(Mt) – Cumbersland University Geographically Dispersed Teams Questions

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PERSONNEL PSYCHOLOGY 2016, 69, 159–198 EMPOWERING LEADERSHIP AND EFFECTIVE COLLABORATION IN GEOGRAPHICALLY DISPERSED TEAMS N. SHARON HILL The George Washington University KATHRYN M. BARTOL University of Maryland Our research integrates theoretical perspectives related to distributed leadership in geographically dispersed teams with empowering leadership theory to build a multilevel model of virtual collaboration and performance in dispersed teams. We test the model with procurement teams in a major multinational corporation. Our results show a significant cross-level effect of empowering team leadership, such that under conditions of high empowering team leadership, a team member’s virtual teamwork situational judgment (VT-SJ) is positively and significantly associated with his or her virtual collaboration behaviors and also indirectly with his or her individual performance in the team. At the team level, our findings also suggest that the impact of empowering leadership on team members’ aggregate virtual collaboration, and indirectly on team performance, increases at higher levels of team dispersion. These findings shed important light on the role of team leadership in fostering effective collaboration and performance of geographically dispersed virtual teams. To support major strategic initiatives in areas such as globalization, outsourcing, and strategic partnering, organizations are increasingly turning to the use of geographically dispersed teams in which members rely on technology to collaborate virtually in the team. Dispersed or virtual teams offer many potential advantages (Martins, Gilson, & Maynard, 2004; Rosen, Furst, & Blackburn, 2006), including the ability to have the most technically qualified individuals work on tasks regardless of location while also offering opportunities for sizable cost savings resulting from reduced travel. With such potential benefits, it is small wonder that organizations have an increasing interest in the utilization of such teams (Martins et al., 2004; Rosen et al., 2006). At the same time, reports point to special challenges individuals face in their collaborations with dispersed Correspondence and requests for reprints should be addressed to N. Sharon Hill, The George Washington University, School of Business, 315F Funger Hall, 2201 G Street, NW, Washington, DC 20052; nshill@gwu.edu. C 2015 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. doi: 10.1111/peps.12108 159 160 PERSONNEL PSYCHOLOGY team members (for reviews, see Axtell, Fleck, & Turner, 2004; Martins et al., 2004; O’Leary & Cummings, 2007). For example, research shows that geographic dispersion may impede effective information sharing, coordination, problem solving, building trust, and constructively resolving conflicts with others on the team (Cramton, 2001; Cramton & Webber, 2004; Hill, Bartol, Tesluk, & Langa, 2009; Hinds & Mortensen, 2005; Jarvenpaa & Leidner, 1999; Joshi, Lazarova, & Liao, 2009; O’Leary & Cummings, 2007). In the face of such challenges, numerous scholars have pointed to the potential importance of team leaders in promoting virtual collaboration that contributes to high levels of performance in dispersed teams (e.g., Bell & Kozlowski, 2002; Blackburn, Furst, & Rosen, 2003; Malhotra, Majchrzak, & Rosen, 2007; Martins et al., 2004; Weisband, 2008; Zigurs, 2003). In their major theorizing about leadership in dispersed teams, Bell and Kozlowski (2002) suggested that the challenges of collaboration in such teams and the attendant difficulty in monitoring team member behaviors require distributing leadership functions to team members while, at the same time, fostering collaboration among them. Yet the limited existing empirical research related to distributed forms of leadership in dispersed teams has focused on leadership as it relates to use of information and communication tools in teams (e.g., Rapp, Ahearne, Mathieu, & Rapp, 2010; Surinder, Sosik, & Avolio, 1997; Wakefield, Leidner, & Garrison, 2008) and/or failed to consider geographic dispersion in the team (e.g., Pearce, Yoo, & Alavi, 2004). One form of leadership that embodies Bell and Kozlowski’s (2002) recommended approach is empowering leadership. Due to its combination of sharing power with team members while also providing a facilitative and supportive environment (Arnold, Arad, Rhoades, & Drasgow, 2000; Srivastava, Bartol, & Locke, 2006), empowering leadership appears to be particularly well suited to helping team members meet the demands of collaborating in a dispersed teamwork environment. Hence, the overall purpose of this study is to evaluate the extent to which distributing leadership to team members by way of empowering leadership promotes more effective virtual collaboration and ultimately performance in dispersed teams. We define virtual collaboration as collaborative behaviors that promote interactions that support geographically dispersed teamwork. In their theorizing, Bell and Kozlowski (2002) noted that distributing leadership functions to dispersed teams creates an environment that facilitates each team member applying relevant knowledge and judgment in order to successfully collaborate virtually with other team members. This is paramount in dispersed teams because each member faces challenges unique to his or her local dispersed circumstances. Further, as a result of being separated from others in the team, each team member must HILL AND BARTOL 161 regulate his or her own behaviors and performance in the team. Accordingly, taking a multilevel approach, we examine the extent to which an empowering leadership team context moderates the influence of individual virtual teamwork situational judgment (VT-SJ) on team member virtual collaboration, and ultimately team member performance. VT-SJ reflects Bell and Kozlowski’s (2002) emphasis on each member of a dispersed team having “attributes to be able to . . . operate in a virtual environment” (p. 26). As such, VT-SJ describes an individual’s knowledge about successful virtual collaboration strategies and how to apply that knowledge to formulate effective responses in geographically dispersed teamwork situations. Existing research related to individual characteristics in dispersed teams has largely been concerned with relatively stable personality characteristics or personal orientations that either adversely influence or aid computer-mediated interactions (e.g., Staples & Webster, 2007; Tan, Wei, Watson, Clapper, & McLean, 1998; Workman, Kahnweiler, & Bommer, 2003). Our focus on VT-SJ responds to calls for greater attention to the role of individual differences in dispersed teams (Kirkman, Gibson, & Kim, 2012) by examining a characteristic—knowledge and judgment about operating effectively in dispersed team situations—that can potentially be developed. In addition, we extend leadership research that goes beyond the existing predominant focus on team-level effects to consider how team leadership, as a team-level stimuli, might have cross-level effects on important individual-level processes in teams (e.g., Chen & Kanfer, 2006; Chen, Kirkman, Kanfer, Allen, & Rosen, 2007). Building further on Bell and Kozlowski’s (2002) theorizing about dispersed team leadership, we argue that empowering team leadership will play a more important role in fostering the virtual collaboration and performance of the team as a whole as geographic dispersion in the team increases. This is because the challenges of collaborating virtually can be expected to intensify as the level of team dispersion increases (O’Leary & Cummings, 2007). This line of inquiry adds to the limited research that has explicitly measured geographic dispersion in conjunction with leadership effects in dispersed teams (for exceptions, see Cummings, 2008; Gajendran & Joshi, 2012; Hoch & Kozlowski, 2014; Joshi et al., 2009). At the same time, it contributes to emerging leadership research that seeks to shed light on situations in which empowering team leadership is more or less effective (e.g., Chen, Sharma, Edinger, Shapiro, & Fahr, 2011; Mathieu, Ahearne, & Taylor, 2007; Yun, Faraj, & Sims, 2005). In summary, we build a theoretical model that makes three important contributions to research on dispersed teams as well as empowering leadership research. First, we contribute to theory on leadership in geographically dispersed teams (Bell & Kozlowski, 2002) by integrating 162 PERSONNEL PSYCHOLOGY Team Geographic Dispersion Empowering Team Leadership Virtual Teamwork Situational Judgment Team Virtual Collaboration Team Member Virtual Collaboration Team Performance Team Member Performance Figure 1: Theoretical Model. notions of distributed leadership in such teams with those of empowering leadership theory. In doing so, we support contentions regarding the value of more distributed forms of leadership in dispersed teams (Bell & Kozlowski, 2002) while also extending empowering leadership theory to the dispersed team realm. Second, by exploring the cross-level moderating effect of empowering leadership in strengthening the impact of VT-SJ on a team member’s virtual collaboration, we support the notion that distributed leadership facilitates a team member’s use of relevant attributes to enhance virtual collaboration (Bell & Kozlowski, 2002). Our focus on VT-SJ also extends the limited literature on individual differences in dispersed teams (Hertel et al., 2005; Kirkman et al., 2012) by moving beyond the predominant focus on stable personality traits to highlight a team member characteristic that can potentially be developed to improve individual virtual collaboration and ultimately performance in the team. Finally, at the team level, our study supports Bell and Kozlowski’s (2002) notion that distributed forms of leadership, such as empowering leadership, will be more impactful in teams with greater geographic dispersion, ultimately enhancing team performance (Nauman, Mansur Khan, & Ehsan, 2010; Pearce et al., 2004; Zhang, Tremaine, Egan, Milewski, O’Sullivan, & Fjermestad, 2009). In this way, the present research also contributes to empowering leadership theory by demonstrating an important new boundary condition for empowering leadership effects on dispersed team outcomes. Our multilevel model is shown in Figure 1. HILL AND BARTOL 163 Theory and Hypothesis Development Dispersed teams consist of geographically distributed coworkers who interact using a combination of telecommunications and information technology to accomplish an organizational task (Townsend, DeMarie, & Hendrickson, 1998). In this section, we use Bell and Kozlowski’s (2002) theorizing about leadership in dispersed teams as a foundation to develop the multilevel theoretical model for this study. The model shows empowering leadership as an important factor for promoting effective virtual collaboration behaviors and, ultimately, performance of both individual team members and the dispersed team as a whole. We first consider the cross-level effect of empowering leadership in creating a team context in which a team member is more likely to apply his or her knowledge about strategies for effective virtual teamwork in support of virtual collaboration with distributed teammates. These collaborative behaviors then facilitate a higher level of performance for the individual team member operating within the team. At the team level, we build a model wherein the influence of empowering leadership on the team’s aggregated virtual collaboration is moderated and strengthened by the degree of team geographic dispersion, with ultimate implications for team performance. Empowering Leadership, VT-SJ and Team Member Virtual Collaboration In the context of virtual teamwork, there is considerable support in the related literature for the notion that geographically dispersed teams face challenges that require team members to engage in collaborative behaviors tailored to their dispersed circumstances (e.g., Byron, 2008; Cramton, 2001; Hinds & Bailey, 2003; Hinds & Weisband, 2003; Jarvenpaa & Leidner, 1999; O’Leary & Cummings, 2007). Virtual collaboration refers to behaviors enacted by a team member in support of effective interactions with teammates in geographically dispersed teamwork environments. We argue that empowering leadership plays an important role in facilitating the process through which team members enact such behaviors. In their theorizing about distributed team leadership, Bell and Kozlowski (2002) noted the importance of each member of a dispersed team having attributes that enable them to operate in a virtual environment. However, at the same time, they highlighted the critical role of team leaders in creating a team context that allows each member to make best use of these attributes for collaborating virtually with distributed team members. Such factors are critical in a dispersed team in which members are separated from one another and potentially face challenges unique to their local work environment. Each team member must therefore self-regulate behavior in ways that promote effective virtual collaboration 164 PERSONNEL PSYCHOLOGY with teammates (Bell & Kozlwoski, 2002; Mohrman, 1999). Based on this theoretical perspective, we focus on VT-SJ as an important team member attribute that allows a team member to engage in more effective virtual collaboration behaviors and conceptualize empowering team leadership as a team contextual factor that strengthens this relationship. More specifically, we predict that empowering leadership and VT-SJ will interact to influence team member virtual collaboration. We next consider further both empowering leadership and VT-SJ before describing their joint relevance to collaboration in geographically dispersed teams. Empowering leadership in geographically dispersed teams. Empowering leadership has been defined as leader behaviors that involve sharing power with subordinates, raising their level of intrinsic motivation, and creating a supportive environment for team members to leverage the power afforded them (Arnold et al., 2000; Srivastava et al., 2006; Zhang & Bartol, 2010). These behaviors include leading by example, participative decision making, coaching, informing, and showing concern (Arnold et al., 2000). Empowering leadership is consistent with the distributed leadership approach in the theoretical perspective put forth by Bell and Kozlowski (2002). It is also congruent with commentary by other researchers who have proposed that leader behaviors that share or distribute influence are likely to be particularly functional in a teamwork environment characterized by dispersion of team members and the attendant lack of face-to-face contact (Hertel et al., 2005; Kahai, Sosik, & Avolio, 2004; Pearce et al., 2004). For instance, Hertel et al. (2005) also noted the difficulty for leaders of maintaining close control when team members are dispersed and suggested using principles of delegation to shift some influence to team members. Team member virtual teamwork situational judgment. Bell and Kozlowski (2002) noted that effective virtual teamwork requires team member characteristics related to collaborating effectively in a virtual environment. Consistent with this stance, Hertel et al. (2005) and others (e.g., Kirkman et al., 2012; Shin, 2004) have pointed to the need to focus more research attention on individual attributes that are directly related to being able to function effectively in a dispersed, technology-mediated team environment. Team member virtual teamwork situational judgment (VT-SJ) is an individual characteristic that is particularly relevant to operating effectively in a dispersed team context. In general, situational judgment refers to the extent to which an individual has knowledge about how to deal most effectively with everyday situations encountered in a particular work context and the ability to apply that knowledge to formulate an appropriate response to situations that arise (for a review, see Chan, 2006). Individuals with high situational judgment tend to be more effective at identifying and responding to HILL AND BARTOL 165 situational cues in a particular domain and, therefore, are better positioned to respond to situational demands that they encounter in their daily work. A growing body of research supports using situational judgment tests to assess situational judgment related to specific work domains. That research has shown that domain-specific situational judgment accounts for incremental validity in predicting performance-related behaviors in that domain over measures of cognitive ability and other common individual measures, such as personality measures (for a review, see meta-analysis by McDaniel, Hartman, Whetzel, & Grubb, 2007). Related to this, performance theory recognizes the importance of both having job-related knowledge and being able to apply that knowledge to different job situations (Campbell, McCloy, Oppler, & Sager, 1993; McCloy, Campbell, & Cudeck, 1994). In this study, we focus on virtual teamwork situational judgment (VT-SJ), which reflects an individual’s knowledge about the challenges of technology-mediated collaboration in dispersed teams and appropriate courses of action in situations that commonly arise when working with others in such teams. We next consider the role of a team member’s VT-SJ, in conjunction with empowering team leadership, for promoting effective virtual collaboration behaviors. The interactive effect of empowering leadership and VT-SJ. Based on past research reviewed above that has shown the positive impact of situational judgment related to a particular work domain on performancerelated behaviors in that domain, we expect a team member with a higher level of VT-SJ to be better equipped to formulate effective responses to challenges encountered in geographically dispersed teamwork situations, and hence to be more effective in collaborating virtually with distributed teammates. Further, we expect a higher rather than lower empowering context to play a facilitating and enabling role in strengthening the connection between VT-SJ and virtual collaboration. In considering what constitutes virtual collaboration, Hertel et al. (2005) reviewed the literature to propose a team competency model for virtual teamwork consisting of categories of behaviors that should be particularly functional for effective interactions under technology-mediated, geographically dispersed team circumstances. In addition, reviews by other researchers (e.g., Axtell et al., 2004; Kirkman et al., 2012; Powell, Piccoli, & Ives, 2004; Shin, 2004) point to similar categories of behaviors. First, virtual collaboration requires that a team member uses technology appropriately so as to communicate virtually with distributed teammates in a way that reduces the increased potential for misunderstandings, negative attributions, and adverse impact on the development of shared understanding among team members (Cramton, 2001; Hinds & Weisband, 2003). This need derives from the fact that the greater reliance on technology to communicate due to team member dispersion (O’Leary & Cummings, 166 PERSONNEL PSYCHOLOGY 2007; Kirkman & Mathieu, 2005) reduces contextual and nonverbal cues that help to clarify the intended meaning of messages (Daft & Lengel, 1986). Second, virtual collaboration also involves taking the initiative to interact with others in a highly supportive and responsive manner (Jarvenpaa & Leidner, 1999) in order to overcome the coordination missteps that can result from geographically dispersed team situations (O’Leary & Cummings, 2007) and to build task-based trust, a primary source of trust in a virtual team (Jarvenpaa & Leidner, 1999). This type of interaction is characterized by frequent, predictable, and supportive communication; substantive responses to requests for information and input; and consistently meeting commitments (Jarvenpaa & Leidner, 1999). Finally, virtual collaboration requires that a team member works constructively across the boundaries in a dispersed team resulting from differences in team member perspectives and work approaches associated with distribution across multiple work locations (Hinds & Bailey, 2003; Hinds & Mortensen, 2005). Bridging these differences is notably more challenging in a distributed team environment due to the diversity of contexts typically involved (Bell & Kozlowski, 2002; Cramton, 2001; Jarvenpaa & Leidner, 1999; O’Leary & Cummings, 2007). While noting the importance of individual attributes for aiding virtual collaboration in dispersed teams, Bell and Kozlowski (2002) also suggest that a team member who is able to share power with the leader will be better positioned to self-regulate performance by applying virtual teamwork relevant attributes to collaborate virtually with others in the team. This notion is consistent with research suggesting that empowering leadership creates an environment that motivates and facilitates the process of team members utilizing their capabilities to work more effectively in the team (Chen & Kanfer, 2006; Chen et al., 2011). It also aligns with general person-situation interactionist theoretical perspectives proposing that situational factors can limit the extent to which individual differences result in expected behaviors that are consistent with those differences (for a review, see Meyer, Dalal, & Hermida, 2010). Finally, it is congruent with propositions and evidence from team research showing that team contextual factors can act as facilitators of or constraints on team member processes (Chen & Kanfer, 2006; Chen et al., 2007) We predict that a team member operating in a team context characterized by high levels of empowering team leadership is likely to use VT-SJ more effectively to collaborate virtually with team members than one operating in a low empowering leadership team context. There are several reasons why empowering leadership is likely to positively moderate the relationship between VT-SJ and a team member’s virtual collaboration. High rather than low empowering team leadership entails more modeling of appropriate actions, giving team members more examples that they HILL AND BARTOL 167 can adapt using their virtual teamwork situational judgment in order to improve collaboration with others. The greater degree of participative decision making associated with higher empowering team leadership also affords a team member more latitude to use virtual teamwork situational judgment in collaborating virtually. Further, more coaching on the part of a high empowering team leader should encourage greater use of situational judgment capabilities with virtual collaboration. Finally, it is easier to incorporate VT-SJ to formulate effective responses to virtual collaboration situations when team leadership is more rather than less empowering because such a leader provides an individual with more relevant information and shows greater concern and support for the team member’s actions. In summary, we expect that VT-SJ is more likely to translate into effective team member virtual collaboration when team empowering leadership is high rather than low. These individuals, when functioning under a high level of empowering leadership, should have the power to use their knowledge and ability to develop more appropriate responses to the challenges of distributed teamwork they encounter as compared to their counterparts in low empowering leadership team contexts. Hypothesis 1: Empowering leadership moderates the positive relationship between team member virtual teamwork situational judgment (VT-SJ) and a team member’s virtual collaboration, such that this relationship is stronger when empowering leadership is high. Team Member Performance We predict that more effective virtual collaboration with others in a dispersed team should improve a team member’s performance in the team. Past theoretical and empirical research has shown that, in teamwork settings, working well with others and responding to their needs is a means by which individuals can achieve a higher level of individual performance (e.g., Barry & Stewart, 1997; Farh, Seo, & Tesluk, 2012; Shaw, Duffy, & Stark, 2000; Welbourne, Johnson, & Erez, 1998). Hence, in a dispersed team, a team member’s ability to engage in collaborative behaviors that address the demands of distributed teamwork should enhance a team member’s performance. We have proposed earlier that the influence of team member VT-SJ on team member virtual collaboration is partially contingent on empowering team leadership (Hypothesis 1). Considered in combination with the expectation that team member virtual collaboration positively relates to individual team member performance, this suggests that there is an indirect (mediated) relationship between VT-SJ and team member performance 168 PERSONNEL PSYCHOLOGY through team member virtual collaboration that is contingent on the level of team empowering leadership. This type of relationship is commonly referred to as a conditional indirect effect or moderated mediation effect (Edwards & Lambert, 2007; Preacher et al., 2007). Further, because we have predicted that high empowering leadership strengthens the positive relationship between VT-SJ and team member virtual collaboration, this indirect effect should be stronger at higher than at lower levels of empowering team leadership. This cross-level moderated mediation hypothesis constitutes Hypothesis 2. Hypothesis 2: Empowering team leadership moderates the positive indirect effect of team member virtual teamwork situational judgment (VT-SJ) on team member performance through team member virtual collaboration, such that this indirect effect is stronger at higher levels of empowering leadership. Empowering Leadership, Team Geographic Dispersion, and Team Virtual Collaboration In addition to its cross-level influence on the relationships linking team member VT-SJ to team member collaboration and performance, we also consider the impact of empowering leadership on the aggregate level of virtual collaboration enacted by members of the team. We henceforth refer to aggregate virtual collaboration at the team level as team virtual collaboration to distinguish it from individual team member virtual collaboration discussed in the previous section. We expect empowering leadership to have a direct positive impact on team virtual collaboration that is moderated by the team’s geographic dispersion. These predictions are consistent with Bell and Kozlowski’s (2002) theorizing related to leadership in dispersed teams. There are several reasons why empowering leader behaviors might help to promote effective collaboration behaviors in dispersed teams. For instance, participative leadership along with leader coaching and support can provide the team with the leeway and confidence to experiment in finding ways to effectively use technology for communicating virtually within the dispersed team (Colquitt, LePine, Hollenbeck, Ilgen, & Sheppard, 2002; Kirkman, Rosen, Tesluk, Gibson, 2004). Empowering team leadership has also been shown to foster a collaborative team context (Srivastava et al., 2006), which should make team members more responsive to each other and more willing to take the initiative to help the team. Finally, empowering leadership can be expected to solicit behaviors associated with collaborating across the differences that exist in HILL AND BARTOL 169 geographically dispersed teams and leveraging the different perspectives and work approaches members bring to the team. The aforementioned collaborative context and spirit of experimentation engendered by empowering leadership behaviors, as well as the consideration for others that results when empowering leaders show concern for dispersed team members, should result in team members being more likely to seek and value each other’s ideas and perspectives. It should also result in a greater tendency for team members to work to mitigate the potentially dysfunctional conflicts that can arise in the team as a result of team-member and work-context differences. More generally, through leading by example, empowering leaders can model appropriate behaviors for interaction among dispersed team members. Given the likelihood of greater diversity of members and work practices in dispersed teams, as well as the reduced opportunity for face-to-face interaction, such modeling along with team leader coaching behaviors should be useful in signaling and creating a shared understanding of effective norms and patterns of interaction. With regard to the interaction between empowering leadership and team geographic dispersion, past research has shown that the level of geographic dispersion in a team is an important contingency that determines the degree of team relevance of leadership behaviors (Cummings, 2008; Gajendran & Joshi, 2012; Hoch & Kozlowski, 2014; Joshi et al., 2009; Morgeson, DeRue, & Karam, 2010). This is because geographic dispersion in a team can be considered as a continuum and teams that are higher on this continuum tend to experience greater challenges that can complicate team processes and undermine the production of needed outcomes (Cramton & Webber, 2004; Cummings, 2008; Gajendran & Joshi, 2012; Gibson & Gibbs, 2006; Hinds & Mortensen, 2005; Joshi et al., 2009; O’Leary & Cummings, 2007; Schweitzer & Duxbury, 2010). Related theoretical perspectives that support the prescription of team leaders sharing leadership functions with distributed team members also propose that these leader behaviors will increase in importance as team dispersion increases (Bell & Kozlowski, 2002; Hertel et al., 2005). Yet the amount of research that has considered the geographic dispersion issue empirically in conjunction with distributed team leadership has been somewhat limited (for exceptions, see Cummings, 2008; Gajendran & Joshi 2012; Hoch & Kozlowski, 2014; Joshi et al., 2009), and we are not aware of any published empirical research that has addressed the team geographic dispersion issue with respect to empowering leadership. Relevant to this gap, we expect empowering leadership to have a stronger impact on team virtual collaboration in teams with higher rather than lower levels of geographic dispersion. As noted earlier, our focus on empowering leadership is based on the notion that leadership in geographically dispersed teams calls for distributing leadership functions 170 PERSONNEL PSYCHOLOGY to team members while at the same time generating high levels of intrinsic motivation to engage in more effective virtual collaboration with others (Bell & Kozlowski, 2002). Greater dispersion in the team increases the challenges of collaboration and makes it more difficult for leaders to directly monitor individual team members and intervene to address these challenges. Hence, at high rather than low levels of geographic dispersion, the increased intrinsic motivation and power to act elicited by high empowering leadership behaviors becomes more important for producing needed virtual collaboration. Kirkman et al. (2004) used similar arguments to support their prediction and finding that team empowerment has a stronger relationship to team effectiveness in teams with less opportunity for face-to-face interaction. They argued that less face-to-face interaction would result in a greater tendency to exhibit “distrust and information hoarding, unwillingness to take risks and learn from mistakes, and even inaction and paralysis” (Kirkman et al., 2004, p. 180), resulting in a greater need for empowered team members to overcome these behaviors. Similarly, we have argued that empowering leadership, which past research has shown to impact team empowerment (e.g., Kirkman & Rosen, 1999), can help to overcome these team behaviors that are detrimental to a team’s virtual collaboration. Hence, we hypothesize the following: Hypothesis 3: Team geographic dispersion moderates the positive relationship between empowering team leadership and a team’s virtual collaboration, such that this relationship is stronger when team geographic dispersion is high. Team Performance More effective team virtual collaboration should improve overall team performance because team virtual collaboration involves behaviors on the part of team members that collectively promote effective geographically dispersed teamwork. Hypothesis 3 predicts that team geographic dispersion moderates the positive effect of empowering leadership on team virtual collaboration. Considered in combination with the expected positive effect of team virtual collaboration on team performance, this suggests a moderated mediation effect whereby the indirect (mediated) effect of empowering leadership on team performance through team virtual collaboration is contingent on the level of team geographic dispersion. In addition, because we expect geographic dispersion to strengthen the positive relationship between empowering leadership and team virtual collaboration, the indirect effect should be more strongly positive at higher rather than lower levels of geographic dispersion. HILL AND BARTOL 171 Hypothesis 4: Team geographic dispersion moderates the positive indirect effect of empowering leadership on team performance through team virtual collaboration, such that this indirect effect is stronger at higher levels of geographic dispersion. Methods Sample and Data Collection We tested the study hypotheses with data collected via online surveys from a sample of geographically dispersed teams in the procurement organization of a large multinational company. These teams were well-suited to testing hypotheses related to distributed teamwork. They ranged in size from 3 to 26 with an average team size of 9.27. Sixty percent of the teams were cross-functional global commodity procurement teams. These teams comprised buyers in different geographic areas who were collectively responsible for purchasing commodities to address the needs of the global organization. Team members had to collaborate to develop and implement global procurement strategies for managing the company’s total spend for a commodity. The remaining teams were cross-functional procurement process improvement teams responsible for identifying and implementing improvements to the company’s global procurement processes. Team members had to work collaboratively to share information, analyze current procurement processes, as well as develop and implement globally integrated process improvements to meet the needs of the different procurement organizations around the world. Discussions with organizational representatives confirmed that the teams engaged in tasks of similar levels of complexity that required team members to work interdependently. Leaders across the teams in the sample also reported a mean level of task interdependence of 5.4 on a scale of 1 to 7 (SD = 1.18), providing further evidence that these teams engaged in interdependent work. Team members completed two different surveys. The first survey completed by each team member is referred to as the focal team member survey and provided data on a member’s virtual teamwork situational judgment and the individual control variables in the study. Each team member then completed a second survey 2 weeks later. Using this second survey, team members provided data on the extent of empowering team leadership on the part of the team leader. In addition, each team member assessed the virtual collaboration of three to five other members of the team (peers) who were randomly selected by the research team (e.g., Arthaud-Day, Rode, & Turnley, 2012; Erez, Lepine, & Elms, 2002; Tasa, Taggar, & 172 PERSONNEL PSYCHOLOGY Seijts, 2007). We used this peer data to compute a virtual collaboration score for each member of the team. A total of 250 team members working in 29 dispersed teams were sent survey links. We received responses from 194 team members (78% response rate). Team leaders also completed two surveys. The first survey provided data on team-level control variables and team performance. On the second survey, the team leader separately rated the performance of each team member. The team member database consisted of the data from the focal team member survey (VT-SJ and individual-level controls) matched with each team member’s virtual collaboration score (computed using peer data from the second team member survey) and the team member’s performance rating received from the team leader. Consistent with related research (e.g., Chen, 2005; Srivastava et al., 2006), we used peer data only for cases in which at least two peer ratings were available for the focal team member. The team-level database consisted of the team leader’s empowering leadership rating (using data from the second team member survey) as well as team-level controls and team performance data provided by the team leader. The final sample used in the study consisted of data for 193 focal team members (77% of total focal team members surveyed) in 29 teams. Team members in the final sample were 66% male with a mean age of 47 years and a mean tenure in the procurement organization of 3.7 years. Among the members, 66% were White, 12% Asian, 8% Hispanic, 6% Black, and 8% from other ethnic groups. Measures Unless otherwise noted, a 7-point Likert scale ranging from 1 = strongly disagree to 7 = strongly agree was used for the survey measures. Empowering team leadership. We measured empowering leadership with the 5-factor empowering leadership scale used by Srivastava et al. (2006) and based on Arnold et al. (2000). Each factor had three items: leading by example (e.g., “Leads by example”), participative decision making (e.g., “Gives all team members a chance to voice their opinions”), coaching (e.g., “Teaches team members how to solve problems on their own”), informing (e.g., “Explains the team’s goals”), and showing concern for/interacting with the team (e.g., “Shows concern for team members’ success”). Team members indicated the extent to which each statement described the leader of their team using a scale of 1 = does not describe the team leader at all to 7 = describes the team leader extremely well. CFA on the empowering leadership measure showed acceptable fit for a model with five first-order factors (the five dimensions) and one secondorder factor (χ2 = 249.39, df = 86, p

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