Does a narcissistic leader encourage intra-team competition, and what are the consequences of such competition on team functioning? To answer these questions, we draw on social information processing theory and propose that leader narcissism leads to intra-team performance competition and intra-team power struggles, which mediate both the positive (tournament mechanism) and negative (power struggles mechanism) effects of leader narcissism on team performance. We also examine how the proportion of team members with long versus short work tenure moderates these relationships. The results from a two-wave, two-source field study of 81 team leaders and 352 team members show that leader narcissism is positively related to both performance competition and power struggles within teams. Intra-team performance competition mediates the positive effects of leader narcissism on team performance, while intra-team power struggles mediate its negative effects. A higher proportion of employees with short work tenure intensifies the positive indirect effect of leader narcissism on team performance via intra-team performance competition, while a higher proportion with long work tenure intensifies its negative indirect effect via intra-team power struggles.
