Unlocking Team Adaptability: A Systems Perspective on Paradoxical Leadership and Team Goal Orientation

In volatile environments, work teams operate as complex adaptive systems that reconfigure internal processes in response to internal and external tensions. Team adaptability—a systemic outcome—is influenced by paradoxical leadership (PL), but the motivational pathways translating PL into adaptive behavior remain underexplored. Grounded in Conservation of Resources theory, this multi‑wave, supervisor–subordinate dyadic study of 114 high‑tech teams adopts a systems perspective and treats goal orientations as collective resource‑allocation rules. PL most strongly fosters systemic adaptability by cultivating a team performance‑approach orientation—an agentic, short‑term resource‑mobilization strategy that drives visible competence demonstration. Although team learning orientation predicts adaptability when tested alone, its mediating effect is suppressed once performance‑approach orientation is included, consistent with competitive resource‑allocation dynamics in specialist teams. PL also reduces performance‑avoidance orientation, but this reduction does not yield a significant indirect effect on adaptability, indicating that removing dysfunction is not equivalent to activating adaptive capacity. By comparing three competing motivational pathways, the study identifies a dominant leadership leverage point for configuring resource flows to produce emergent adaptation and offers implications for designing systemic interventions and models to enhance team resilience.