The agile way of working and team adaptive performance: A goal-setting perspective

• Provides empirical insights on the effects of the agile way of working. • Agile way of working positively related to team adaptive performance. • Relationship is partly through the mechanism of team goal specificity. • Shows importance of integrating goal-setting theory into agile way of working. The agile way of working gained prominence in business due to its promise of improving team adaptive performance. However, empirical assessment whether it indeed relates to the expected improvement in team adaptive performance and the underlying processes is lagging. We researched the link between the agile way of working and team adaptive performance in a diverse sample of 71 agile teams. Based on goal-setting theory, team goal specificity and goal difficulty were explored as mediators in this link. Results indicate that the agile way of working contributes positively to team adaptive performance, and team goal specificity partially mediates this relationship, while team goal difficulty does not. Our findings shed light on the goal-setting processes involved in agile ways of working and contribute to our understanding of how the agile way of working grants autonomy to teams in setting and specifying goals, ongoing goal refinement, and the ability to prioritize goals.