Having Each Other’s Back: The Mediating Role of Supportive Behaviours in the Relationship Between Team Autonomy and Team Effectiveness

Incorporating autonomy in teams has been an increasingly popular practice, but the mechanisms that make autonomous teams effective still need to be completely understood. Adopting a multidimensional approach to team effectiveness, the aim of this study was to analyse the mediating role of team members’ supportive behaviours in the relationship between team autonomy and team effectiveness (team performance, team viability, quality of group experience and team process improvement). This research adopts a group-level analysis with a sample of 90 teams of 40 organisations from different sectors. Regression analysis was used to analyse the data, namely the product of the coefficients method. A positive relationship between team autonomy and supportive behaviours, which, in turn, is positively related to the four criteria of team effectiveness, was found, suggesting that supportive behaviours are a team process that explains the relationship between team autonomy and team effectiveness. This research enriches our knowledge of the antecedents of team effectiveness and explains the mechanisms through which team autonomy relates to team effectiveness, encouraging organisations to incorporate autonomy into teams’ design to enhance supportive behaviours and team effectiveness.