Fostering team innovation and learning by means of team-centric transformational leadership: The role of teamwork quality

摘要

Team innovation is an important factor for organizational effectiveness. However, fostering innovation in teams remains a major challenge for team leaders. In particular, we still have an incomplete understanding of (1) the effects of team-centric leadership and (2) the role of teamwork for the relationship between leadership and innovation and learning. Integrating team-centric transformational leadership and the teamwork quality (TWQ) model with frameworks for team innovation, the current study addresses this issue. Specifically, we investigated TWQ as a team-level mediator of the relationship between team-centric transformational leadership, team innovation, and individual members' learning. We tested our hypotheses using lagged, multi-source data from a sample of 79 scientific teams. Our findings show that team-centric transformational leadership is positively related to both team innovation and individual members' learning. Furthermore, the positive relationship between team-centric transformational leadership and learning is mediated by specific aspects of TWQ. Our study helps to clarify the processes underlying the effects of team-centric leadership on innovation and learning.