Work Engagement in Agile Teams: The Missing Link Between Team Autonomy, Trust, and Performance?

Abstract

To have engaged and high-performing agile teams are what most organizations strive for. At the same time, there is little research on the drivers of team work engagement in the software context. Team autonomy and trust are crucial for agile teams and are suggested as potential boosters of team work engagement and performance. In this study, we apply the Job Demands-Resources model to examine the role of autonomy and trust and their impact on work engagement and team performance in agile teams. We analyze quantitative survey data from 236 team members in 43 agile teams to examine how team autonomy and trust relate to team work engagement and how engagement mediates the relationship between these factors and performance. Our results show that while both autonomy and trust are positively related to team work engagement, team trust plays a more critical role than team autonomy. Teams with high team trust showed higher engagement, which enhanced team performance. Our results highlight the importance of social factors such as trust in creating conditions for high performance in agile teams through its effect on team work engagement.