Empowering leadership and team innovation: The mediating effects of team processes and team engagement

Abstract

This study explored the mediating effects of team processes and team engagement on the relationship between empowering leadership and team innovation using a time-lagged research design and two-source data, where the supervisors’ team innovation rating was measured after a 3-month lag. Structural equation modeling was used to test the hypotheses. The findings showed that (1) team processes fully mediated the positive relationship between empowering leadership and team innovation, (2) team engagement fully mediated the positive relationship between empowering leadership and team innovation, and (3) the positive covariance of both team processes and team engagement contributed to stimulating the positive effect of empowering leadership on team innovation. Theoretical implications, practical implications, and directions for future research were also discussed.