Paradoxical Leadership Enhances Team Adaptability via Performance Approach Orientation: A Systems Perspective on Team Goal Orientation as Resource Allocation Rules

In volatile environments, teams must rapidly adapt to complex internal and external pressures. Although paradoxical leadership (PL) has been linked to enhanced team adaptability, the motivational pathways driving this systemic outcome remain underexplored. To address this gap, we examine how collective goal orientations—treated as resource-allocation rules—mediate the relationship between PL and team adaptability. Grounded in Conservation of Resources theory, we tested the model in a three-wave, multi-source study of 114 high-tech specialist teams, where team members rated PL at T1 and team goal orientations at T2, while supervisors rated team adaptability at T3. Our findings reveal that, within this dataset and context, PL’s indirect association with team adaptability operates largely through a performance approach orientation, an agentic strategy that mobilizes resources for visible competence in the short term. In contrast, while a team learning orientation predicts adaptability when assessed alone, its unique mediating effect becomes non-significant when performance approach orientation is taken into account, consistent with conceptual and empirical overlap between the two constructs. Moreover, although PL reduces performance avoidance orientation, this reduction does not significantly enhance team adaptability. In the present dataset and context, these findings indicate performance approach orientation as the more robust motivational pathway linking PL to team adaptability, thereby providing a foundation for further inquiry into how systemic levers might selectively shape distinct team motivational states.