Too much of a good thing: the curvilinear relation between inclusive leadership and team innovative behaviors

Previous studies have found that inclusive leadership has positive effects on employees’ behavior and performance in individuals and teams. Yet, there remains debate about whether increasing inclusive leadership is always beneficial in teams with high or low diversity. Following social exchange theory and the prior studies which put forward the potential drawbacks of inclusive leadership, we developed and tested a “Too-Much-of-a-Good-Thing” (TMGT) model of an inverted U-shaped relation between inclusive leadership and team innovative behaviors. Using time-lagged and multi-source data collected from 65 team supervisors and 364 employees in China, we found an inverted U-shaped relation between inclusive leadership and team engagement, and team engagement mediated the inverted U-shaped relation between inclusive leadership and team innovative behaviors. Furthermore, results showed that team demographic diversity moderated this indirect curvilinear effect. The theoretical and practical implications are discussed at the end of the paper.