关键词: 领导集权度, 团队成员交换, 任务互依性, 团队绩效压力

Abstract: Centralization refers to the degree to which decision making and authority are centralized at a formal team leader. Previous studies tested the effect of centralization on team performance; however, most of them focused on its cognitive processes and little attention has been paid to the interpersonal processes. Indeed, researchers have proposed that both cognitive and interpersonal processes have a great impact on team performance. Therefore, this study aims to examine the effect of centralization on team-member exchange (TMX), representing the quality of relationships among team members, which in turn influences team performance. We also propose and test the moderation roles of task interdependence and team performance pressure on the centralization—TMX linkage to get a better understanding of the boundary conditions of the effectiveness of centralization. We collected data from manufacturing companies located in Zhejiang Province. To reduce the concern of common method bias, we adopted a three-wave design with a one-month interval. At Time 1, we distributed survey questions to 523 employees from 110 work teams. Employees responded to the questions on centralization, task interdependence, team performance pressure and demographic variables. At Time 2, the 413 employees from 86 teams who completed the Time 1 survey were asked to respond to the questions on TMX. At Time 3, team leaders evaluated each team’s performance. The final sample consists of 328 employees from 72 teams. For the purpose of analysis, we aggregated the measures of centralization, task interdependence, team performance pressure and TMX to the group level. The results showed that both task interdependence and team performance pressure moderated the relationship between centralization and TMX. When task interdependence (team performance pressure) was low, centralization was negatively related to TMX, while this relationship became positive when task interdependence (team performance pressure) was high. Moreover, we conducted a moderated mediation analysis to test the integrative model. The results showed that both task interdependence and team performance pressure moderated the indirect relationship between centralization and team performance through TMX. The indirect effect of centralization on team performance via TMX was negative only when task interdependence (team performance pressure) was low. This study contributes to the literature in following ways. First, our study contributes to the centralization literature by examining its effect on TMX and exploring the boundary conditions involved. Unlike the relationship between leader and members theorized and tested in previous studies, our study reveals that centralization is likely to constrain the interaction among team members and destroy the quality of TMX, when task interdependence (team performance pressure) was low. Second, previous studies have suggested that centralization could either promote or inhibit team performance by exploring the cognitive processes (e.g., information process) underlying this linkage. In this sense, our study extends this line of research by demonstrating the importance role of TMX in translating the interactions of centralization and task interdependence and team performance pressure into team performance. Therefore, our study provides a new perspective to understand how and when centralization is related to team performance.

Key words: centralization, team-member exchange, task interdependence, team performance pressure