A multilevel study of leadership, empowerment, and performance in teams.

TLDR

The study discusses contributions to team leadership theory, research, and practices. The authors tested a multilevel model of leadership, empowerment, and performance with 62 teams, 445 members, 62 leaders, and 31 managers from a Fortune 500 company. Leader‑member exchange and leadership climate differentially influence individual and team empowerment and jointly affect performance: leader‑member exchange predicts individual performance through empowerment, leadership climate predicts team performance through empowerment, team empowerment moderates the link between individual empowerment and performance, and individual performance positively relates to team performance, with these effects stronger in highly interdependent teams.

Abstract

A multilevel model of leadership, empowerment, and performance was tested using a sample of 62 teams, 445 individual members, 62 team leaders, and 31 external managers from 31 stores of a Fortune 500 company. Leader-member exchange and leadership climate related differently to individual and team empowerment and interacted to influence individual empowerment. Also, several relationships were supported in more but not in less interdependent teams. Specifically, leader-member exchange related to individual performance partially through individual empowerment; leadership climate related to team performance partially through team empowerment; team empowerment moderated the relationship between individual empowerment and performance; and individual performance was positively related to team performance. Contributions to team leadership theory, research, and practices are discussed.