Participative climate, team job crafting and leaders' job crafting: a moderated mediation model of team performance

Purpose Despite increasing interest in team performance, particularly in team-based work environment, the literature is underdeveloped in explaining the mechanisms that lead to team performance. The purpose of this paper, a team-level research, is to advance the understanding of one of the mechanisms that explains how participative climate relates to team performance by studying the roles of team job crafting and leader job crafting in the process. Design/methodology/approach A moderated mediation model of team performance is tested through causal mediation analysis of the R mediation package using multi-sourced data collected from 250 team members working in 58 teams in the software development industry (about participative climate and team job crafting) and from their respective 58 team leaders (about leader job crafting and team performance) through online survey questionnaires. Findings The results indicate that teams with the perception of a higher level of participative climate are more likely to engage in team job crafting, which, in turn, leads to team performance. However, the data do not support the hypothesized moderating effect of the leader's job crafting. Practical implications The findings offer implications for practitioners in designing policies that improve team job performance by better understanding one of the mechanisms through which team performance is improved. The study would potentially guide practitioners on the importance of developing a participating climate in job crafting and team performance. Originality/value This study not only contributes to the job crafting literature by introducing participative climate as one of the important antecedents to team job crafting, but also enriches the literature on team effectiveness by explaining and empirically demonstrating the role of team job crafting in the link between participative climate and team performance. To the best of our knowledge, the current study is the first one to conceptualize the role of leaders' job crafting in participative climate, team job crafting, and team performance relationships.