Purpose The uncertainties in the market have led to an increasing number of uncertainties and unexpected situations in the work environment of organizations. Based on information processing theory, we investigate how teams can dynamically integrate the expertise of their members to better respond to an uncertain market environment. We propose an important team cognition: team expertise location awareness and point out its unique impact on knowledge integration and thus on improvisation capabilities. In addition, we argue that shared leadership facilitates the use of team recognition resources by teams. Methods This study adopts a multi-source design approach and collects data from an information technology (IT) company that provides apps of voice socialization and game for foreign markets in southern China. Our sample comprised 86 IT teams, and hierarchical regression and bootstrapping methods are also employed to test the hypotheses. Results This study reveals that (1) team’s expertise location awareness positively influences the team’s knowledge integration ability which in turn enhances the team’s improvisational ability; (2) team’s knowledge integration mediates the effect of team’s expertise location awareness and team’s improvisational ability; (3) shared leadership moderated this above mediation effect. Conclusion In this paper, we introduce information processing theory into team improvisation research to understand why some teams can effectively utilize and integrate their members’ knowledge and information and further contribute to effective team improvisation. These results’ theoretical and practical implications for team expertise location awareness, team knowledge integration, shared leadership, and team improvisation are discussed.

Improvisational behavior is an individual’s spontaneous and creative behavior in the face of emergencies, using existing material and emotional resources to respond quickly and effectively to uncertain situations. Despite increasing interest in this behavior, its antecedents remain unclear, with particular ambiguity regarding the relationship between empowering leadership and employee improvisational behavior. The present article addresses this ambiguity with the theory of reasoned action to examine whether the impact of empowering leadership on employees’ improvisational behavior is determined by employees’ attitudes toward such behavior. In this study, a multi-source design was adopted, and data (339 valid samples) were collected from five Internet companies in China’s Jiangsu and Zhejiang provinces. Hierarchical regression and bootstrapping methods were used to test the hypotheses. The results reveal that (1) employees’ promotion focus moderates the relationship between empowering leadership and improvisational behavior and (2) employees’ willingness to take risks mediates the moderating effect of promotion focus. Our findings demonstrate employees’ attitudinal utility in explaining when improvisational behavior is most likely to occur under empowering leadership.

Purpose The prevailing literature on perceived leader trust has focused on its benefits on employees’ work behavior. However, recent researches suggest that the feeling of leader trust also brings strains and work overload. Thus, existing researches have not yielded consistent conclusions about how the “trusted” employees tend to behave after being trusted by their leaders. Integrating the trait activation theory and self-evaluation psychological states, this study develops and tests the double-edged effects of perceived leader trust on proactive behavior through the different mediating roles of employee’s psychological variables. Specifically, we argued that the perceived leader trust effect is dependent on the employee’s reciprocation wariness, which to a large extent determines employees’ response to the perceived leader trust (ie, sense of self-worth and role overload). Methods The study uses a systematic literature review to identify the arguments supporting the relationship between the constructs and propose model. Additionally, this study adopts the multi-source design approach and collects data in a large Housing Construction & Development Company, which comprised 372 valid samples. Besides, hierarchical regression and bootstrapping methods are also employed to test the hypotheses. Results This study reveals that employee’s reciprocation wariness is negatively moderated the relationship between perceived trust and sense of self-worth while positively moderated the relationship between perceived trust and sense of role overload. Moreover, the higher the employee’s reciprocation wariness, the more negative the influence of perceived trust will be on the employee’s proactive behavior via the sense of role overload; on the contrary, the lower the employee’s reciprocation wariness, the more positive the influence of perceived trust will be on the employee’s proactive behavior via the sense of self-worth. Conclusion This study examines the double-edged sword influence of perceived leader trust on employee behavior. It found that perceived leader trust will affect proactive behavior through employees’ subjective evaluation of the leader’s trust. Moreover, employee’s reciprocation wariness plays a moderating role in this relationship. In a word, this paper deeply analyzes the mechanism and boundary conditions of perceived leader trust influencing employees’ psychological state and behavior, contributing to organizational trust and workplace proactive behavior research.

PurposeThis paper aims to extend the literature on how to harness the expertise of team members. This paper suggests that the leader’s expertise recognition plays an important role in enhancing team effectiveness. In addition, leader’s personal dispositions shape how the leader’s recognition could benefit team expertise utilization.Design/methodology/approachThis paper utilizes a two-wave, multi-source (team leaders and team members rated) survey design from 78 information technology teams to test the proposed moderated mediation model.FindingsThe data analysis revealed that a leader’s expertise recognition is positively related to team expertise utilization. Moreover, the leaders’ traits (i.e. social dominance and reflectiveness) act as important boundary conditions of this relationship. Specifically, only when the leader is less socially dominant or more reflective can they fully utilize the expertise recognition and enhance team creativity through team expertise utilization.Originality/valueThis study investigated an important issue that expertise utilization research has hitherto overlooked: the effects of leader’s expertise recognition on team expertise utilization and team creativity.

Under the background of economic globalization and industrial revolution, team entrepreneurship has drawn increased attention. Team entrepreneurship is considered to be advantageous in its capability of integrating more abundant resources and of sharing knowledge, information, and complementary skills among members of the entrepreneurial team, enabling entrepreneurial enterprises to successfully adapt to the highly uncertain entrepreneurial environment. In recent years, the relationship between the heterogeneity of the entrepreneurial team and its decision-making quality has attracted much attention in the management research field. However, the research results on such topic are quite inconsistent. Based on the information processing theory, the greater the market uncertainty the entrepreneurial team faces, the stronger information integration ability a team will be required to possess. This study investigates the mechanism and boundary conditions of the impact of expertise heterogeneity of the entrepreneurial team on entrepreneurial decision-making. It points out that team knowledge integration and team reflexivity have significant impacts on the relationship between entrepreneurial team expertise heterogeneity and entrepreneurial decision-making. This study adopts the multi-source design approach and collects data from 419 academic entrepreneurial teams in the University Science and Technology Park in Zhejiang Province. Hierarchical regression and bootstrapping methods are also employed for data analysis. The results show that team knowledge integration mediates the relationship between entrepreneurial team expertise heterogeneity and entrepreneurial decision-making, whereas team reflexivity moderates the relationship between entrepreneurial team expertise heterogeneity and team knowledge integration. In the final part, the practical implications for entrepreneurial team are discussed.