Managing diversity and enhancing team outcomes: The promise of transformational leadership.

In a sample of 62 research and development (R&D) teams, the authors examined transformational leadership as a moderator of the relationship of age, nationality, and educational background diversity with team outcomes. When levels of transformational leadership were high, nationality and educational diversity were positively related to team leaders' longitudinal ratings of team performance. These relationships were nonsignificant when transformational leadership was low. Age diversity was not related to team performance when transformational leadership was high, and it was negatively related to team performance when transformational leadership was low. Two mediated moderation effects help explain these findings. Transformational leadership moderated the relationship of the 3 examined diversity dimensions with the elaboration of task-relevant information, which in turn was positively associated with team performance. Moreover, transformational leadership moderated the relationship of the 3 diversity types with collective team identification, which in turn was positively related to the elaboration of task-relevant information. The authors discuss the theoretical and practical implications of these results. Overall, this study suggests that transformational leadership can foster the utilization of the potential, but frequently untapped, benefits entailed by both demographic and informational/cognitive team diversity. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Advice networks in teams: The role of transformational leadership and members' core self-evaluations.

This article examines the team-level factors promoting advice exchange networks in teams. Drawing upon theory and research on transformational leadership, team diversity, and social networks, we hypothesized that transformational leadership positively influences advice network density in teams and that advice network density serves as a mediating mechanism linking transformational leadership to team performance. We further hypothesized a 3-way interaction in which members' mean core self-evaluation (CSE) and diversity in CSE jointly moderate the transformational leadership–advice network density relationship, such that the relationship is positive and stronger for teams with low diversity in CSE and high mean CSE. In addition, we expected that advice network centralization attenuates the positive influence of network density on team performance. Results based on multisource data from 79 business unit management teams showed support for these hypotheses. The results highlight the pivotal role played by transformational leadership and team members' CSEs in enhancing team social networks and, ultimately, team effectiveness. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved)     

Embracing transformational leadership: Team values and the impact of leader behavior on team performance.

The authors investigated the relationship between transformational leadership behavior and group performance in 218 financial services teams that were branches of a bank in Hong Kong and the United States. Transformational leadership influenced team performance through the mediating effect of team potency. The effect of transformational leadership on team potency was moderated by team power distance and team collectivism, such that higher power distance teams and more collectivistic teams exhibited stronger positive effects of transformational leadership on team potency. The model was supported by data in both Hong Kong and the United States, which suggests a convergence in how teams function in the East and West and highlights the importance of team values. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved)     

Cognition-based and affect-based trust as mediators of leader behavior influences on team performance.

We develop a model in which cognitive and affective trust in the leader mediate the relationship between leader behavior and team psychological states that, in turn, drive team performance. The model is tested on a sample of 191 financial services teams in Hong Kong and the U.S. Servant leadership influenced team performance through affect-based trust and team psychological safety. Transformational leadership influenced team performance indirectly through cognition-based trust. Cognition-based trust directly influenced team potency and indirectly (through affect-based trust) influenced team psychological safety. The effects of leader behavior on team performance were fully mediated through the trust in leader variables and the team psychological states. Servant leadership explained an additional 10% of the variance in team performance beyond the effect of transformational leadership. We discuss implications of these results for research on the relationship between leader behavior and team performance, and for efforts to enhance leader development by combining knowledge from different leadership theories. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved)     

When is educational specialization heterogeneity related to creativity in research and development teams? Transformational leadership as a moderator.

The authors examined conditions under which teams' educational specialization heterogeneity was positively related to team creativity. Using a sample of 75 research and development teams, the authors theorized and found that transformational leadership and educational specialization heterogeneity interacted to affect team creativity in such a way that when transformational leadership was high, teams with greater educational specialization heterogeneity exhibited greater team creativity. In addition, teams' creative efficacy mediated this moderated relationship among educational specialization heterogeneity, transformational leadership, and team creativity. The authors discuss the implications of these results for research and practice. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Antecedents of team potency and team effectiveness: An examination of goal and process clarity and servant leadership.

Integrating theories of self-regulation with team and leadership literatures, this study investigated goal and process clarity and servant leadership as 3 antecedents of team potency and subsequent team effectiveness, operationalized as team performance and organizational citizenship behavior. Our sample of 304 employees represented 71 teams in 5 banks. Results showed that team-level goal and process clarity as well as team servant leadership served as 3 antecedents of team potency and subsequent team performance and team organizational citizenship behavior. Furthermore, we found that servant leadership moderated the relationships between both goal and process clarity and team potency, such that the positive relationships between both goal and process clarity and team potency were stronger in the presence of servant leadership. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved)     

Transformational Leadership: Relations to the Five-Factor Model and Team Performance in Typical and Maximum Contexts.

This study examined the 5-factor model of personality, transformational leadership, and team performance under conditions similar to typical and maximum performance contexts. Data were collected from 39 combat teams from an Asian military sample (N = 276). Results found that neuroticism and agreeableness were negatively related to transformational leadership ratings. Team performance ratings correlated at only .18 across the typical and maximum contexts. Furthermore, transformational leadership related more strongly to team performance in the maximum rather than the typical context. Finally, transformational leadership fully mediated the relationship between leader personality and team performance in the maximum context but only partially mediated the relationship between leader personality and team performance in the typical context. The Discussion section focuses on how these findings, although interesting, need to be replicated with different designs, contexts, and measures. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Transactive memory system links work team characteristics and performance.

Teamwork and coordination of expertise among team members with different backgrounds are increasingly recognized as important for team effectiveness. Recently, researchers have examined how team members rely on transactive memory system (TMS; D. M. Wegner, 1987) to share their distributed knowledge and expertise. To establish the ecological validity and generality of TMS research findings, this study sampled 104 work teams from a variety of organizational settings in China and examined the relationships between team characteristics, TMS, and team performance. The results suggest that task interdependence, cooperative goal interdependence, and support for innovation are positively related to work teams' TMS and that TMS is related to team performance; moreover, structural equation analysis indicates that TMS mediates the team characteristics-performance links. Findings have implications both for team leaders to manage their work teams effectively and for team members to improve their team performance. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Understanding team innovation: The role of team processes and structures.

The present study focused on innovation of teams, examining the contributions of team interaction processes (exchanging information, learning, motivating, and negotiating) and structures (functional heterogeneity and frequency of meetings) to innovation. Specifically, it was hypothesized that (a) team structures will be positively related to team innovation, (b) team heterogeneity will be positively related to team interaction processes, (c) team interaction processes will be positively related to team innovation, and (d) team interaction processes will mediate the relationship between team heterogeneity and team innovation. Results from a sample of 48 intact teams in elementary and secondary schools supported the main hypotheses. These results imply that the development of mutual interaction processes is a crucial mechanism for translating team heterogeneity into innovation. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Co-leader similarity and group climate in group interventions: Testing the co-leadership, team cognition-team diversity model.

This study tested a coleadership, team cognition-team diversity model of coleader similarity and dissimilarity and its effect on group processes. This model suggests that group coleaders will be most effective when coleaders share cognitions about the group but are dissimilar in terms of their skill sets and behavior within the group. Specifically, the current study examined whether coleader dissimilarity in behavior was related to the group climate in eight coled intergroup dialogue groups at a large university. Results gave partial support to the coleader, team cognition-team diversity model, as coleader dissimilarity was related to increased overall engagement and conflict within the group. Coleader dissimilarity was related to decreasing conflict and increasing avoiding, suggesting that the relationship between coleader similarity and group processes is more complex than implied by the coleadership, team cognition-team diversity model. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Trust in leadership and team performance: Evidence from NCAA basketball.

This study empirically examined the relationship between trust, leadership, and team performance with 2 objectives. The 1st objective was to empirically examine an assumption found in several literatures—that a team's trust in its leader has a significant effect on the team's performance. The 2nd objective was to explore a more complex and dynamic relationship between trust and team performance whereby trust in leadership mediates the relationship between past team performance and future team performance. This relationship is derived by combining theories of trust with an attributional theory of leadership. Survey and archival data from a sample of men's college basketball teams provides support for both hypotheses, indicating that trust in leadership is both a product and a determinant of team performance. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Employee customer orientation in manufacturing organizations: Joint influences of customer proximity and the senior leadership team.

Pursuing a customer-focused strategy in manufacturing organizations requires employees across functions to embrace the importance of understanding customer needs and to align their everyday efforts with the goal of satisfying and retaining customers. Little prior research has examined what factors influence employee customer orientation in manufacturing settings. Drawing on the attraction-selection-attrition model, upper-echelons theory, and contingency theories of leadership, this study investigated the joint influences of functional roles' proximity to external customers and the senior leadership team's customer orientation on employee customer orientation. Hierarchical linear modeling results based on data obtained from 4,299 employees and 403 senior leaders from 42 facilities of a global manufacturer operating in 16 countries revealed that employees occupying customer-contact roles had the highest level of customer orientation, followed by employees occupying production roles, and then by those in support roles. In addition, there was a positive relationship between the senior leadership team's customer orientation and employee customer orientation for all 3 functional roles. The positive relationship between the senior leadership team and employee customer orientation was the strongest for employees in support roles, suggesting that lower levels of proximity to external customers may create a greater need for leadership in developing employees' customer-oriented attitudes. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Development and test of a model linking safety-specific transformational leadership and occupational safety.

The authors developed, tested, and replicated a model in which safety-specific transformational leadership predicted occupational injuries in 2 separate studies. Data from 174 restaurant workers (M age=26.75 years, range=15-64) were analyzed using structural equation modeling (LISREL 8; K. G. J?reskog & D. S?rbom, 1993) and provided strong support for a model whereby safety-specific transformational leadership predicted occupational injuries through the effects of perceived safety climate, safety consciousness, and safety-related events. Study 2 replicated and extended this model with data from 164 young workers from diverse jobs (M age=19.54 years, range=14-24). Safety-specific transformational leadership and role overload were related to occupational injuries through the effects of perceived safety climate, safety consciousness, and safety-related events. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Building team adaptive capacity: The roles of sensegiving and team composition.

The current study draws on motivated information processing in groups theory to propose that leadership functions and composition characteristics provide teams with the epistemic and social motivation needed for collective information processing and strategy adaptation. Three-person teams performed a city management decision-making simulation (N=74 teams; 222 individuals). Teams first managed a simulated city that was newly formed and required growth strategies and were then abruptly switched to a second simulated city that was established and required revitalization strategies. Consistent with hypotheses, external sensegiving and team composition enabled distinct aspects of collective information processing. Sensegiving prompted the emergence of team strategy mental models (i.e., cognitive information processing); psychological collectivism facilitated information sharing (i.e., behavioral information processing); and cognitive ability provided the capacity for both the cognitive and behavioral aspects of collective information processing. In turn, team mental models and information sharing enabled reactive strategy adaptation. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved)     

The role of justice in team member satisfaction with the leader and attachment to the team.

This study examined the effects of team decision accuracy, team member decision influence, leader consideration behaviors, and justice perceptions on staff members' satisfaction with the leader and attachment to the team in hierarchical decision-making teams. The authors proposed that staff members' justice perceptions would mediate the relationship between (a) team decision accuracy, (b) the amount of influence a staff member has in the team leader's decision, and (c) the leader's consideration behaviors and staff attachment to the team and satisfaction with the leader. The results of an experiment involving 128 participants in a total of 64 teams, who made recommendations to a confederate acting as the team leader, generally support the proposed model. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Antecedents and consequences of psychological and team empowerment in organizations: A meta-analytic review.

This paper provides meta-analytic support for an integrated model specifying the antecedents and consequences of psychological and team empowerment. Results indicate that contextual antecedent constructs representing perceived high-performance managerial practices, socio-political support, leadership, and work characteristics are each strongly related to psychological empowerment. Positive self-evaluation traits are related to psychological empowerment and are as strongly related as the contextual factors. Psychological empowerment is in turn positively associated with a broad range of employee outcomes, including job satisfaction, organizational commitment, and task and contextual performance, and is negatively associated with employee strain and turnover intentions. Team empowerment is positively related to team performance. Further, the magnitude of parallel antecedent and outcome relationships at the individual and team levels is statistically indistinguishable, demonstrating the generalizability of empowerment theory across these 2 levels of analysis. A series of analyses also demonstrates the validity of psychological empowerment as a unitary second-order construct. Implications and future directions for empowerment research and theory are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved)     

Transformational leadership and group interaction as climate antecedents: A social network analysis.

In order to test the social mechanisms through which organizational climate emerges, this article introduces a model that combines transformational leadership and social interaction as antecedents of climate strength (i.e., the degree of within-unit agreement about climate perceptions). Despite their longstanding status as primary variables, both antecedents have received limited empirical research. The sample consisted of 45 platoons of infantry soldiers from 5 different brigades, using safety climate as the exemplar. Results indicate a partially mediated model between transformational leadership and climate strength, with density of group communication network as the mediating variable. In addition, the results showed independent effects for group centralization of the communication and friendship networks, which exerted incremental effects on climate strength over transformational leadership. Whereas centralization of the communication network was found to be negatively related to climate strength, centralization of the friendship network was positively related to it. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Divergent effects of transformational and passive leadership on employee safety.

The authors concurrently examined the impact of safety-specific transformational leadership and safety-specific passive leadership on safety outcomes. First, the authors demonstrated via confirmatory factor analysis that safety-specific transformational leadership and safety-specific passive leadership are empirically distinct constructs. Second, using hierarchical regression, the authors illustrated, contrary to a stated corollary of transformational leadership theory (B. M. Bass, 1997), that passive leadership contributes incrementally to the prediction of organizationally relevant outcomes, in this case safety-related variables, beyond transformational leadership alone. Third, further analyses via structural equation modeling showed that both transformational and passive leadership have opposite effects on safety climate and safety consciousness, and these variables, in turn, predict safety events and injuries. Implications for research and application are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

What makes a good team player? Personality and team effectiveness.

Good team players are often defined in trait terms; that is, they are described as dependable, flexible, or cooperative. Our goal is to examine the relationship between team member personality traits and team effectiveness. However, to understand the effects of personality on team performance requires greater specificity in how personality is described and in how team effectiveness is described. A hierarchical model of team member personality is presented that defines higher-level personality traits and specific facets relevant to team performance. Next, a classification of the core teamwork dimensions underlying effective team performance is presented. Finally, predictions are derived linking team member personality facets to specific teamwork requirements. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Centrality and charisma: Comparing how leader networks and attributions affect team performance.

When leaders interact in teams with their subordinates, they build social capital that can have positive effects on team performance. Does this social capital affect team performance because subordinates come to see the leader as charismatic? We answered this question by examining 2 models. First, we tested the charisma-to-centrality model according to which the leader's charisma facilitates the occupation of a central position in the informal advice network. From this central position, the leader positively influences team performance. Second, we examined the centrality-to-charisma model according to which charisma is attributed to those leaders who are socially active in terms of giving and receiving advice. Attributed charisma facilitates increased team performance. We tested these 2 models in 2 different studies. In the first study, based on time-separated, multisource data emanating from members of 56 work teams, we found support for the centrality-to-charisma model. Formal leaders who were central within team advice networks were seen as charismatic by subordinates, and this charisma was associated with high team performance. To clarify how leader network centrality affected the emergence of charismatic leadership, we designed Study 2 in which, for 79 student teams, we measured leader networking activity and leader charisma at 2 different points in time and related these variables to team performance measured at a third point in time. On the basis of this temporally separated data set, we again found support for the centrality-to-charisma model. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved)