring sampling adequacy was 0.960.

3.2. Mediation Analysis

A mediation analysis was performed with viability and performance as the dependent variables and the two components of the team-building construct as the independent variables. Distributive justice was the mediator.

The direct, indirect, and total effects were analyzed using the bias-corrected percentile bootstrap method. The direct effects of the factors of team-building on performance and viability were statistically significant at p < 0.001 (

Table 5. Direct effects of the components of team-building on viability and performance.

		Estimate (β)	Std. Error	z-Value	p	95% Confidence Interval
						Lower	Upper
Int. Rel. and Prob. Sol	Viability	0.504	0.055	9.208	<0.001	0.397	0.612
Role C. and Goal S.	Viability	0.204	0.060	3.402	<0.001	0.086	0.321
Int. Rel. and Prob. Sol	Performance	0.443	0.049	8.961	<0.001	0.346	0.539
Role C. and Goal S.	Performance	0.266	0.054	4.939	<0.001	0.161	0.372

Note: The delta method was used for the standard errors and normal theory was used for the confidence intervals, along with the ML (maximum likelihood) estimator.

).

Proof of Hypothesis 1.

The indirect effects of the components of team-building on viability, with the mediating role of distributive justice, were statistically significant with β = 0.065 (SE = 0.019, p < 0.001) for interpersonal relationships and problem-solving with β = 0.090 (SE = 0.024, p < 0.001) for role clarification and goal-setting, so Hypothesis 1 was accepted (

Table 6. Indirect effects, showing the significant mediation roles of distributive justice.

			Estimate (β)	Std. error	z-Value	p	95% ConfidenceInterval
							Lower	Upper
Int. Rel. and Prob. Sol	Dist. Justice	Viability	0.065	0.019	3.433	<0.001	0.028	0.103
Role C. and Goal S.	Dist. Justice	Viability	0.090	0.024	3.691	<0.001	0.042	0.138
Int. Rel. and Prob. Sol	Dist. Justice	Performance	0.048	0.016	2.982	0.003	0.017	0.080
Role C. and Goal S.	Dist. Justice	Performance	0.066	0.021	3.146	0.002	0.025	0.108

Note: The delta method was used for the standard errors and normal theory was used for confidence intervals, with the ML estimator.

). □

Proof of Hypothesis 2.

The indirect effects of distributive justice on the relationship between the components of team-building and performance were statistically significant with β = 0.048 (SE = 0.016, p < 0.05) for interpersonal relationships and problem-solving, and β = 0.066 (SE = 0.021, p < 0.05) for role clarification and goal-setting, so Hypothesis 2 was also accepted (Table 6). □

For the indirect effects, we noted that the mediating effect of distributive justice on the relationship of role clarification and goal-setting with viability was 31%, and that for performance was 20%. These partial mediation effects were relatively higher than the partial mediation effect on interpersonal relationships and problem-solving, for which the partial mediation of distributive justice and the relationship with viability and performance were 11% and 10%, respectively. As the direct effects grew stronger, the partial mediation effects grew relatively weaker.

The total effects in

Table 7. Total effects.

		Estimate (β)	Std. error	z-Value	p	95% Confidence Interval
						Lower	Upper
Int. Rel. and Prob. Sol	Viability	0.570	0.054	10.614	<0.001	0.465	0.675
Role C. and Goal S.	Viability	0.293	0.057	5.137	<0.001	0.181	0.405
Int. Rel. and Prob. Sol	Performance	0.491	0.048	10.213	<0.001	0.397	0.585
Role C. and Goal S.	Performance	0.333	0.051	6.507	<0.001	0.233	0.433

Note: The delta method was used for the standard errors and normal theory was used for the confidence intervals, with the ML estimator.

show that the regression estimates of the effect of interpersonal relationships and problem-solving on both viability (β = 0.570, SE = 0.054, and p < 0.001) and performance (β = 0.491, SE 0.048, and p < 0.001) were higher relative to those of role clarification and goal-setting.

The entire path plot and the full path coefficients of the mediation analysis are presented in Figure 3 and

Table 8. Path coefficients of the mediation analysis.

		Estimate (β)	Std. Error	z-Value	p	95% Confidence Interval
						Lower	Upper
Dist. Justice	Viability	0.166	0.039	4.213	<0.001	0.089	0.243
Int. Rel and Prob. Sol.	Viability	0.504	0.055	9.208	<0.001	0.397	0.612
Role C. and Goal S.	Viability	0.204	0.060	3.402	<0.001	0.086	0.321
Dist. Justice	Performance	0.123	0.036	3.452	<0.001	0.053	0.192
Int. Rel. and Prob. Sol.	Performance	0.443	0.049	8.961	0.001	0.346	0.539
Role C. and Goal S.	Performance	0.266	0.054	4.939	< 0.001	0.161	0.372
Int. Rel. and Prob. Sol.	Dist. Justice	0.394	0.067	5.922	<0.001	0.264	0.525
Role C. and Goal S.	Dist. Justice	0.542	0.071	7.650	<0.001	0.403	0.680

Note: The delta method was used for the standard errors and normal theory was used for the confidence intervals, with the ML estimator.

, respectively.

4. Discussion

The viability of teams is one of the fundamental basics of organizations to achieve their goals and be sustainable in the long term. Understanding teamwork and viability improves innovation and competitiveness by selecting the right project management tools [75]. The results of the study explored how the viability of a team is linked to team-building practices through distributive justice. We also measured the effect on team performance, as viable teams are supposed to achieve success. It is worth mentioning here that the four items of team-building practices converged into two factors, where one of them had a higher correlation with viability and performance. Thus, we first investigated this factor, namely interpersonal relationships and problem-solving.

4.1. Importance of Interpersonal Relationships and Problem-Solving

The results showed that teams which have stronger interpersonal relationships and problem-solving abilities are more viable and show high performance. Improving the teams’ ability to find solutions to challenges and improving the personal relationships among team members will help managers build more resilient and re-energized teams [76]. Problem-solving methods have long been the focus of organizations, as they are needed for strong competition and innovation. Continuously improving and learning organizations improve ways to solve problems using methods such as Six Sigma, FMEA, the 8D disciplines, lean management tools, DMAIC, A3, the Hoshin and Shainin systems, and many others [77]. Whether work is conducted online, remotely, or face-to-face, problem-solving will remain an important variable affecting the viability and performance of teams.

We have seen practical implementations of these results in our organization, which supplies automotive and railway products and hand tools. In measuring the output of different teams, we noted that the teams that were able to solve problems and were willing to welcome obstacles and embrace challenges had better performances and greater effectiveness. Seeing this effect, problem-solving techniques have now been implemented in the standard periodical training sessions for each team.

As a further implication, improved interpersonal relationships aid in detecting problems and finding out possible solution paths. Training in communication skills significantly reduces the time needed to detect problems and improves analyses of the root cause. Therefore, problem-solving capabilities should always be considered together with the communication skills of teams.

Another example is the increased efficiency and viability of preventive maintenance teams. After developing and training the teams for more than two years, we saw a clear improvement in reducing the equipment’s downtime and boosting the machines’ availability and the overall effectiveness of the equipment as a result of better problem-solving ability and good interpersonal relationships.

Strong interpersonal relationships among team members and their ability to approach and solve problems help strengthen the team’s viability. This is especially important in today’s challenging and rapidly changing world. However, as projects have become more frequently managed through distant and online teamwork, interpersonal relations or collaboration does not necessarily involve more classical means such as meetings. Supportive relationships and taking collective responsibility to lift each other’s energy and well-being can be counted as some methods of asynchronous collaboration [76]. Through distant working, new approaches to relationships can be formed. For example, interpersonal relationships in online teams can be observed through the team’s text-based correspondence. Cao et al. [78] analyzed 10-minute text conversations of online teams in relation to viability and noted that exclusive language such as “but” and “except”, and the use of second-person pronouns were the best predictive features for detecting the most viable teams. Younger workers who build interpersonal relationships report higher job satisfaction and work engagement. Bloom-Feshbach and Poyet [79] proposed findings about the new generation, i.e., Millennials, noting that when employees can build meaningful relationships at work, they are more than three times as likely to stay with their organization.

4.2. The Mediating Role of Distributive Justice

The perception of distributive justice was found to positively increase the effect of team-building interventions on both viability and performance. This mediating effect was more visible in the relationship between role clarification and goal-setting practices. Distributive justice can foster the viability and performance of teams that already have strong interpersonal relationships and high problem-solving abilities, which highlights the importance of justice for running sustainable teams.

Hiring and retaining talent has become crucial, and executives are worried about keeping the talent and managing the teams’ viability, especially in today’s volatile markets, such as the automotive industry [80,81,82,83,84]. Distributive justice, therefore, as a means of promoting team-building and organizational viability, may also mediate the effects of other measures such as wage increases, compensation, and flexible and hybrid work models, thus yielding the desired long-term growth and transformation in the face of pressure from inflation, talent shortages, supply chain risks, and political risks [85]. Research on the effect of these measures on team viability will help gain more insight into the methods that should be considered for team management.

By improving viability through distributive justice, organizations can keep the employee turnover ratio at a convenient level, which eventually produces cost benefits. For example, since 2010, the number of voluntary job departures per 100 workers in the USA has been continuously increasing, reaching a peak in 2022 [86]. This increasing trend means the cost of employee turnover is also increasing, including the impact on labor productivity [87].

One remarkable result is the high partial mediating effect (31%) of distributive justice on the relationship of role clarification and goal-setting with viability. The direct effect was lower, and the role of distributive justice was more obvious. If our efforts do not produce a viable team and there are signs of the team falling apart, it is advised to investigate the perceptions of justice. The effect of team-building factors depends significantly on how well we can establish justice within the teams. Without a reasonable perception of justice, our efforts to build viable and sustainable teams may fail.

4.3. Limitations

Our study was cross-sectional and did not provide longitudinal results. Longitudinal studies would provide deeper insights into a project’s success and viability over the project’s lifecycle and the organizational lifecycle. Depending on the teams and their functions, performance outcomes are measured in short- or long-term periods. For example, periodical maintenance teams are focused on short-term performance, whereas preventive maintenance teams are focused on long-term performance and keeping the equipment’s availability at a higher level. Financial teams also focus on short-term performance during crises but focus more on long-term success during strategic planning. The link between long-term success and viability may be explored better through longitudinal research.

The rating used for performance was subjective and limited to individual team members. However, as the number of projects increases, the success of projects differs from the success of the organizations. Especially after 2020, due to the transformation of many industries, the number of research projects has increased and not every project’s success is necessarily correlated with organizational performance. Therefore, performance may be analyzed on the team and organizational levels. Accordingly, separate objective team-level KPIs, including budget plans, lead time performance, quality targets, and costs, and organizational-level KPIs including earnings, EBITDA, growth rates, financial ratios, ROI, and stakeholder inputs are recommended to be considered.

In the study, we did not examine the role of moderating variables affecting team-building, including the type of team, sector (production, services, construction), team size, or the experience of team members. The relationships and effects may show differences under different conditions.

As teamwork is performed by individuals, we measured the scales at the individual level. More accurate evaluation of scales, such as that of team performance, would be possible when measured at multiple levels. Moreover, both process and outcomes could be measured to extend the amount of information learned.

Another concern is the common method bias, namely that the dependent and independent variables were collected by self-reporting questionnaires at the same time and place, as the common method bias may have affected the relationship between the measured variables. We tried to reduce this effect using the measures recommended by Kock et al. [88].

This study was limited to one country. The variables could have different effects in different countries and sectors. Procedural justice, for example, would be more significant in underdeveloped countries and some sectors such as heavy manufacturing, food and agriculture, textiles, mining, and farming, than in developed countries. Therefore, managers are recommended to consider the environment and boundary conditions of their organizations and surroundings when implementing the necessary tools.

4.4. Future Research

Future research on the relationship between the problem-solving methods mentioned in Section 4.1, such as Six Sigma, lean management, or the Shainin system, and the viability and performance of teams may provide a deeper understanding of the role of each tool. The regression analysis showed that a team’s problem-solving ability improves the team’s resilience and viability. The different problem-solving methods may be studied together or separately to analyze their correlations with team viability.

We have also analyzed only one factor of organizational justice, namely distributive justice. Future research could also consider the effect of the other types of organizational justice on viability and performance, such as procedural justice, interactional justice, or informational justice. The effects may vary depending on the sectors and various boundary conditions. In the automotive supply industry, for example, sustainability and code of conduct principles are mandatory to establish and sustain business relationships with OEMs. These principles and sustainability requirements have become stricter and jointly adopted, as COVID-19 is seen as a challenge to global health, society, and the economy, with a severe potential impact on individuals, corporations, and countries [80]. Strict controls, regular checks, and laws are forcing the implementation of procedural justice by organizations. Monitoring performance and managing KPIs and tools such as balance scorecards help internal procedures become transparent and free of bias. Therefore, one can expect that the effect of procedural justice on viability and performance would be minimal in the automotive sector; instead, interactional justice would play a more important role as a mediator.