A multilevel study of supportive leadership and individual work outcomes: The mediating roles of team cooperation, job satisfaction, and team commitment

Abstract

Due to increasing empowerment in work teams, team leaders’ supportive role in helping team members perform their tasks is deemed important. The present study aimed at exploring the multilevel dynamics involving team leaders’ supportive leadership and individual work outcomes. Longitudinal survey data were collected from 536 employees in 69 teams of a large engineering company located in South Korea. The results of multilevel structural equation modeling showed that individuals’ perceptions of supportive leadership were positively related to their subsequent task performance, and that this relationship was mediated by team commitment. The relationship between individual-level perceptions of supportive leadership and organizational citizenship behavior (OCB) was mediated by job satisfaction and team commitment. On the other hand, team cooperation mediated the relationship between team-level perceptions of supportive leadership and OCB. These findings provide meaningful insights into multilevel mediation processes involving different levels of supportive leadership perceptions.