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The joint impact of servant leadership and team-based HRM practices on team expediency: the mediating role of team reflexivity

Shuang Ren (Deakin Business School, Deakin University, Melbourne, Australia)
Zhining Wang (School of Management, China University of Mining and Technology, Xuzhou, China)
Ngan Thuy Collins (School of Management, RMIT University, Melbourne, Australia)

Personnel Review

ISSN: 0048-3486

Article publication date: 9 February 2021

Issue publication date: 17 October 2021

1052

Abstract

Purpose

This study focuses on an emerging deviant behavior at the team level and investigates when and why the team level processes reduce team expedient behavior. Anchored on the input–process–outcome (I–P–O) theoretical framework for studying team effectiveness, it conceptualizes and tests a research model where servant leadership and team-based human resource management (HRM practices) serve as a team-level input that interacts to influence the process of team reflexivity and ultimately reduces team expedient behavior as the outcome.

Design/methodology/approach

Data are from 109 teams involving a total of 584 employees and analyzed at the team level.

Findings

The findings provide empirical support that team-based HRM practices positively moderate the relationship between servant leadership and team reflexivity and that team reflexivity transforms the influence of servant leadership into reduced team expedient behavior. Implications for theory and practice are discussed.

Research limitations/implications

The participants in this study were drawn from diverse backgrounds (n = 584), and they were nested within 109 teams. Therefore, the authors were cautious of making claims that the findings would apply to every team in the context of China. The authors acknowledge that the research design of this study is not the strongest to test for causal relationship.

Practical implications

The findings show the synergistic role of servant leadership and team-based HRM practices and suggest organizations have both in place to mitigate deviant behaviors by teams. The study also suggests organizations develop and promote an environment where team members are motivated and encouraged to share their ideas, openly discuss experiences and set up forward plans.

Social implications

Organizations should focus on training their leaders of the behaviors such as supporting followers, enhancing subordinates' commitment to the collective goal and emphasizing the equality between themselves and subordinates. Organizations need to increase their awareness that the teams are more likely to perform their tasks by the means prescribed by the organizational rules if they communicate, discuss and get modeling or feedback from other teams.

Originality/value

This study enriches research on team-based HRM practices, which so far have received limited attention, and deserves further investigation. It sharpens the underlying mechanism that translates team-level input of leadership and HRM to the desired outcomes of reduced expedient behavior by introducing the role of team reflexivity. The study adds to the growing research on workplace deviance by addressing team-level expedient behavior.

Keywords

Acknowledgements

This research is partly supported by The Fundamental Research Funds for Central Universities in China (Grant No. 2017XKQY087), The Humanities and Social Sciences Research Funds of the Chinese Education Ministry (Grant No. 19YJC630203), The Social science Research Funds of Jiangsu province of China (Grant No. 19GLB014), The Double First-Class Initiative Project for Cultural Evolution and Creation of China University of Mining and Technology (Grant No.2018WHCC03/05) and The National Natural Science Foundation of China funded project (Grant No. 71872102).

Citation

Ren, S., Wang, Z. and Collins, N.T. (2021), "The joint impact of servant leadership and team-based HRM practices on team expediency: the mediating role of team reflexivity", Personnel Review, Vol. 50 No. 7/8, pp. 1757-1773. https://doi.org/10.1108/PR-07-2020-0506

Publisher

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Emerald Publishing Limited

Copyright © 2020, Emerald Publishing Limited

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