Navigating the Team Adaptation Process: A Dynamic Regulatory Focus Model of Ambidextrous Leadership, a seminar by Professor Herman Tse (Monash University)

Navigating the Team Adaptation Process: A Dynamic Regulatory Focus Model of Ambidextrous Leadership

By Professor Herman Tse from Monash University

Abstract

Leaders play a pivotal role in helping teams adapt to organizational change, yet we know surprisingly little about whether different leader behaviors are needed at different stages of the adaptation process. Integrating the two-stage model of team adaptation, ambidextrous leadership research, and regulatory focus theory (RFT), we develop a stage-contingent model explaining how leader opening and closing behaviors enable team adaptation through distinct motivational pathways. We propose that leader closing behaviors foster team prevention focus, helping teams mitigate performance losses during the disruption stage, whereas leader opening behaviors foster team promotion focus, enabling teams to achieve performance gains during the recovery stage. We further theorize that team bureaucracy operates as a stage-contingent boundary condition, strengthening the prevention-focused pathway during disruption while constraining the promotion-focused pathway during recovery.

We tested our model using multisource, multiwave data from 108 production teams undergoing a major business transformation. Results largely supported our theorized model. During disruption, leader closing behaviors reduced performance losses through team prevention focus, with this indirect effect becoming stronger under higher levels of team bureaucracy. During recovery, leader opening behaviors enhanced performance gains through team promotion focus, but this indirect effect became weaker as team bureaucracy increased. These findings advance research on team adaptation by showing that effective leadership is inherently stage-contingent: leader behaviors that help teams withstand disruption differ from those that enable teams to recover and improve. Our study also extends ambidextrous leadership and regulatory focus research by identifying team regulatory focus as a key motivational mechanism linking leader behavior to dynamic patterns of team adaptation and by revealing bureaucracy as a structural condition that can facilitate or constrain these processes across adaptation stages.

About the speaker

Herman Tse is a Professor of Leadership at Monash Business School, Monash University, Melbourne, Australia. He earned his PhD from the University of Queensland, Brisbane. He is a Senior Fellow of the UK Higher Education Academy, a Fellow of the Institute of Managers and Leaders Australia and New Zealand, and a Fellow of the Australian and New Zealand Academy of Management. Herman’s research focuses on relational approaches to leadership, emotions and team dynamics, and the well-being of leaders and employees. More recently, his research has expanded to explore the role of leadership and job redesign in enabling effective AI–human collaboration and shaping the future of work. In particular, he is interested in how organizations can redesign work and leadership practices to harness the benefits of AI while supporting employee well-being, adaptability, and sustainable performance. His research has been published in leading international journals, including the Journal of Applied Psychology, The Leadership Quarterly, Journal of Organizational Behavior, and Human Resource Management. He currently serves as an Associate Editor of the Journal of Organizational Behavior and also on the Editorial Board of the Leadership Quarterly, the Journal of Business School and the Management Organisation Review.