The impact of team temporal leadership on work engagement, team conflict and team performance: Examining the mediating and moderating effects of a multi-level model

Leadership is an essential function of management that helps to maximise efficiency in achieving organisational goals. A number of leadership styles have been identified and investigated and yet, leadership remains an enigma. The team environment in which employees work today impacts on their ability to perform their job, which can be significantly different from their desired performance. The impact of constructs such as team conflict and work tension may hinder performance. These constructs cause concern because despite their skills and abilities, employees may be unable to complete the tasks required to the level at which they have the talent or desire to perform. The purpose of this research is to examine the relationship of some of the constructs under the team temporal leadership domain.
This thesis first presents a systematic review of extant literature on team temporal leadership and team performance to identify gaps and issues. This thesis then presents a multi-level model that was developed by synthesising the existing literature to explain a number of organisational factors that are closely associated with team temporal leadership. The theoretical model illustrates how team temporal leadership interacts with team performance and shows the interrelationships between organisational factors based on five theoretical perspectives including time, interaction and performance theory, equity theory, broaden-and-build theory, path-goal theory and role theory. The thesis also presents a series of hypotheses developed as a catalyst for the research that has significant effects on individual, team and organisational performance underlying the multi-level model.
A two-wave multi-source survey was conducted, with a final sample of 196 leaders and 873 subordinates from five manufacturing firms from Sri Lanka. The data were analysed through multi-level structural equation modelling using Mplus 8.0.
Results revealed several significant relationships between the variables, indicating the importance of a broad lens under the team temporal leadership domain. First, employee voice behaviour and work tension were found to have a mediating role between team temporal leadership and team performance. Second, task conflict and relationship conflict were found to moderate the relationship between work engagement and career commitment, while role innovation was found to have a mediating effect. Third, team temporal leadership moderated the relationships between task conflict and team performance, and relationship conflict and team performance. Finally, employee proactivity, proficiency and adaptivity were found to have a mediating effect between team temporal leadership and work engagement, while work engagement had a positive relationship with organisational commitment.
This thesis presents theoretical implications and contributions of these findings, along with recommendations for practice. The study had some has some limitations that future research might address. They include common method variance and generalisation of findings. Additional instrumental constructs should therefore be considered in future research. In conclusion, this study offers a number of contributions and significant implications for theory and leadership practices.