Having Each Other’s Back: The Mediating Role of Supportive Behaviours in the Relationship Between Team Autonomy and Team Effectiveness
Published Online: Mar 04, 2024
Page range: 87 - 98
Received: Feb 20, 2023
Accepted: Aug 10, 2023
DOI: https://doi.org/10.2478/orga-2024-0006
Keywords
© 2024 Joana Alexandrino et al., published by Sciendo
This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
Background and Purpose
Incorporating autonomy in teams has been an increasingly popular practice, but the mechanisms that make autonomous teams effective still need to be completely understood. Adopting a multidimensional approach to team effectiveness, the aim of this study was to analyse the mediating role of team members’ supportive behaviours in the relationship between team autonomy and team effectiveness (team performance, team viability, quality of group experience and team process improvement).
Methods:
This research adopts a group-level analysis with a sample of 90 teams of 40 organisations from different sectors. Regression analysis was used to analyse the data, namely the product of the coefficients method.
Results
A positive relationship between team autonomy and supportive behaviours, which, in turn, is positively related to the four criteria of team effectiveness, was found, suggesting that supportive behaviours are a team process that explains the relationship between team autonomy and team effectiveness.
Conclusion
This research enriches our knowledge of the antecedents of team effectiveness and explains the mechanisms through which team autonomy relates to team effectiveness, encouraging organisations to incorporate autonomy into teams’ design to enhance supportive behaviours and team effectiveness.