Empowering leadership in R&D

teams: a closer look at its

components, process,
and outcomes
Yu-Qian Zhu1 and Houn-Gee Chen2
1
Department of Information Management, National Taiwan University of Science and Technology,
No. 43, Section 4, Keelung Road., Da’an District, Taipei 106, Taiwan. yuqian@gmail.com
2
Graduate School of Business Administration, National Taiwan University, No. 1, Section 4, Roosevelt
Road, Taipei 106, Taiwan. hgchen@ntu.edu.tw

Empowering leadership in R&D teams has gained increasing popularity as it provides a

balance between autonomy and control, encourages member participation and self-
leadership, and benefits creativity and innovation. This research examined the unique
influences of two behavior components of empowering leadership: group-focused empow-
ering leadership and differentiated individual-focused empowering leadership on R&D
team’s processes and team effectiveness. Using data from 54 R&D teams, we found that
group-focused empowering leadership is strongly related to intra-team collaboration, which
in turn is positively related to both team innovativeness and performance. Differentiated
individual-focused empowering leadership, however, is positively related to intra-team
competition.

1. Introduction 2003). Second, the nature of the work they provide is

knowledge-based, which is oftentimes systemic and

T he leadership of R&D teams has been reported

to be an important factor contributing to various
outcomes, such as individual and group innovation,
project and employee performance, R&D project
effectiveness, quality, employee satisfaction, and
team performances (Elkins and Keller, 2003; Hirst
and Mann, 2004; Berson and Linton, 2005; Burger
et al., 2013). Three distinct characteristics differenti-
ate R&D professionals and R&D activities from
other employees and types of work. First, R&D
teams are characterized with considerable more
autonomy than other types of teams: they typically
have greater degree of freedom in day-to-day oper-
ating decisions, such as when to work and how to
solve problems (Stoker et al., 2001; Thamhain,
continuous, and may consist of multiple, concurrent
workflows that influence each other, i.e., highly inter-
dependent (Mohrman, 2003). As the complexity of
innovation increases, R&D work often exceeds the
capacity of a single person, or a single team (Hoegl
et al., 2004). For overall performance and successful
project integration, both intra-team and inter-team
collaboration are vital (Souder and Moenaert, 1992;
Hoegl et al., 2004). Finally, the primary intent
of R&D is to develop new ideas about products,
processes, or services; thus, R&D is considered an
occupation that requires ‘professional creatives’
(Unsworth, 2001), where creativity and innovation
are vital for job performance. Due to the unique
nature of R&D activities, empowering leadership,

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Yu-Qian Zhu and Houn-Gee Chen
defined as leader behaviors where authority,
autonomy and responsibility are shared with
employees in order to enhance and encourage
employees to be more receptive and adaptive to their
work environment (Gao et al., 2011), has gained
increasing popularity in R&D management as it pro-
vides a balance between autonomy and control,
encourages member participation as well as self-
leadership, and benefits creativity and innovation
(Faraj and Sambamurthy, 2006; Zhang and Bartol,
2010).
Recent research points out that there are two dis-
tinct behavioral components of leadership: (1) those
targeted at influencing the group as a whole (e.g.,
setting goals for the whole group and providing
inspiration for the whole group); and (2) those aimed
at individual group members (e.g., setting goals for
individual members and providing individualized
coaching). The former is called group-focused lead-
ership, while the latter is termed individual-focused
leadership (Wu et al., 2010). The concept of differ-
entiated individual-focused leadership builds on the
notion of individual-focused leadership and refers to
leaders exhibiting varying levels of individual-
focused leadership behavior across different group
members, for example, treating some members better
than others, or providing more support to some
members than others (Wu et al., 2010). A critical
question concerning differentiated leadership is
whether it is beneficial or detrimental to team effec-
tiveness in R&D teams. Wu et al. (2010) reported
that differentiated individual-focused transforma-
tional leadership harms group effectiveness through
self-efficacy divergence. However, much is still left
unexplored. For example, what are the effects of
differentiated individual-focused empowering lead-
ership on other team outcomes, such as performance
and innovativeness, and through what mechanism?
To advance this line of research, this research aims
to investigate empowering leadership in R&D teams
through the lens of group-focused and differentiated
individual-focused leadership, and further explores
how they affect team innovativeness and perfor-
mance through team processes, i.e., intra-team com-
petition and collaboration.
2. Theory and hypotheses
Based on the input-process-output model, the heuris-
tic model of team effectiveness (Cohen and Bailey,
1997) suggests that team effectiveness is a function
of contextual factors and group processes, among
others. Leadership behaviors serve as a contextual
factor and influence team processes (e.g., conflicts,
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Empowering leadership in R&D teams
collaboration, and communication), which in turn
affect team effectiveness such performance and
innovativeness.
Following the heuristic model of team effective-
ness, we propose empowering leadership as the con-
textual factor in our model. Faraj and Sambamurthy
(2006) defined empowering leadership in the R&D
context to consist of three dimensions: encouraging
teamwork, encouraging self-development, and par-
ticipative goal setting. Of these three dimensions,
encouraging teamwork belongs to group-focused
empowering leadership as its influence target is a
whole group rather than individual members within
the group: the emphasis is on common ground,
shared values, and ideology of teamwork. Encourag-
ing self-development and participative goal setting
belongs to individual-focused empowering leader-
ship as leaders need to be aware of each person’s
unique skills to be able to set performance goals that
fit followers’ capabilities and to provide individual
learning opportunities. Differentiated individual-
focused empowering leadership in encouraging self-
development and participative goal setting describes
leader treating members differently in individual-
focused activities, such as providing more resources/
support to some members than others, and giving
more opportunities for individual learning to some
members than others. For team processes, we focus
on two specific forms: intra-team competition and
collaboration. These processes, accordingly, lead to
different team outcomes, such as team innovati-
veness and performance. Figure 1 delineates the pro-
posed research model.
2.1. Group-focused empowering
leadership
Group-focused leadership sets its influence target as
the whole group, rather than individual members
within the group. Empowering leaders encourage
teamwork by urging the whole team to work together
as a team and coordinate efforts with each other
(Pearce and Sims, 2002). Thus, in this study, we refer
to encouraging teamwork as group-focused empow-
ering leadership.
By nature, people are prone to have positive atti-
tudes toward collaboration. Relatedness, i.e., the
need for social connection and intimacy, is one of the
three core psychological needs of human being
(Gagne and Deci, 2005). Collaboration with other
team members can provide fulfillment of the need of
relatedness. Building upon the human need to be
related, group-focused empowering leadership
emphasizes the importance of the team to work
together as an entity and coordinate efforts with each
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Yu-Qian Zhu and Houn-Gee Chen
Group-focused + +
Intra-team
empowering
leadership collaboration
Differentiated
individual-focused + Intra-team
empowering competition
leadership
Figure 1. Proposed research model.
other; team members are likely to embrace teamwork
as a subjective norm, i.e., a perceived expectations to
perform what is expected from relevant individuals
or groups (Ajzen and Fishbein, 1980). In a team
where there is strong group-focused empowering
leadership, team members are more likely to embrace
teamwork as the right thing to do, and therefore form
positive interaction with each other and collaborate
with each other to achieve common team goals.
Drawing on the above reasoning, we predict:
H1: Group-focused empowering leadership is posi-
tively related to intra-team collaboration.
2.2. Differentiated individual-focused
empowering leadership
Individual-focused leadership has its roots in situ-
ational leadership theories, which suggest that effec-
tive leaders should vary their behavior on the basis of
follower’s individual characteristics (i.e., capabil-
ities), as well as contextual factors (Wu et al., 2010).
For the three dimensions of R&D empowering lead-
ership proposed by Faraj and Sambamurthy (2006),
encouraging self-development and participative goal
setting are considered individual-focused empower-
ing leadership as self-development opportunities, and
performance goals need to be tailored to individual
capabilities and needs.
Differentiated individual-focused empower-
ing leadership, however, captures the variation of
individual-focused leadership among team members
(Wu et al., 2010). A high level of differentiated lead-
ership signifies that the leader treats different
members differently. For example, instead of treating
all members as the same, the leader may encourage
some members to seek new opportunities to grow
more often than other members. Or the leader may sit
with some members and discuss their performance
goals with them, but give directive orders to others as
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Team
innovativeness
+
–
Team
– performance
far as performance goals are concerned. Low levels
of differentiated leadership, on the contrary, suggest
that the leader provides similar level of participation
and support for development for each team member.
Prior research has demonstrated some detrimental
effects of differentiated leadership on team member
relationship. Sherony and Green (2002) found that
coworker relationship quality increased as cowork-
ers’ similarity in leader–member exchange (LMX)
quality grew and decreased as similarity in LMX
diminished. Within-team differentiated leadership
results in the formation of subgroups in teams: an
ingroup and an outgroup, with the former enjoying a
better relationship with the leader. Social psycholo-
gists argue that the ingroup may seek positive dis-
tinctiveness through direct competition with the
outgroup; while the outgroup may try to reverse the
relative positions of the ingroup on salient dimen-
sions (Tajfel and Turner, 1979, p. 44). On a broader
scale, when leaders do not treat every member
equally, members also compete with each other for
supervisor attention (Thibaut and Kelley, 2004) and
scarce resources, such as opportunities to learn new
things, skills, and abilities etc. (Johnson and Johnson,
1989). As a result, higher differentiated individual-
focused empowering leadership may lead to higher
levels of intra-team competition. Thus, we predict the
following:
H2: Differentiated individual-focused empowering
leadership is positively related to intra-team
competition.
2.3. Intra-team collaboration and
team effectiveness
We focus on team innovativeness and team perfor-
mance as two measures of team effectiveness in the
R&D context. Collaboration supports innovation in
three ways: expertise, creative thinking skill, and
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Yu-Qian Zhu and Houn-Gee Chen
intrinsic task motivation (Amabile, 1998). In teams
that have a collaboration climate, people help and
support each other’s work, offer advice, and share
information and ideas with each other. Amabile
(1998) contended that information sharing and
cooperation heighten peoples’ enjoyment of work
and thus their intrinsic motivation. Scholars reported
that intrinsic motivation predicts R&D engineer crea-
tivity measured either with self-report or supervisor
rating (Shin and Zhou, 2003; Dewett, 2007). Creative
performance of employees, in turn, provides the basis
for innovation (Oldham and Cummings, 1996).
Meanwhile, the more often people exchange ideas
and thoughts by working together, the more knowl-
edge and expertise they will acquire. Finally, insights
and lessons learned by one member are shared so that
the whole team benefits vicariously from others’
experiences. Creativity and innovation are spurred
when diverse ideas are united or when new ideas in
one domain inspire or force fresh thinking in another
(Uzzi and Spiro, 2005). We thus expect that
intra-team collaboration directly enhances team
innovativeness.
A team’s performance also benefits in a collabora-
tive team environment. When team members col-
laborate toward a common goal, perceptions of
shared fate are created and supportive behavior is
promoted, whereby each group member looks out for
the interests of the others. Members in a collaborative
team will consider a task from a greater variety of
viewpoints, and such broader consideration is more
likely to uncover problems. As team members share
valuable information and lesson learned with each
other, so some similar mistakes are avoided and pit-
falls are shunned. Singh and Fleming (2009) reported
that joint work reduces the probability of very poor
outcomes – because of more rigorous selection pro-
cesses – while simultaneously increasing the prob-
ability of extremely successful outcomes – because
of greater recombinant opportunity in the search
process. We thus hypothesize:
H3: Intra-team collaboration is positively related to
team innovativeness.
H4: Intra-team collaboration is positively related to
team performance.
2.4. Intra-team competition and team
effectiveness
R&D work is often systemic and continuous, and
may consist of multiple, concurrent workflows that
influence each other, i.e., highly interdependent
(Mohrman, 2003). In R&D teams, each member’s
work is dependent on others. For overall performance
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Empowering leadership in R&D teams
and successful project integration, both intra-team
and inter-team collaboration are vital (Hoegl et al.,
2004). Intra-team competition, on the contrary, may
be detrimental to R&D team effectiveness. People in
competitive teams are likely to keep valuable infor-
mation proprietary. Teammates remain indifferent to
one another and avoid interacting for fear that doing
so will result in exploitation (Tjosvold, 1986), thus
damaging team cohesion and communication, which
are important contributors to team innovativeness
(Hulsheger et al., 2009). The possibility also exists
for teammates to interfere, obstruct, or in some other
way make the behavior of another less effective
(Tjosvold, 1986). Thus, intra-team competition may
have negative influences on team effectiveness in
both innovativeness and performance:
H5: Intra-team competition is negatively related to
team innovativeness.
H6: Intra-team competition is negatively related to
team performance.
2.5. Intra-team competition and
intra-team collaboration
Intra-team competition fosters a self-defensive atti-
tude (Amabile, 1998). Individuals competing with
each other focus on outperforming others and dem-
onstrating their superiority (Maurer et al., 2003). As
knowledge is deemed the most valuable asset of
knowledge-based workers, people competing with
each other are unlikely to share with each other,
thus reducing team collaboration. Competition also
reduces cohesion and team identification (Mael and
Ashforth, 1992), further hurting collaboration.
Therefore, we have:
H7: Within-team competition is negatively related to
within-team collaboration.
3. Methods
3.1. Sample and procedures
We tested the model and hypotheses with data col-
lected from a cross-sectional field study of
employees in R&D departments from a system inte-
gration company headquartered in Taiwan. With
support and help from top management teams and
two administrative assistants, roughly 100 R&D
teams in the headquarter office were invited by mail
to participate in the survey with the offer of a small
gift. Two forms of surveys were used. R&D engi-
neers answered questions about their perceptions of
empowering leadership, intra-team competition, and
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Yu-Qian Zhu and Houn-Gee Chen
Table 1. Demographic information of the sample
Manager
Gender Female (16.7%), male (83.3%)
Tenure Average 6.06 (1.4–13.4)
Team size Average 7 (3–17)
R&D engineer
Gender Female (16.8%), male (83.2%)
Tenure Average 3.1 (0.1–11)
Education College (42.9%), master’s (52.1%)
Age 20–30 (47%), 30–40 (52.5%)
collaboration. R&D managers assessed their team’s
performance and innovativeness. Team members
were matched with team manager’s self-rated perfor-
mance and innovativeness data without revealing
their identification. A total of 247 engineers and 54
managers responded; however, one survey come
back with incomplete data. We had a final usable
sample of 54 teams from 246 engineers and 54 man-
agers. Table 1 below summarizes the demographic
information of the sample.
3.2. Measures
Measures were from prior research when available.
Except for team performance and team innova-
tiveness, all measures used a scale anchored at 1
(‘strongly disagree’) and 7 (‘strongly agree’).
3.2.1. Group-focused empowering leadership
Group-focused empowering leadership measure-
ments were from Faraj and Sambamurthy’s (2006)
empowering leadership measurement of encouraging
teamwork with five items. Wording of the items was
adjusted to reflect team referent (e.g., ‘My team
leader encourages us to work together with each
other who are part of the team’).
3.2.2. Differentiated individual-focused
empowering leadership
Differentiated individual-focused empowering
leadership has two dimensions: differentiation in
encouraging self-development and differentiation
in participative goal setting. Encouraging self-
development (five items) and participative goal
setting (three items) were from Faraj and
Sambamurthy’s (2006) empowering leadership
measurement. Measures use a scale anchored at 1
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Empowering leadership in R&D teams
(‘strongly disagree’) and 7 (‘strongly agree’). Differ-
entiated leadership falls into Chan’s (1998) disper-
sion composition model, where within-group
variation conveys the substantive meaning of a con-
struct. Following Wu et al. (2010), we operationalize
differentiated leadership with the coefficient of
variation (Allison, 1978). Because there are two
dimensions – encouraging self-development and par-
ticipative goal setting – two scores were calculated
for each team.
3.2.3. Intra-team competition
Intra-team competition was measured with Mael and
Ashforth (1992). The original scale was developed to
measure perceived competition among students
attending the same school, and some items may not
be readily applied in the work setting. Thus, items
were adjusted and the wording of the scale was modi-
fied to fit the working context.
3.2.4. Intra-team collaboration
As collaboration has been studied mostly at the
organizational or business unit level, measures
of collaboration at the functional team level have
been very limited. Thus, the measures of intra-team
collaboration blended prior research from several
scholars into one scale. It synthesized scale items
used in Aram and Morgan (1976) for collective
problem solving, Aram and Morgan (1976) for help
and support, Lin et al. (2010) for collaborative
working, and last Singh and Avital (2007) for task
coordination.
3.2.5. Team performance
Team performance was from Faraj and Sambamurthy
(2006). We use a 1–5 scale, ranging from well below
average to well above average.
3.2.6. Team innovativeness
Team innovativeness was measured with Lovelace
et al.’s (2001) four items, with a 1–5 scale from well
below average to well above average. This too was
assessed by team managers of their own teams
against other R&D teams with which they were
familiar with.
4. Analyses and results
4.1. Aggregation, reliability, and validity
To support the aggregation of intra-team collabora-
tion and intra-team competition, we calculated
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Table 2. Reliability and AVE of constructs
AVE Composite
reliability
1. Differentiated individual-focused 0.63 0.76
leadership
2. Group-focused leadership 0.84 0.96
3. Intra-team collaboration 0.87 0.96
4. Intra-team competition 0.54 0.82
5. Team innovativeness 0.58 0.85
6. Team performance 0.67 0.86
AVE, average variance extracted.
indicators of inter-rater agreement, reliability, as well
as reliability of group mean. Three indicators were
used: rwg(j) indicates the level of agreement among
raters within the same team, ICC1 reflects the pro-
portion of variance in ratings due to team member-
ship, and ICC2 demonstrates the reliability of team
mean differences.
For intra-team competition, ICC1 was 0.24,
median rwg(j) was 0.91, and ICC2 was 0.58. For
intra-team collaboration, ICC1 was 0.14, median
rwg(j) was 0.97, and ICC2 was 0.42. Although the
ICC1 and rwg(j) values are in line with prior research
involving aggregation (Hofmann and Stetzer, 1996,
1998), the ICC2 value of intra-team collaboration is
on the low side. The slightly less reliable mean, i.e.,
lower ICC2 value, is a result of the relatively small
group size (Bliese, 1998). Similar to unreliability at
the individual level, which attenuates observed rela-
tionships, this unreliability will likely attenuate rela-
tionships observed at the group level (Bliese, 1998).
Thus, results presented with lower ICC2 should be
interpreted as conservative in light of the possible
attenuation.
Reliability gauged by composite reliability was
examined. All composite reliabilities are greater than
0.7 for measures in this research, as reported in
Table 2. Convergent validity is gauged by examining
the average variance extracted (AVE). Items associ-
ated with a given construct should be greater than
0.50, indicating more than half of the variance is true
score instead of error (Fornell and Larcker, 1981). As
Table 2 indicates, all constructs exhibit high conver-
gent validity. Discriminant validity is estimated by
comparing the construct correlations with the square
root of AVE of the construct. In this method, the
square root of AVE should be greater than the corre-
lation between construct pairs (Fornell and Larcker,
1981). Table 3 contains the construct correlations,
and on the diagonal the square root of AVE (in bold).
It demonstrates that all of our constructs have good
discriminant validity.
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4.2. Hypothesis testing
We test our hypotheses with partial least squares
(PLS) technique using the SmartPLS package
(Ringle et al., 2014) as it is better suited for small
sample sizes (Reinartz et al., 2009). The PLS estima-
tion results for the structural model are summarized
below in Figure 2.
In sum, results provided support for most hypoth-
eses and the overall model with our data. Specifi-
cally, H1–H4 and H7 all received full support, while
H5 and H6 failed to be supported. Group-focused
empowering leadership is strongly related to intra-
team collaboration, which in turn is positively related
to both team innovativeness and performance. Dif-
ferentiated individual-focused empowering leader-
ship positively predicts intra-team competition.
Intra-team competition, as predicted, is negatively
related to intra-team collaboration. The effects
of intra-team competition on team innovativeness
and performance, however, remain unclear. Extant
research investigating the impact of competition on
innovation has reported similar result, with no sig-
nificant relationship between competition and team
innovativeness (Tjosvold et al., 2004). One possibil-
ity is that the relationships among intra-team compe-
tition, team creativity, and performance are more
complicated than direct links. There may be complex
mechanisms, such as mediation or moderation
involved, particularly in the R&D environment.
5. Discussion and conclusion
In this study, we took a closer look at empower-
ing leadership through the group-focused and differ-
entiated individual-focused lens, and found that
although empowering leadership as a whole is posi-
tively related to team effectiveness (Faraj and
Sambamurthy, 2006), details concerning how it is
administered can also make a huge difference in
outcomes.
5.1. Theoretical contribution
We add to the R&D management literature in two
ways. First, instead of treating empowering leader-
ship as an overall concept, we look into the behavior
components of empowering leadership – group-
focused and differentiated individual-focused – and
explore each component’s unique contribution/
effects to team effectiveness. Thus, we contribute to
the empowering leadership literature with details and
insights concerning the proper use of empowering
leadership with the group-focused and differentiated
individual-focused lens.
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Table 3. Correlations among the variables and square root of AVE

1 2 3 4 5 6

1. Differentiated individual-focused leadership 0.80 – – – – –

2. Group-focused leadership −.50** 0.92 – – – –
3. Intra-team collaboration −0.32* 0.73** 0.93 – – –
4. Intra-team competition 0.27** −0.26** −0.38** 0.73 – –
5. Team innovativeness −0.27* 0.33* 0.38** −0.16 0.76 –
6. Team performance −0.14 0.24 0.31* −0.10 0.54** 0.82
N = 54 teams.
*P < 0.05,**P < 0.01.
AVE, average variance extracted.

#1 #2 #3 #4 #5 #1 #2 #3 #4 #1 #2 #3 #4
0.955 0.94 0.92
92 0.87 0.96 0.94 0.94 0.90 0.89 0.82 0.71 0.62

Group-focused Team
Intra-team 0.38**
empowering innovativeness
leadership 0.68** collaboration

0.32**

– 0.20**

– 0.02

Differentiated
0.28**
individual-focused Intra-team Team
empowering competition performance
0.02
leadership

0.99 0.52 0.71 0.92 0.79

0.81 0.71 0.76 0.73
Participative Encouraging self- #1 #2 #3 #4 #1 #2 #3
goal setting development
divergence divergence

Figure 2. Results of the structural equation modeling (SEM) model with latent constructs.
Notes: N = 54. Standardized factor loadings and path coefficients are presented. All factor loadings are significant at the 0.05 level.
**P < 0.01.

Second, this research extends our understanding of 5.2. Managerial implications

how R&D team leaders influence team innovative-
ness and performance through innovation-enabling or
hindering group processes. We investigate a pair of
important, albeit rarely discussed team processes:
intra-team competition and collaboration. We explore
how leadership behaviors, although unintended, may
lead to unwanted group process of intra-team compe-
tition as an outcome, and how intentionally focusing
on the team as a whole could lead to better team
process in the form of collaboration.
This research offers interesting insights and implica-
tions for R&D managers who intend to use empow-
ering leadership for their teams.
First, group-focused leadership that empha-
sizes teamwork enhances team collaboration, and
team collaboration is vital for both team inno-
vativeness and team performance. Thus, managers
who want to empower their teams should first and
foremost stress the importance of teamwork and

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Yu-Qian Zhu and Houn-Gee Chen
collaboration, which would substantially enhance
their team innovativeness and performance.
Second, although encouraging self-development
and participative goal setting are effective tools for
empowering the team, managers should use these
tools with caution. Managers should not display
favoritism toward some members out of the whole
team. Otherwise, knowing that someone is getting
more than others, team members are likely to
compete with each other for more and better oppor-
tunities, which will hurt intra-team collaboration, the
vital factor for team innovativeness and performance.
5.3. Limitations and conclusion
As with most research, the results of this study
should be interpreted in consideration of several limi-
tations, which highlight important avenues for future
research. First, the cross-sectional nature of the study
does not allow for any conclusions regarding causal
relationships. Future research would benefit from
testing within a longitudinal design. Second, our
sample came from one large organization in a single
country high on collectivism; thus, our results should
be viewed with caution when generalizing to other
culture (e.g., more individualism) and to organiza-
tions small and medium in size. Future research
would benefit from studying different-sized organi-
zations in different types of culture. Finally, our
research focuses on the effects of group-focused
empowering leadership and differentiated individual-
focused empowering leadership on team processes
and outcomes, while the relationship between these
two leadership types, and the relationship between
team performance and team innovativeness, are not
discussed. Future research could further explore
these relationships to enhance our understanding of
the interplay between these factors.
To conclude, as far as empowering team members
are concerned, leaders should be advised that differ-
entiation between treatments of team members may
cause team members to compete with each other,
which hampers team collaboration, and should be
avoided when possible. Managers should emphasize
on the importance of collaboration among team
members to achieve better team performance and
innovativeness.
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Yu-Qian Zhu is Assistant Professor in the Depart-
ment of Information Management, National Taiwan
University of Science and Technology. She holds a
PhD in Management of Technology from National
Taiwan University. Her research interests include
knowledge management, technology adoption, and
management of information system development
teams. Yu-Qian can be contacted at yuqian@
gmail.com.
Houn-Gee Chen is Professor at the College of Man-
agement, National Taiwan University. He earned his
PhD from the University of Wisconsin, Madison.
Prior to joining National Taiwan University, he was a
faculty member at the University of Notre Dame and
National Tsing Hua University. His research interests
include e-commerce, management information
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Yu-Qian Zhu and Houn-Gee Chen Empowering leadership in R&D teams

systems, information technology, project manage- My team leader encourages me to develop my

ment, and software quality. He has published nearly skills and abilities.
90 articles in refereed journals like Information and My team leader encourages me to learn by extend-
Management, Decision Sciences, Communications of ing myself.
ACM, IEEE Transactions, Journal of MIS, Journal My team leader encourages me to develop myself.
of AIS, Database, International Journal of Man- 2. Intra-team collaboration
Machine Studies, Computers and OR, and others. He Sources: Aram and Morgan (1976); Singh and
serves at the Editorial Board for many international Avital (2007); Lin et al. (2010).
journals. Houn-Gee can be reached at hgchen@ My team members work collaboratively as a team
ntu.edu.tw. to achieve goals.
My team members provide support and help to
each other.
My team members collaborate to find the best
Appendix A. Measurement items solution to problems.
My team members coordinate efforts with each
1. Empowering leadership
other.
Source: Faraj and Sambamurthy (2006).
3. Intra-team competition
Encourage Teamwork (Group-Focused Leadership)
Source: Mael and Ashforth (1992).
My team leader encourages members to work
In my team you feel left out unless you compete
together with other individuals who are part of the
with each other.
team.
The competition at my team was intense.
My team leader encourages cooperation among
My team members find it painful when others were
members of the team.
getting ahead.
My team leader urges members to work as a
My team members try to outdo each other at
team with other individuals who are part of the
impressing the manager.
team.
4. Team innovativeness
My team leader emphasizes the importance of
Source: Lovelace et al. (2001).
working together for a common goal.
Compared to other R&D teams you are familiar
My team leader advises members to coordinate my
with, how well does your team perform in . . .
efforts with other individuals who are part of the
the innovativeness of my team’s product
team.
the number of innovations or new ideas introduced
Participative Goal Setting (Individual-Focused
by my team
Leadership)
my team’s overall technical performance
My team leader and I sit down together and reach
my team’s adaptability to changes.
agreement on my performance goals.
5. Team performance
My team leader works with me to develop my
Source: Faraj and Sambamurthy (2006).
performance goals.
Compared to other R&D teams you are familiar
My team leader and I work together to decide what
with, how well does your team perform in . . .
my performance goals should be.
adherence to schedules
Encourage Self Development (Individual-Focused
adherence to budgets
Leadership)
extent to which the product meets the design
My team leader encourages me to learn new things.
objectives
My team leader encourages me to seek out oppor-
tunities to learn.

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4, 2016 Ltd