Fostering team adaptivity under uncertain environment: comprehensive decision-making under paradoxical leadership

Nowadays, work teams are confronted with increasingly uncertain environments. The question, however, remains how teams can effectively navigate this uncertainty and thrive. Drawing upon social information processing theory, we propose that paradoxical leadership serves as a salient source of social information to enhance team decision comprehensiveness and ultimately, foster team adaptivity. We further posit that task uncertainty amplifies the effect of paradoxical leadership on team decision comprehensiveness and the indirect effect on team adaptivity. To test these hypotheses, we conducted two multi-wave and multisource field studies. The results supported all hypotheses. These findings offer important implications for both leadership literature and management practice.