Collaborative Leadership and Employee Perception in Decision-Making: The Meditating Role of Team Excellence

Purpose: This study aims to examine how team excellence mediates the relationship between collaborative leadership and employee perception in decision-making in Turkish public banks.Design/methodology/approach: This study employs survey data collected from 391 employees and managers across multiple organizational levels in Turkish public banks. All constructs were measured as individual perceptions and analyzed at the individual level. Using validated measurements and Hayes’ PROCESS Macro (Model 4), mediation analysis was conducted to test the indirect role of team excellence.Findings: The findings indicate that collaborative leadership is positively associated with both team excellence and employee perception in decision-making, and that team excellence mediates the association between collaborative leadership and employee perception in decision-making.Originality: This study contributes to the literature by illustrating the boundaries of team excellence, distinguishing it from traditional measures of team effectiveness, and empirically mapping how collaborative leadership is associated with the high regulatory and bureaucratic cultural domain of Turkish public banking, while offering context-sensitive implications for leadership practice and policy