The Curvilinear Relationship Between Empowering Leadership and Team Performance: A Self-Regulatory Perspective

Abstract

Although previous research demonstrated that empowering leadership has both positive and negative impacts on team consequences, our current knowledge of the processes by which and the conditions under which empowering leadership promotes or hinders team performance remains limited. Drawing on the too-much-of-a-good-thing (TMGT) effect and the team self-regulatory perspective, our findings, backed with a time-lagged and multi-source survey, suggested that empowering leadership has a curvilinear impact (i.e., inverted U-shaped) on team performance through team reflexivity, and this impact is contingent on team performance-approach goal orientation. We discuss the implications of our findings from both theoretical and practical perspectives.