EMPOWERING LEADERSHIP AND TEAM EFFECTIVENESS – THE MEDIATING ROLE OF DIGITAL MATURITY

This study surveyed 88 employees spread over 25 small working teams at Royal Schiphol Group, Holland to explore the mediating role of digital team maturity in the relationship between empowering leadership and team effectiveness. Using the input-process-output (IPO) model to frame the construct, this study explores the role of digital team maturity as process variable. Employees empowered by their leader spend more time at growth and development of new skills. Teams with higher digital maturity show higher innovativeness and better performance compared to other teams. Results show that there is no mediating role of digital team maturity between empowering leadership and team effectiveness. Also, there is no positive relation found between empowering leadership and digital team maturity. This study did find a positive relation between digital team maturity and team effectiveness, which is in line with expectations and an addition to the understanding of what processes are beneficial for team effectiveness. Translated to daily practice this means that spending time and money in ways to improve digital maturity of teams, can be an enabler for improving team effectiveness.