Team Interdependence as a Substitute for Empowering Leadership Contribution to Team Meaningfulness and Performance

Alon Lisak; Raveh Harush; Tamar Icekson; Sharon Harel

doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2022.637822

Team Interdependence as a Substitute for Empowering Leadership Contribution to Team Meaningfulness and Performance

Front Psychol. 2022 Feb 11:13:637822. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2022.637822. eCollection 2022.

Authors

Alon Lisak¹, Raveh Harush², Tamar Icekson^{1

3

4}, Sharon Harel¹

Affiliations

¹ Department of Management, Guilford Glazer Faculty of Business and Management, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Be'er Sheva, Israel.
² The Graduate School of Business Administration, Bar-Ilan University, Ramat Gan, Israel.
³ School of Behavioral Sciences, Peres Academic Center, Rehovot, Israel.
⁴ Department of Education, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Be'er Sheva, Israel.

Abstract

This study uses a relational work design perspective to explore substitutes for leadership behaviors that promote team meaningfulness and performance. We propose that team task interdependence, a structural feature facilitating interaction among team members, can be a substitute for the contributions of empowering leadership. Data were collected from 47 R&D and technology implementation teams across three organizations in a cross-sectional field study. The results revealed that high task interdependence attenuated the contributions of empowering leadership concerning team meaningfulness and, indirectly, to team performance. These findings highlight that the importance of leaders as generators of team meaningfulness is contingent on team relational work design.

Keywords: empowering leadership; substitute for leadership; task interdependence; team meaningfulness; team performance.