Collective thriving in interdependent sport: conceptual and methodological considerations

Despite conceptual advances and preliminary associations highlighting the benefits of thriving in sport (e.g., goal achievement, Kinoshita et al., 2021; enhanced life satisfaction, Rouquette et al., 2021), opportunities for continued research are numerous. Notably, sport specific research involving thriving has predominantly taken an individual athlete perspective (Brown et al., 2021). Interestingly, evidence from organizational psychology suggests that thriving can manifest at a collective level through interdependent team member interactions (Walumbwa et al., 2018; Xu & Wang, 2019). Given the potential for collective thriving to occur in team sports, a critique of collective athlete thriving is advanced. More specifically, the authors first discuss the implications of a conceptual shift in focus using example constructs that have been examined at both individual and collective levels from within (e.g., collective efficacy; Feltz, 2007) and beyond sport psychology (e.g., team burnout; Urien et al., 2021). Based on established conceptual underpinnings, the complex and dynamic emergence of collective thriving is considered (i.e., compositional versus compilation emergence; Kozlowski & Klein, 2000), paying particular attention to potential contagion effects. Further, the attainment of ‘team thriving’ is explored, cogitating the necessity of member awareness and group consensus, and the potential for varying degrees of influence from certain athletes. Finally, and with a view to operationalization, collective thriving is discussed as a shared or configural construct (Klein & Kozlowski, 2000), and if most accurately represented through the aggregation of individual-level perceptions or the adoption of a multi-level approach.