Can Empowering Leadership Increase New Product Development Performance in China: The Destructive Role of Error Aversion Culture

Abstract

Empowering leadership has been widely recognized as an effective approach to enhancing new product development performance in Western countries. However, it was not so prevalent in Chinese R&D team management. This study reported here examined the relationship between empowering leadership and new product development performance (i.e., new product creativity, and new product development speed) by focusing on the mediating effect of job autonomy, direct and moderating effects of error aversion culture to find out the reasons. Data collected from a two-wave survey involving 107 superiors and 387 subordinates in 107 R&D teams in China was used to conduct analysis of hierarchical multiple regression. The results revealed two key findings. Firstly, empowering leadership was found to have no significant association with new product development speed which was the primary performance target for Chinese R&D teams. Secondly, while empowering leadership was positively associated with new product creativity when mediated by job autonomy, the widespread presence of an error aversion culture in China significantly reduced job autonomy within R&D teams and negatively moderated the relationship between empowering leadership and job autonomy. Consequently, empowering leadership had no impact on new product creativity when error aversion culture was high. The implications of these findings were discussed in the context of Chinese R&D teams, aiming to highlight potential avenues for improving new product development performance through leadership interventions.

Keywords

empowering leadership job autonomy error aversion culture new product development performance

Introduction

In the past four decades, China has experienced rapid economic growth and emerged as a major global consumer market (Bei, 2022; Fu et al., 2020). In response to the increasing demands of consumers, Chinese companies have significantly increased their investments in research and development (R&D) to develop innovative new products at a rapid pace (Wang et al., 2020). Notably, Chinese high-tech firms have led the world in terms of R&D expenditure according to data from the National Bureau of Statistics of China. This growing investment in R&D has paved the way for the rise of high-tech multinational giants such as Huawei, Tencent, and Alibaba in China. Consequently, effective management of new product development in R&D teams has become an area of great importance for these high-tech companies. Therefore, there is a pressing need to explore the strategies for managing R&D teams to improve new product development performance in China, considering their theoretical and practical implications.

Ammeter and Dukerich (2002) emphasized the integral role of effective leadership behavior in team management. Previous studies have demonstrated the positive impact of various leadership styles, such as transformational leadership, shared leadership, servant leadership, authentic leadership, charismatic leadership and empowering leadership, on team performance (G. Chen et al., 2023; Cremers & Curşeu, 2023; Edelbroek et al., 2023; Fareed et al., 2023; Farrukh et al., 2023; Luu, 2023; Prabhu & Modem, 2023; Worley et al., 2020; Yin et al., 2023). Among these styles, empowering leadership has been recognized as particularly effective in team management (Arnold et al., 2000; S. Zhang et al., 2018). Empowering leadership is characterized by the sharing of power with subordinates and the enhancement of their intrinsic motivation (Srivastava et al., 2006). By granting sufficient authority, leaders offer employees a conducive working environment that allows for more innovative thinking, thereby improving the organization’s innovation performance (Lorinkova et al., 2013). Consequently, empowering leadership is highly favored in Western organizations, especially in the management of R&D teams.

However, in practical management, Chinese R&D teams tend to adopt more mechanistic leadership styles, such as paternalistic and authoritarian leadership (Zeng et al., 2009; S. F. Zhang et al., 2022). This raises the critical question of whether empowering leadership can also yield positive new product development performance in Chinese R&D team management and the potential reasons why empowering leadership may not be as effective in this context. Unfortunately, these issues have been largely overlooked in previous research, highlighting the need for further exploration and a deeper understanding of the factors at play in Chinese high-tech firms.

In additional, the theory of organizational-based self-esteem (OBSE) and research on empowering leadership suggested that when employees were authorized and have much job autonomy, they would feel trusted and respected by the organization, thereby making them initially and produce good job performance (Donald, 2020; Pierce & Gardner, 2004). Thus, this study takes job autonomy into the research as a mediating actor between empowering leadership and new product development performance in R&D teams.

Moreover, OBSE believed that a negative organizational environment can weaken employees’ organizational self-esteem, thereby diminishing their enthusiasm and initiative at work (Korman, 1970; Pierce & Gardner, 2004). It is thus likely that error aversion culture as a more significant negative organizational environment by compared to Western countries (R. Chen, 2022; van Dyck et al., 2005) is related to undermine employees’ job autonomy and destroy the effect of empowering leadership on R&D team’s job autonomy as it will undermine target employee’s self-esteem. Therefore, combined with the theory of OBSE, this study will explore the relationship between error aversion culture and job autonomy of the R&D team, as well as the moderating effect on the relationship between empowering leadership and job autonomy in R&D teams, so as to provide conditional boundary of empowering leadership on managing R&D teams in China.

In sum, this study aims to investigate the impact of empowering leadership on the new product development performance of R&D teams, with job autonomy as a mediating factor. It will also explore how error aversion culture will undermine this relationship. By doing so, we hope to shed light on the reasons why empowering leadership is not widely practiced in the management of Chinese R&D teams, despite its proven effectiveness in Western organizations. The research model is shown as Figure 1.

Figure 1.

Research framework.

Literature and Hypothesis Development

Empowering Leadership and New Product Development Performance

The research of empowering Leadership is originated from the super leadership theory proposed by Manz and Sims (1991), which believed that super leadership was a behavior that helps subordinates achieve self-leadership. Later, in the research of expanding the “transactional-transformational” leadership model, Pearce and Sims (2002) reclassified leadership to include directive leadership, transactional leadership, transformational leadership, and empowering leadership, which formally established empowering leadership as an independent concept, and attracted numerous scholars’ attention. They believed that empowering leadership was a process of sharing power with subordinates (Kirkman & Rosen, 1999; Strauss, 1963). However, Arnold et al. (2000) reviewed the literature on empowering leadership and concluded that empowering leadership was not only a situational authorization behavior in which leaders shared power with subordinates and gave subordinates decision-making power, but also a psychological authorization. They defined “empowering leadership as the process of implementing conditions that enable sharing power with an employee by delineating the significance of the employee’s job, providing greater decision-making autonomy, expressing confidence in the employee’s capabilities, and removing hindrances to performance.” Therefore, Arnold et al. (2000) believed that as an empowering leader, they should have the abilities including: (1) Leading by example, which leaders should use their own work successful performance to influence team members to take the initiative to work; (2) Participative decision-making, which leaders should actively refer to the opinions of team members to make decisions and recognize their work performance; (3) Coaching, which leaders should teach and help team members to make them become more confident; (4) Informing, which leaders should share important information about the company or work mission to team members; (5) Showing concern, which leaders should express general concern on the welfare of members.

A large number of studies have shown that empowering leadership have a significant positive effect on improving team performance (Cremers & Curşeu, 2023; Srivastava et al., 2006). Z. Y. Wu and Peng (2019) conducted an empirical study on Chinese medium-sized enterprises and found that empowering leadership can significantly improve the ambidextrous innovation performance of R&D teams. Tang et al. (2020) also found on the study of 84 technical teams in China that by sharing and granting power to team members, empowering leadership can help the team improve innovation performance more efficiently. In other words, in China, the implementation of empowering leadership by high-tech R&D team leaders is likely to improve the R&D team’s new product development performance significantly. Moreover, Ganesan et al. (2005) believed that new product development performance should be measured from two dimensions including new product creativity and new product development speed. Therefore, in consideration of the above, we propose that:

Hypothesis 1a. Empowering leadership is positively related to new product creativity of R&D team.

Hypothesis 1b. Empowering leadership is positively related to new product development speed of R&D team.

The Mediating Role of Job Autonomy

The concept of job autonomy originated from the research of Turner and Lawrence (1965) on the structure of job characteristics, who defined job autonomy as the freedom degree for employees to achieve their job tasks from the perspective of freedom degree. Later, most studies were carried out from this perspective. For example, Bailyn (1985) believed that job autonomy refers to the degree to which individuals can freely determine work methods and work arrangements, and measured job autonomy from two dimensions of freedom degree to determine what to do and how to do jobs; Breaugh (1985) put forward a more generally accepted viewpoint that job autonomy was the degree to which employees can control and determine their own work methods, standards and arrangements, and divided job autonomy into three dimensions including work method autonomy, work scheduling autonomy and work criteria autonomy. Langfred (2007) further promoted the research in this field from the perspective of work initiative, suggested that job autonomy referred to the proactive work behavior of subordinates with decision-making power from authorization.

OBSE believed that employees’ positive personal work experience will enhance their organizational self-esteem, which in turn will enhance employees’ self-efficacy (Pierce & Gardner, 2004). In view of the fact that job autonomy will bring employees a certain degree of freedom for autonomous decision-making, which will bring positive work experience to employees, thus, a large number of studies have found that job autonomy often leaded to good work performance (Giebels et al., 2016; Msuya & Kumar, 2022; Preenen et al., 2016; Ulrych, 2022). Y. X. Wu et al. (2018) conducted an empirical study on the research of 45 R&D teams in China and found that job autonomy would enable team members to be given higher power to make decisions independently at work, and there would be more opportunities for them to arrange work freely which helped adopting flexible working methods in response to existing problems, thereby improving team innovation performance. W. Zhang et al. (2017) conducted research from the perspective of technological innovation effect and found that job autonomy empowered team members have the freedom to choose the method for completing tasks, so it will stimulate the team to have higher innovative behaviors and innovation performance. That is, the higher the job autonomy of the R&D team, the more likely it is to promote the R&D team to produce higher new product creativity. Tai and Liu (2007) conducted research from the perspective of technological innovation efficiency, and found that the higher the job autonomy, the higher the convenience and speed would be for employees to handle problems, which means that the higher job autonomy of R&D team, the faster the development speed of new products would be. Therefore, in consideration of the above, we propose that:

Hypothesis 2a. Job autonomy is positively related to new product creativity of R&D team.

Hypothesis 2b. Job autonomy is positively related to new product development speed of R&D team.

According to OBSE, work environmental structures are important factors affecting employees’ organizational self-esteem. In organic organizations, a good working environment will make employees felt fully attention and trusted in the organization, which will enhance employees’ organizational self-esteem and generate positive proactive behaviors (Pierce & Gardner, 2004). Leadership behavior is often an important factor affecting the structure of organizational work environment (Glambek et al., 2023). Arnold et al. (2000) pointed out that the most important function of empowering leadership was to give employees or groups more decision-making powers. By sharing and gaining more leadership power, employees or groups can be more confident in finishing their work. That is, empowering leadership is an important means for enhancing job autonomy of employees or teams. The research of Gao and Jiang (2019) also confirmed that empowering leadership had a significant positive effect on employees’ job autonomy. That is to say, the impact of empowering leadership on new product development performance of R&D team including new product creativity and new product development speed, is likely to be achieved by promoting R&D teams’ job autonomy. That is, the more empowered employees are, the stronger their job autonomy will be, leading to better job performance (Martin et al., 2013). Therefore, this study believes that the high empowering leadership will promote R&D team members have high job autonomy, thereby leading to better new product development performance. Thus, taken the above arguments together, we propose that R&D team’s job autonomy services as a mediator in the relationship between empowering leadership and new product development performance of R&D team:

Hypothesis 3a. Job autonomy mediates the relationship between empowering leadership and new product creativity of R&D team.

Hypothesis 3b. Job autonomy mediates the relationship between empowering leadership and new product development speed of R&D team.

The Moderating Role of Error Aversion Culture

Work errors refer to unconscious deviations from plans, goals and feedback procedures due to insufficient knowledge and experience (Du & Chen, 2019). It is inevitable for employees to make mistakes at work. However, while the organization ignores the mistakes, undesirable consequences will be produced, thereby comes the error management culture (L. Li, 2016). van Dyck et al. (2005) put forward the concept of error aversion culture for the first time when studying the theory of error management culture, and believes that error aversion culture is an important negative dimension of error management culture, which refers to the cultural atmosphere that organizational members are afraid of making errors at work and will try their best to avoid mistakes or conceal mistakes.

OBSE believed that the work environment will have a significant impact on employees’ organizational self-esteem, and a bad organizational environment will weaken employees’ organizational self-esteem, thereby discouraging employees’ enthusiasm and initiative at work (Korman, 1970; Pierce & Gardner, 2004). Generally speaking, in a work environment with a high-error aversion culture, people will be more inclined to work passively to avoid taking responsibility and risks caused by work errors (Lei et al., 2016; Love & Smith, 2016; Matthews et al., 2022). Therefore, this study believes that the higher the error aversion culture exists in the R&D team, the weaker the job autonomy of R&D team will be, and the effect of empowering leadership impacting new product development performance through job autonomy may be even insignificant. From this, it can be seen that error aversion culture is likely to be the important boundary variable for destroying or weakening the impact of empowering leadership on R&D team’s new product development performance.

In addition, some studies on the direct and moderating effect of error aversion culture provide us with indirect evidence regarding the direct and moderating role played in the relationship between empowering leadership and job autonomy of R&D team. For example, Du and Chen (2019) found that error aversion culture negatively affected job embeddedness, thereby reducing employees’ dedication and willingness to sacrifice. That is to say, under the cultural atmosphere of error aversion, job autonomy of employees will become more negative. S. J. Wu et al. (2020) examined the relationship between authentic leadership on employees’ deviant innovation, and tested the moderating effect of error aversion culture on the above relationship. The results showed that error aversion culture negatively moderated the relationship between authentic leadership on employees’ deviant innovation. In consideration of the above, we propose that:

Hypothesis 4. Error aversion culture is negatively related to job autonomy of R&D team.

Hypothesis 5. Error aversion culture moderates the relationship between empowering leadership and job autonomy, such that the relationship is weaker for high error aversion culture than for low error aversion culture.

Method

Sample

Participants in this study were R&D team’s superior and their subordinates from 50 high-tech firms in a national economic development zone in North China. In order to reduce the common method bias, two-wave data collection were conducted over 10 months (Podsakoff et al., 2003).

In the first-wave survey (T1), with the assistant of local government and human resource managers of the firms, we administered 138 coded questionnaires to R&D team superiors and 479 coded questionnaires to their direct subordinates. Superiors were asked to provide information on their demographics (age, gender, and tenure), and evaluated new product creativity and new product development speed of their R&D team. Subordinates were asked to evaluate the empowering leadership of their superiors. All participants were explained the purpose of the codes and were assured of the confidentiality of their answers. In 2 months, we obtained 136 questionnaires from superiors and 471 questionnaires from subordinates, which representing a response rate of 98.6% and 98.3% respectively.

Six months later, in the second-wave survey (T2), with the assistant of local government and human resource managers of the firms, we administered 115 coded questionnaires to the previous superiors and 413 coded questionnaires to the previous subordinates while 21 superiors and 58 subordinates were out of reach or quite the job. Superiors were asked to evaluate job autonomy of their R&D team. Subordinates were asked to evaluate the error aversion culture of their team. In 2 months, we obtained 111 questionnaires from superiors and 394 questionnaires from subordinates, which representing a response rate of 96.5% and 95.4% respectively.

By matching the two waves’ questionnaires and excluding the team less than three members, a total of 107 R&D team samples including 107 superiors and 387 subordinates were qualified for hypothesis testing. Of those superiors, 71.0% were male; the average age was 34.4 years (SD = 5.3); their average tenure was 8.9 years (SD = 6.0); and 6.5% holding no degree, 21.5% holding Bachelor’s degree, 47.7% holding master’s degree, 24.3% holding Phd degree.

Measurement

Measures of empowering leadership, job autonomy, error aversion culture and new product development performance used a five-point scale. As all measures were originally constructed in English, this study strictly follows translation–back translation procedure to ensure equivalency of meaning (Brislin, 1970).

Empowering Leadership

A twelve-item scale developed by Ahearne et al. (2005) and later used by X. Zhang and Bartol (2010) in the Chinese context was used to measure superiors’ empowering leadership. Subordinates were asked to evaluate this scale. The Cronbach’s alpha for this study was .88.

Job Autonomy

A seven-item scale developed by Kirmeyer and Shirom (1986) and later used by Liu and Yang (2017) in the Chinese context was used to measure R&D team’s job autonomy. Superiors were asked to evaluate this scale. The Cronbach’s alpha for this study was .94.

Error Aversion Culture

A seven-item scale developed by van Dyck et al. (2005) and later recompiled and used by J. R. Li and Li (2016) in the Chinese context was used to measure R&D team’s error aversion culture. Subordinates were asked to evaluate this scale. The Cronbach’s alpha for this study was .91.

New Product Creativity

A six-item scale developed by Ganesan et al. (2005) and later used by L. Wu et al. (2017) in the Chinese context was used to measure R&D team’s new product creativity. Superiors were asked to evaluate this scale. The Cronbach’s alpha for this study was .93.

New Product Development Speed

A four-item scale developed by Ganesan et al. (2005) and later used by L. Wu et al. (2017) in the Chinese context was used to measure R&D team’s new product development speed. Superiors were asked to evaluate this scale. The Cronbach’s alpha for this study was .85.

Control Variables

Followed by Zhou et al. (2023), this study controlled superiors’ age, gender, tenure and education as they might have potential effects on empowering leadership. Age and tenure were self-reported in years. Gender was dummy-coded with male coded as “0” and female coded as “1.” Gender was dummy-coded with “0” = holding no degree, “1” = holding Bachelor’s degree, “2” = holding Master’s degree, “3” = holding Phd degree.

Results

Aggregation Test

In this study, the theoretical model is on group-level construct. Followed by Rego et al. (2018), variables of job autonomy, new product creativity and new product development speed evaluated by superiors are no need for data aggregation, and variables of empowering leadership and error aversion culture evaluated by subordinates needs to be aggregated into group-level data. According to James et al. (1984), we calculated the within-group interrater reliabilities of empowering leadership and error aversion culture by using R_wg, ICC(1), and ICC(2) to justify aggregation while value of R_wg, should above 0.7, value of ICC(1) should above 0.05 and value of ICC(2) should above 0.5. Result showed that values of R_wg, ICC(1), and ICC(2) of empowering leadership were 0.98, 0.50, and 0.78 respectively, and values of R_wg, ICC(1), and ICC(2) of error aversion culture were 0.96, 0.53, and 0.80 respectively. These results supported aggregating empowering leadership and error aversion culture into the group-level data.

Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFAs)

Confirmatory factor analyses (CFAs) with AMOS 17.0 was used to examine the convergent and discriminant validity of all multiple-item variables. We first examined the fit of a five-factor model including empowering leadership (EL), job autonomy (JA), error aversion culture (EAC), new product creativity (NPC) and new product development speed (NPDS). As shown in Table 1, the proposed five-factor model demonstrated acceptable fit (χ2/df = 1.497, RMSEA = 0.068, CFI = 0.913, TLI = 0.906) with all the factor loadings were significant, demonstrating convergent validity. Moreover, as reported in Table 1, the five-factor model fitted the data considerably better than any of the alternative models did, providing evidence of the construct distinctiveness of empowering leadership, job autonomy, error aversion culture, new product creativity and new product development speed. Thus, the distinctiveness of the five constructs in this study was supported.

Table 1.

Results of CFAs for the Measures of the Variables Studied.

Model	Factors	χ²	df	RMSEA	TLI	CFI
Five-factor model	EL, JA, EAC, NPC, NPDS	874.224	584	0.068	0.906	0.913
Four-factor model-1	EL + JA, EAC, NPC, NPDS	1464.824	588	0.119	0.718	0.736
Four-factor model-2	EL + EAC, JA, NPC, NPDS	1647.259	588	0.130	0.659	0.682
Four-factor model-3	EL, JA + EAC, NPC, NPDS	1608.084	588	0.128	0.671	0.693
Four-factor model-4	EL, JA, EAC + NPC, NPDS	1424.176	588	0.116	0.731	0.749
Four-factor model-5	EL, JA, EAC, NPC + NPDS	1007.123	588	0.082	0.865	0.874
One-factor model	EL + JA + EAC + NPC + NPDS	2881.355	594	0.191	0.271	0.312

Note. RMSEA = root-mean-square error of approximation; TLI = Tucker–Lewis index; CFI = comparative fit index.

Descriptive Statistics

Table 2 summarized the means, standard deviations, and zero-order Pearson correlations of all main variables and controlled variables. As reported in Table 2, empowering leadership was positively correlated with job autonomy (r = .24, p < .05) and new product creativity (r = .25, p < .01). Job autonomy was positively correlated new product creativity (r = .48, p < .01), new product development speed (r = .31, p < .01), and was negatively correlated with error aversion culture (r = −.21, p < .05). In addition, new product creativity was positively correlated with new product development speed (r = .40, p < .01). These results provided initial support for our further hypotheses test.

Table 2.

Means, Standard Deviations, and Correlations.

Variables	1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9
1. Superior’s age	1.00
2. Superior’s gender	0.07	1.00
3. Superior’s tenure	0.75**	0.02	1.00
4. Superior’s education	−0.01	−0.07	−0.45**	1.00
5. Empowering leadership	−0.08	−0.15	−0.13	0.22*	1.00
6. Job autonomy	0.24*	0.02	0.17	0.10	0.24*	1.00
7. Error aversion culture	−0.21 *	−0.02	−0.19*	−0.01	0.00	−0.21*	1.00
8. New product creativity	0.15	−0.12	0.04	0.29**	0.25**	0.48**	−0.02	1.00
9. New product development speed	0.55**	0.03	0.46**	0.22*	0.12	0.31**	−0.14	0.40**	1.00
Mean	34.43	0.29	8.91	1.90	3.39	3.58	2.53	3.40	3.86
SD	5.29	0.46	6.04	0.85	0.36	0.65	0.52	0.65	0.62

Note. N = 107. Gender is coded “0” = male, “1” = female. Education is coded “0” = holding no degree, “1” = holding Bachelor’s degree, “2” = holding Master’s degree, “3” = holding Phd degree.

p < .01. *p < .05.

Hypotheses Test

Hierarchical multiple regression analysis was conducted to test Hypotheses by entering in the control variables (i.e., superior’s age, gender, tenure and education), independent variable (i.e., empowering leadership), mediator variable (i.e., job autonomy), and moderator variable (i.e., error aversion culture, job autonomy × error aversion culture) on separate steps. Table 3 presented the results.

Table 3.

Results of Hypotheses Test.

	New product creativity			New product development speed			Job autonomy
	Model 1	Model 2	Model 3	Model 4	Model 5	Model 6	Model 7	Model 8	Model 9
Control variables
Superior’s age	−0.01	0.02	−0.04	0.11	0.12	0.11	0.11	0.15	0.11
Superior’s gender	−0.09	−0.07	−0.09	0.04	0.06	0.05	0.02	0.05	0.04
Superior’s tenure	0.22	0.20	0.14	0.60**	0.58**	0.57**	0.17	0.14	0.09
Superior’s education	0.38**	0.33*	0.28*	0.49**	0.46**	0.45**	0.18	0.11	0.10
Independent variable
Empowering leadership		0.20*	0.09		0.11	0.08		0.26**	0.22*
Mediator
Job autonomy			0.41**			0.12
Moderator
Error aversion culture									−0.21*
Interaction
Empowering leadership × error aversion culture									−0.25**
R ²	.13	.16	.31	.44	.45	.46	.07	.13	.22
F	3.73**	3.98**	7.54**	19.85**	16.46**	14.34**	2.00	3.14*	3.90**
ΔR²	.13	.03	.15	.44	.01	.01	.07	.06	.09
ΔF	3.73**	4.45*	21.36**	19.85**	2.07	2.50	2.00	7.18**	5.16**

Note. N = 107.

p < .01. *p < .05.

Hypothesis 1a and 1b proposed that superior’s empowering leadership was positively related to new product creativity and new product development speed of R&D team respectively. As shown in Table 3, empowering leadership was positively associated with new product creativity of R&D team (M2, β = .20, p < .05), but no relationship with new product development speed of R&D team (M5, β = .11, p > .05). Thus, hypothesis 1a was supported, and hypothesis 1b was not supported.

Hypothesis 2a and 2b proposed that job autonomy was positively related to new product creativity and new product development speed of R&D team respectively. As shown in Table 3, job autonomy was positively associated with new product creativity of R&D team (M3, β = .41, p < .01), but no relationship with new product development speed of R&D team (M6, β = .12, p > .05). Thus, hypothesis 2a was supported, and hypothesis 2b was not supported.

Hypothesis 3a proposed that job autonomy mediated the relationship between empowering leadership and new product creativity of R&D team while hypothesis 3b proposed that job autonomy mediated the relationship between empowering leadership and new product development speed of R&D team. Baron and Kenny (1986) suggested that a full mediation was supported when four conditions were met: (1) the independent variable (i.e., empowering leadership) was significantly related to the mediator (i.e., job autonomy); (2) the independent variable was significantly related to the dependent variable (i.e., new product creativity and new product development speed); (3) the mediator was significantly related to the dependent variable; and (4) when the mediator was present, the relationship between the independent and the dependent variable became non-significant.

As shown in Table 3, the results indicated that (1) empowering leadership was positively associated with job autonomy of R&D team (M8, β = .26, p < .01), and (2) the relationship between empowering leadership and new product creativity of R&D team became non-significant (M3, β = .09, p > .05) after entering job autonomy. According to the criteria suggested by Baron and Kenny (1986), and combined with the tested results of hypothesis 1a, hypothesis 1b, hypothesis 2a and hypothesis 2b, job autonomy mediated the relationship between empowering leadership and new product creativity, but played no mediating effect on the relationship between empowering leadership and new product development speed. Thus, hypothesis 3a was supported, and hypothesis 3b was not supported.

Besides the most widely used procedure suggested by Baron and Kenny (1986), bootstrap method recommended by Hayes (2013) was also used to see whether the mediation effect was significant. Hayes (2013) pointed out that the mediation effect would be significant when the mediating effect value interval with 95% confident included no zero. As shown in Table 4, bootstrapping results showed that there was a positive and significant mediation effect of job autonomy on the association between empowering leadership and new product creativity (mediation effect value = 0.195, 95% confidence interval: [0.077, 0.343] included no zero) but no significant mediation effect on the association between empowering leadership and new product development speed (mediation effect value = 0.056, 95% confidence interval: [−0.006, 0.189] included zero). Therefore, Hypothesis 3a received further support, and Hypothesis 3b was not supported.

Table 4.

Bootstrap Testing Results for the Mediating Effect of Job Autonomy.

Direct path	Indirect path	Mediating effect	95% Confidence interval
EL → NPC	EL → JA → NPC	0.195	[0.077, 0.343]
EL → NPS	EL → JA → NPDS	0.056	[−0.006, 0.189]

Hypothesis 4 proposed that error aversion culture was negatively related to job autonomy of R&D team. As shown in Table 3, error aversion culture was negatively associated with job autonomy of R&D team (M9, β = −.21, p < .05), supporting hypothesis 4.

Hypothesis 5 proposed that error aversion culture moderated the relationship between superior’s empowering leadership and job autonomy of R&D team. Table 3 shown that the interaction between error aversion culture and empowering leadership was negatively related to job autonomy of R&D team (M9, β = −.25, p < .01), and the interaction effect accounted for 9% of the explained variance in job autonomy (ΔR² = .09, ΔF = 5.16, p < .01). hypothesis 5 was thus supported.

The nature of the significant interactions was examined by plotting figures with values plus and minus one standard deviation from the means of error aversion culture and empowering leadership (Cohen et al., 2003). Figure 2 provided a clear illustration of the interactions by demonstrating the influence patterns through slope analyses. As shown in Figure 2, superior’s empowering leadership was more positively related to job autonomy of R&D team when error aversion culture was Low (β = .47, p < .01), but were unrelated to job autonomy of R&D team when error aversion culture was high (β = −.03, ns). These influence patterns further supported hypothesis 5.

Figure 2.

The interactive effect of empowering leadership and error aversion culture on job autonomy.

Discussion and Conclusion

Results revealed that the use of empowering leadership by R&D team superiors positively influenced the development of subordinates’ job autonomy. In turn, job autonomy was found to promote new product creativity within the R&D teams. Job autonomy mediated the relationship between empowering leadership and new product creativity in Chinese R&D teams. Therefore, hypotheses 1a, 2, and 3a were supported, indicating that empowering leadership positively affects job autonomy, which leads to enhanced new product creativity. Interestingly, neither the superior’s empowering leadership nor the R&D team’s job autonomy had a significant impact on the speed of new product development (hypotheses 1b and 3b were not supported). Furthermore, we found that error aversion culture decreased R&D team’s job autonomy and negatively moderated the relationship between empowering leadership and R&D team’s job autonomy, thus hypotheses 4 and 5 were supported. The theoretical contributions and managerial implications of this study were discussed as below.

Theoretical Contributions

Our study makes several contributions to the understanding of empowering leadership in the context of Chinese R&D teams. First, our study confirmed that empowering leadership positively predicted new product creativity in Chinese R&D teams. This result was consistent with the results of Srivastava et al. (2006), Carmeli et al. (2011), and Hsu et al. (2023) based on Western and Eastern organizational scenarios, demonstrating that empowering leadership was a cross-cultural and universal leading way in improving innovation performance. It suggests that empowering leadership can foster a positive and inclusive work environment, enabling team members to think more leisurely, have more time to communicate each other and absorb more new knowledge, thereby developing new product with better creativity. Given the significant advancements in major scientific and technological achievements and the increasing number of international patents from China, we believe that empowering leadership will play a pivotal role in the future of innovation in China, as the demand for original and technological innovations continues to grow. Additionally, in the context of Chinese organizations, the impact of empowering leadership on new product creativity aligns with the concept of “face culture.” In Chinese society, when employees are empowered, they gain the trust and attention of their leader and peers. In order to avoid losing face, empowered R&D teams strive harder to overcome challenges and innovate new products with greater creativity.

Secondly, this study found that empowering leadership, while having a positive impact on new product creativity for R&D teams, does not significantly contribute to the speed of new product development. This finding may partially explain why empowering leadership is not as prevalent as authoritarian and paternalistic leadership styles in Chinese R&D teams, where efficiency in product development often takes precedence over unique originality and creativity in a highly competitive market. Empowering leadership involves reducing supervision, which may lead to a loss of control over the overall pace of work, potentially decreasing the efficiency and speed of new product development. In contrast, authoritarian and paternalistic leadership styles can enforce longer working hours and strict adherence to team schedules, resulting in higher performance in terms of new product development speed. Consequently, when empowering leadership fails to deliver high efficiency outcomes, it tends to be used less frequently in Chinese R&D team management. This finding diverges from the conclusions drawn by Srivastava et al. (2006) and Lee et al. (2014) in Western scenarios, where empowering leadership was found to improve organizational efficiency and performance.

Finally, our study confirmed that error aversion culture was widespread in China and would significantly decrease R&D team’s job autonomy, and negatively moderate the relationship between empowering leadership and job autonomy of R&D team. This finding provides a second important reason for the limited prevalence of empowering leadership in Chinese R&D teams. Our study also found that the influence of empowering leadership on R&D team’s new product creativity was produced by promoting the mediating role of job autonomy, which indicated that job autonomy was an important way for empowering leadership affecting new product creativity of R&D team. However, the role of job autonomy of R&D team is consistently suppressed by error aversion culture in China, which can be reflected in Figure 2 intuitively. When error aversion culture was high, the effect of empowering leadership on job autonomy of R&D team was even disappeared. Meanwhile, when error aversion culture was low, superior’s empowering leadership was more positively related to job autonomy of R&D team. In Chinese organizational contexts, employees experience fewer opportunities for trial and error compared to their Western counterparts, primarily due to intense market competition. The management culture and management styles such as “accountability for mistakes” and “one-vote veto” are pervasive across various organizational situations in China. This culture of aversion to errors instills fear in R&D team members, making them hesitant to take risks or readily accept failures. While mistakes and failures are inevitable in the process of new product development, employees in China prefer to attribute responsibility for failures to others rather than themselves. This profoundly challenges the job autonomy of R&D team members and subsequently weakens the positive impact of empowering leadership on new product development performance in Chinese R&D teams. And this is a major contribution to the extent of empowering leadership in Chinese R&D team management.

Managerial Implications

The research findings of our study have important practical implications. Firstly, we found that empowering leadership has a significant positive impact on the new product creativity of R&D teams, but does not affect the speed of new product development. Therefore, to enhance the new product development performance of R&D teams, it is crucial to select appropriate leadership styles that align with the specific goals of the new product development process. When the focus is on the creativity of the product, R&D team leaders should adopt empowering leadership by delegating power to team members, establishing relaxed assessment goals, and providing ample time and space for innovation and invention. Conversely, when the emphasis is on developing maintenance products and achieving rapid product upgrades, R&D team leaders should consider adopting authoritarian or paternalistic leadership styles to effectively distribute tasks, supervise team members, and ensure efficient control of the overall speed of new product development in accordance with standard operating procedures.

Second, we found that job autonomy has a positive effect on the new product creativity of R&D team. Therefore, as R&D team’s needs for creative new product development increase, companies should formulate diversified policies to stimulate job autonomy of R&D team members so as to develop more original products and increase product premium capabilities. Specific measures can include: (1) Allowing employees to make work arrangements and decision-making on the basis of clear work goals; (2) Reducing monitoring and evaluation of R&D personnel, and create a relaxed innovation environment; (3) Allowing employees to carry out job crafting with adjusting the sequence, process and content of work, so as to stimulate the enthusiasm for innovation.

Finally, our research results showed that error aversion culture was more likely to weaken the positive effect of empowering leadership on job autonomy of R&D team, which is one of the important reasons for why empowering leadership is less adopted in Chinese R&D teams. Therefore, when an enterprise or R&D team encounters error aversion culture, the R&D organization should find a way to break this culture in the first place. Specific measures can include: (1) Making policies to ensure that employees of the R&D team have the right to trial-and-error and exempt the corresponding responsibility for losses or mistakes caused by the trial-and-error while developing new products. (2) Establishing a good atmosphere for error management so as to encourage employees to respond to errors, handle errors, and learn from errors actively. (3) Increasing the training intensity of R&D so as to help employees building confidence to cope with the challenges and difficulties brought about by innovation, so that employees dare to take risks and accept the challenges of R&D uncertainty.

Limitations and Further Research

There are several limitations also need to be noticed in this study: First, although this paper explored the mediating role of R&D team’s job autonomy on empowering leadership impacting R&D team’s new product creativity and new product development speed, the mediating roles may be diverse. Future research can try different theoretical perspectives to explore the mediating mechanism of empowering leadership in the management of R&D teams. In recent years, the role of social exchange theory on explaining employee’s work attitudes and behaviors is receiving more and more attention (Cropanzano & Mitchell, 2005). Future research can take deep exploration on whether empowering leadership will achieve better innovation performance by making R&D team members feel the trust exchange from the organization and perform better citizenship behavior.

Second, we only explored the moderating role of error aversion culture on weakening the power of empowering leadership. But in fact, the moderating factors that influence the impacting process of empowering leadership are diverse, which can be group factors or individual factors. For example, in terms of personal characteristics in China, employees with stronger traditionality will be more obedient to leaders, and are more likely to follow leader’s command (L. Z. Wu et al., 2009). Therefore, employee with stronger traditionality may be at a loss when being empowered, thus weakening the positive effect of empowering leadership. Therefore, future research can further explore the negative effect of R&D team member’s traditionality on moderating the relationship between empowering leadership and R&D team’s performance.

Finally, our data was collected from 59 high-tech firms with 107 R&D teams including 107 superiors and 387 subordinates in a national economic development zone in North China. Thereby, the results may have strong geographical and industrial features. This may, however, limit the generalizability of our findings. Future research can replicate our findings and compare the results on samples from Shanghai and Shenzhen with different locations and various industries.

Footnotes

Appendix

Acknowledgements

The authors would like to express their gratitude for the valuable contributions of the guest editors and anonymous reviewers, who provided valuable suggestions for improving this manuscript.

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: This work is supported by Guangdong Provincial Philosophy and Social Science Project (GD23YGL10), and the Innovative Team Project of Guangdong Universities (2019WCXTD008).

Ethics Statement

This research does not involve human ethics or animal experiments.

ORCID iD

Jianming Zhou

Data Availability Statement

Data used in this study can be provided as request from the corresponding author.

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