I Believe I Can Do Better with Leader’s Helping: A Cross-Level Mediated Moderation Model

Abstract

Drawing upon the theoretical lenses of social cognitive theory, this study aims to explore whether, when and how team leader’s helping behavior can influence team member’s individual work performance (in terms of individual task proficiency, task adaptivity, and task proactivity) via team member’s self-efficacy. The consequences of different types of leader’s helping are unfolded in this study. By proposing a cross-level mediated moderation model and using valid data of 303 team members from 39 work teams, I found both autonomy-oriented help and dependency-oriented help from team leaders have differential effects on team member’s individual work performance via team member’s self-efficacy. Moreover, the path analysis of moderation uncovered that leader-member exchange relationships at the team level engender the boundary conditions on the main effect of this model.