Team pro-social rule breaking and team innovation performance: An information processing theory perspective

Exploring the antecedents that affect the team innovation performance can better promote the organization to research the potential factors to enhance the organizational innovation competitiveness. Drawing upon information processing theory, we develop a moderated mediation model to examine the relationship between team pro-social rule breaking and team innovation performance. A three-wave field study is constructed from two large manufacturing enterprises from 82 team leaders and their 382 subordinates in Shanghai, China. The results reveal that team pro-social rule breaking is positively related to team innovation performance through team reflexivity. In addition, the relationship between team pro-social rule breaking and team innovation performance via team reflexivity is positive only when team learning orientation is high. The implications, limitations, and future research directions of these findings are discussed.

Developing sustainable workplace through leadership: Perspectives of transformational leadership and of organizational citizenship behavior

The objective of this study was to investigate the leadership style of the supervisor to develop the organization's sustainable workplace of and the extra-role behavior of employees (i.e., OCB). An organizational context of the immigration officer is explored by using the data collected from a survey of 453 immigration officers from 26 immigration officer teams in Taiwan. This study has verified the transformational leadership and organizational commitment that they have positive effect on organizational citizenship behavior (OCB) of the immigration officers. Moreover, it showed that the organizational climate has a context effect on organizational commitment and OCB. Furthermore, the results of this study have shown that an aggregated transformational leadership has cross-level interactions on OCB. This study also found that the transformational leadership has strong effect on organizational commitment and OCB. This study adopts a cross-level study taking organizational environmental factors and cross-level interactions as research considerations. Because of the focus on group-level impact, the research methodology can apply the supervisor's leadership style and the organizational climate to measure whether the immigration officers have a high degree of organizational commitment and influence their OCB performance across levels. The organizational commitment of the immigration officers and their individual OCB performance could be improved by converging the organizational context effect of aggregated transformational leadership and organizational climate. This study found that the application of the transformational leadership is extremely helpful for an organization to develop sustainable workplace and extra-role behavior of employees.

A Preliminary Test of the Impact of De-Globalization on MNC Performance

We offer a preliminary examination of whether national and organizational level contexts amplify or reduce the effects of de-globalization on the performance of MNCs. Theoretically, we borrow ideas from both event system theory and institutional fit to propose a model explicating key dimensions of the relationship between de-globalization, national and organizational context, and MNC performance. We then test our ideas using data assembled from 283 MNCs in 20 countries. We find that while de-globalization has a negative effect on MNC performance, national and organizational level contextual endowments do moderate this relationship. We discuss some implications of our findings and highlight attendant limitations.

The Dual Effect of Transformational Leadership on Individual- and Team-Level Performance: The Mediational Roles of Motivational Processes

Using matched four-stage data from 477 team members and their 132 team leaders in Chinese companies, we examined a cross-level model in which group- and individual-focused transformational leadership (TFL) and their influence on team and member performance from the perspective of multilevel model of motivation in teams. The results indicated that group-focused TFL exerts positive effects through sequential mediation of team efficacy and team process whereas individual-focused TFL has a positive effect on team members' performance through sequential mediation of followers' self-efficacy and individual regulation process. In addition, we also find significant cross-level mediation effects demonstrating that group-focused TFL was positively related to self-efficacy through the mediator of team efficacy, team efficacy was positively related to the individual regulation process through the mediator of the team process, team process was positively related to individual performance through the mediator of the individual regulation process. Theoretical and applied implications are discussed.

Transformational leadership and creativity in sport: Examining the mediating role of support for innovation

Understanding how and when transformational leadership is related to followers' perceptions is an important issue. The present study aims to investigate the potential mediating role of support for innovation in the relationship between transformational leadership and creativity in team sports. We also propose that players' team tenure could moderate this relationship.

A cross-sectional design was used. Athletes (N_players = 447, N_team = 45, M_age = 22.12; SD = 5.09) completed questionnaires assessing transformational leadership, support for innovation and creativity.

Support for innovation mediated the positive relationship between inspirational motivation, intellectual stimulation and high-performance expectations as exogenous variables and creativity as a dependent variable. Moreover, the relationship between intellectual stimulation and creativity was significantly weaker when players' team tenure was high. The relationship between transformational leadership behaviours (inspirational motivation, intellectual stimulation, and high-performance expectations) and support for innovation was stronger when players' team tenure was low.

The current study provides the first evidence of a relationship between transformational leadership and creativity through support for innovation in team sports. This study is also the first to have provided evidence of the role of players' team tenure in those mediational relationships. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed.

Supervisory influence

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to examine the development of leader potential in an extreme context – it develops and tests a model that describes how subordinate perceptions of individual-focused transformational leadership, subordinate trust in the leader and subordinate identification with the team influence supervisory evaluations of subordinate crisis leader potential.

Design/methodology/approach

Surveys were administered to emergency services personnel and their supervisors working in a large fire rescue organization in the Southeastern USA. Survey responses were analyzed using hierarchical regression.

Findings

Results support the theoretical model – subordinates reporting high levels of trust in their transformational leader were evaluated by their supervisors as having stronger potential to become crisis leaders. Lower levels of subordinate identification with the team strengthened the transformational leadership to trust association and the indirect effect of perceived transformational leadership on supervisory evaluations of subordinate crisis leader potential (through subordinate trust in the leader).

Practical implications

Supervisors who are viewed as transformational and fostering trusting relationships by subordinates are more likely to evaluate subordinates as having the potential to lead in crisis situations. In an extreme context within an organization facing change, subordinates who identify less with their team might build a more trusting relationship with a leader who is perceived as demonstrating transformational behaviors.

Social implications

Subordinate focus on the leader appears to enhance supervisory evaluations of subordinate potential (for leader development) in the study. Individual-level rewards for employees that involve competition might counter efforts toward shared mental models and remain the greatest challenge in the public emergency services setting.

Originality/value

Evaluating leader development, in terms of crisis leader potential, in an extreme context using a process model – to understand the interplay of individual-focused transformational leadership and trust given the moderating effect of team identification – is a key strength of the current study.

Team Dispersion and Performance: The Role of Team Communication and Transformational Leadership

Organizations increasingly rely on virtual teams to access geographically dispersed expertise. Yet, team dispersion introduces challenges to team communication that may negatively influence team performance. Using a sample of 53 innovation teams representing a variety of geographic dispersion configurations from completely collocated to highly dispersed, we examined the moderating role of transformational leadership on the relationship between team dispersion, team communication, and team performance. Our findings suggest that while transformational leadership is effective in reducing the negative effects of dispersion in collocated teams or ones with low levels of geographic dispersion, it is less effective helping improve the performance of highly dispersed teams. This effect may be due to a transformational leader’s difficulty in facilitating team communication in highly dispersed teams, where his or her influence might actually have counterproductive effects. We discuss the implications of our findings for theory, future research, and practice.

Curvilinear effect of transformational leadership on innovative behavior among R&D teams in South Korea

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to examine the potential consequences of transformational leadership on follower innovative behavior as well as to investigate the moderating effect of team learning on the relationship. It is argued that an excessive level of transformational leadership may even decrease the subordinates’ innovative behavior due to their negative emotions derived from the leadership, while an appropriate level of transformational leadership can positively influence innovative behavior. Furthermore, the situational factor of team learning, which reinforces the positive feelings of team members through their improved competency, can amplify the positive impact and diminish the negative impact of transformational leadership on innovative behavior.

Design/methodology/approach

Data were collected from R&D teams of large- and mid-sized companies in Korean industries. Survey data from 307 team members and 51 team leaders from 51 project teams were tested using hierarchical linear modeling analysis. Team members evaluated the transformational leadership of their team leaders as well as the perceived level of learning in their teams, and team leaders evaluated the innovative behavior of their team members.

Findings

Multi-level analysis confirmed a non-linear relationship (an inverted U shape) between transformational leadership of team leaders and innovative behavior of team members. It means innovative behavior was negatively related to excessive transformational leadership and positively related to a modest level of the leadership. Furthermore, statistical analysis confirmed the positive multi-level moderating effect of team learning.

Research limitations/implications

The core dimension of transformational leadership, charisma, was the only measurement of the leadership in this study. Most South Korean companies adopted performance-based compensation systems and charisma is a prevailing leadership behavior at emerging market of the nation. As such, other dimensions of transformational leadership such as “individualized consideration” or “intellectual stimulation” are relatively neglected in most companies of South Korea. Future research needs to consider these other dimensions for the generalization in research.

Practical implications

Leaders in emerging markets, such as project team leaders or R&D team leaders, should avoid immoderate transformational leadership and should maintain a proper level of transformational leadership. The contemporary leaders also need to utilize team learning to maximize innovative behavior.

Originality/value

These findings illustrate the disadvantage of excessive transformational leadership and highlight the neutralization effect of team learning on the negative impact of the excessive leadership. Team learning has the potential to enhance members’ innovative behaviors, and it could moderate the perceptions of excessive transformational leadership.

Reinforcing innovation through transformational leadership: mediating role of job satisfaction

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to examine the direct role being played by transformational leadership (TL) dimensions in reinforcing product and service innovation. More particularly, the paper focusses on the role of job satisfaction (JS) as a mediator in this relationship.

Design/methodology/approach

A concurrent mixed methods technique was employed. The researcher surveyed 486 participants from three major telecoms companies that operate in Jordan to supply the society with mobile phones and internet services. In addition, 15 team leaders were interviewed for the same purpose.

Findings

The results of this paper support the positive direct impact of transformational leaders on both employees’ innovativeness and JS. In addition, JS was found to positively impact product and service innovation. Moreover, the results revealed that JS mediates the relationship between TL and innovation.

Research limitations/implications

Leaders are playing a direct and significant role in reinforcing product and service innovation in an interesting manner, especially through JS. Other styles of leadership, populations, and methods may create new perceptions in further research works.

Practical implications

The findings in this paper indicate that practising superior level of TL behaviours enhances overall JS, which, as a result, reinforces product and service innovation within employees in the Jordanian telecom sector. Superior outputs are achieved through such styles both for the firm as a whole towards innovative products and services, and similarly, for individuals within teams who involve in further innovative team climate.

Originality/value

These outcomes augment understanding of practises in which transformational leaders endorse innovation, and emphasise the values added through endorsing more TL behaviours to yield more innovative outputs by employees.

Liderança transformacional e a eficácia grupal: o papel mediador dos comportamentos de suporte

Resumo O objetivo deste estudo foi analisar o papel mediador dos comportamentos de suporte na relação entre a liderança transformacional e quatro critérios da eficácia da equipe (designadamente, o desempenho, a viabilidade, a qualidade da experiência grupal e os processos de melhoria). Conduziu-se um estudo empírico com uma amostra composta por 653 participantes de 117 equipes de diferentes setores de atividade (e.g., indústria, proteção civil, consultoria), onde foram testadas as relações previstas. Os resultados mostraram um efeito direto positivo da liderança transformacional nos comportamentos de suporte, assim como dos comportamentos de suporte na eficácia da equipe (nomeadamente, no desempenho, na viabilidade, na qualidade da experiência grupal e nos processos de melhoria). Além disso, foi igualmente identificado um efeito mediador dos comportamentos de suporte na relação entre a liderança transformacional e os quatro critérios da eficácia da equipe. Implicações para a investigação, para a prática profissional e pistas para futuras pesquisas foram apresentadas.

Subjective well-being, knowledge sharing and individual innovation behavior

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the effect of subjective well-being on individual innovation behavior. The authors propose that such effect is mediated by knowledge sharing, and individual absorptive capacity moderates the relationship between knowledge sharing and innovation behavior.

Design/methodology/approach

A research model was developed. Survey data were based on a sample of 220 employees from 20 enterprises in China. Hierarchical multiple regression analyses and bootstrap approach were applied to test the research model.

Findings

Subjective well-being has significantly positive influence on individual innovation behavior, and this effect is mediated by knowledge sharing. Furthermore, absorptive capacity moderates the mediated relationships between subject well-being and individual innovation behavior via knowledge sharing.

Practical implications

This research sheds light on an effective role to promote individual innovation behavior in management practices. It suggests that harmonious atmosphere, communication platform, and well-established learning plans can be cultivated to enhance individual innovation ability.

Originality/value

This research discusses the antecedent of innovation behavior from the viewpoint of individual psychology, and identifies the different roles of knowledge sharing and absorptive capacity on individual innovation behavior.

When Top Management Leadership Matters: Insights From Artistic Interventions

This article addresses how top management leadership behaviors matter in innovative interventions in organizations. A comparison of six cases of artistic interventions in four countries reveals that lack of visible top management support and sense-making orientation during and after the process resulted in little added value for the organization in three cases. Three other cases show various ways in which top management can legitimize such experimentation, from which more positive outcomes flowed at the individual and collective levels. The implications are counterintuitive because top management faces two sets of tensions in innovative processes: presence/absence and providing orientation/being open to learning. The article suggests ways that top managers can address these tensions, including by engaging in constellations of distributed leadership, for which this article proposes a new definition.

Leader Humility and Team Innovation: Investigating the Substituting Role of Task Interdependence and the Mediating Role of Team Voice Climate

Leadership has been found to be linked with team innovation. Based on social information processing theory and substitutes for leadership theory, this paper examines the influence of leader humility on team innovation. Results from 90 teams showed that leader humility will enhance team innovation by fostering team voice climate. Further, task interdependence substitutes the effect of leader humility on team innovation through an indirect way via team voice climate. This study discussed the theoretical and practical implementations of these observations.

The Impact of Project Managers’ Personality on Project Success in NGOs: The Mediating Role of Transformational Leadership

This study examined the extent to which project managers’ personality determines project success through the mediating mechanism of transformational leadership. The context of the study was nongovernmental projects that focused on education and health. Data were collected from 170 project managers who were engaged in 10 different programs in various areas of Pakistan. Based on the post-positivism approach and a specific deductive design, the results of the study indicated that Extraversion, Agreeableness, and Openness to Experience were direct positive predictors of project success, whereas transformational leadership acted as a mediator of these relations. One of the personality dimensions (i.e., Conscientiousness) had only an indirect effect on project success through transformational leadership. No relation was found between Neuroticism and project success. The theoretical and practical implications for project management are also discussed.

Conflict in Teams: Modeling Early and Late Conflict States and the Interactive Effects of Conflict Processes

We introduce a model of teams’ early and late conflict states, conflict processes, and performance. In a study of 529 individuals in 145 teams, we provide a theoretical framework and empirically test a series of hypotheses pertaining to the influence of conflict states, including task and relationship conflict, on performance, as well as the moderating effect of two conflict processes (cooperative and competitive management approaches). We address inconsistencies in the literature related to the effect of team conflict, specifically task conflict, within teams. Our results suggest that task conflict in the end of a team’s life cycle, like relationship conflict, can have a significant negative effect on performance, but only when teams’ conflict management approaches are competitive (rather than cooperative). We also provide evidence that conflict management approaches are affected by the type of conflict teams exhibit in their early life cycle stages. Thus, we present a study of how early levels of conflict types affect conflict management approaches, and how these approaches affect later levels of the conflict type/performance relationship. Our model suggests that conflict types and conflict management approaches should be modeled together to better understand team conflict.