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

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.