Effects of empowering leadership on performance in management team

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to extend an integrated model of the antecedents that help explain and predict team performance in relation to empowering leadership behaviors. To this end, the authors examine the intervening roles of knowledge sharing and team cohesion in the relationship between empowering leadership and performance in teams. Design/methodology/approach – Data were obtained from 261 team members from 79 management teams in a major international fast‐food chain restaurant operating in Taiwan. Confirmatory factor analysis and multiple regressions were used for data analysis. Findings – It was found that two indirect effects supplemented the direct effect of empowering leadership on team performance, the mechanisms of knowledge sharing and team cohesion. In other words, knowledge sharing and team cohesion, respectively, mediated the relationship between empowering leadership and performance in management teams. Research limitations/implications – This study extended existing research to the links between team characteristics, team cohesion, and knowledge sharing. Particularly, it explored the effect of team cohesion and knowledge sharing on team performance. The authors further investigated the mediating effect of team cohesion and knowledge sharing on the relationship between empowering leadership and team performance. Originality/value – This is one of the first studies in empowering leadership applying different intervention and its process of a management team to the study of knowledge sharing as a team process and team cohesion as an emergent state.