The influence of dispositions and shared leadership on team–member exchange

Abstract

PurposeThis study aims to examine two individual dispositions, propensity to trust and reciprocation wariness, as antecedents of team–member exchange (TMX) and how shared leadership moderates these relationships. It also investigates work engagement as a consequence of TMX.Design/methodology/approachData were collected from 175 employees in 42 teams; a multilevel random slope model was used to test the moderating effect of shared leadership at the team level and across levels.FindingsShared leadership provides a boundary condition for the relationships from propensity to trust and reciprocation wariness to work engagement through TMX. At the individual level, the positive effects of propensity to trust and negative effects of reciprocation wariness on TMX, and their indirect effects on work engagement through TMX, were weaker at higher shared leadership. At the team level, the positive relationship between propensity to trust and TMX was unconditional on shared leadership, whereas the relationship between reciprocation wariness and TMX was moderated by shared leadership. At the team level, shared leadership had positive effects on TMX and work engagement.Practical implicationsManagers can adopt shared leadership to encourage social exchanges among team members to enhance TMX and work engagement.Originality/valueThe study extends the TMX research by investigating dispositions as antecedents and work engagement as a consequence at both individual and team levels. It also identifies the moderating role played by team-level shared leadership, which provides a strong situation supporting reciprocal interactions.

How shared leadership affects team performance: examining sequential mediation model using MASEM

“…Finally, while the current study focuses on the relationship between shared leadership and outcomes at the team level, we found a growing interest in the cross-level influence of shared leadership on individual outcomes (e.g. Drescher and Garbers, 2016; Lau et al. , 2021) during our systematic review of the literature.…”

“…Finally, while the current study focuses on the relationship between shared leadership and outcomes at the team level, we found a growing interest in the cross-level influence of shared leadership on individual outcomes (e.g. Drescher and Garbers, 2016;Lau et al, 2021) during our systematic review of the literature. Therefore, to further clarify the cross-level impacts of shared leadership, we encourage future meta-analyses to investigate on the relationships between shared leadership and individual outcomes and of potential mediational mechanisms and boundary conditions of these relationships.…”

Translating team-member exchange relationships to school outcomes: the mediating role of leader-member exchange

“…Third, the present study describes a model that did not take into account moderating factors that may strengthen or weaken relations among the study variables. For example, future research might consider personality factors, such as Big Five traits (Newman et al, 2017) or leadership style (Lau et al, 2021) as moderators in the relationships between TMX and LMX. Fourth, the development of professional learning communities (PLCs; Nguyen et al, 2023) in recent years has created new social networks, thereby possibly enhancing teachers' social capital.…”

Relative team-member exchange, affective organizational commitment and innovative behavior: The moderating role of team-member exchange differentiation

“…Therefore, high RTMX members who hold high self-efficacy believe that they have the competence to engage in innovative behavior. Third, when individual members have high-level RTMX, they can gain much more trust from their coworkers (Lau et al, 2021), and then they are likely to enjoy the advantages of collecting much more different and useful information from their colleagues within their teams, thereby behaving innovatively through integrating their own and others' knowledge and information when they deal with daily tasks (Du et al, 2021).…”