HYPOTHESIS AND THEORY article
Front. Psychol.
Sec. Personality and Social Psychology
How Team Leader Narcissism Influences Team Task Performance: The Mechanisms of Team Identification, Team Member Narcissism and Task Initiative
Provisionally accepted
- 1Dong-A University, Busan, Republic of Korea
- 2Shandong College of Economics and Business, Shandong, China
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Introduction: In contemporary organizational contexts, leader narcissism has received increased scholarly attention because of its complex impact on team effectiveness. Given the critical role of team level performance, understanding the mechanisms by which leader narcissism influences team outcomes is of paramount importance. From the perspective of social identity theory, we examined the mediating effect of team identification and moderating roles of member narcissism and task initiative. Methods: Survey data were collected from 640 employees and their leaders across 160 teams in China. Results: The primary findings are as follows. First, leader narcissism negatively impacted team task performance. Second, team identification played a significant mediating role in the relationship between leader narcissism and team task performance. Third, member narcissism moderated the leader narcissism and team identification relationship, such that higher member narcissism intensified this negative association. While team member task initiative enhances the positive impact of team member team identification on team task performance, the effect may instead exacerbate the risk of performance decline in leader narcissism contexts.
Keywords: social identity theory, team identification, Team Leader Narcissism, Team Member Narcissism, Team task performance, TeamMember Task Initiative
Received: 22 Oct 2025; Accepted: 03 Feb 2026.
Copyright: © 2026 박, Liu, Liu and Wang. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence:
희태 박
Xiaokang Wang
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