Finally, it is important to note that we did not find a direct relationship between empowering leadership and performance. We provided evidence for the indirect effect of empowering leadership on team performance, unlike previous research (Kirkman & Rosen, 1999) that has shown team empowerment to partially mediate the relationship between empowering leadership and performance. There are two possible reasons we did not find support for the direct relationship between empowering leadership and team performance. First, we used an objective measure of team performance, unlike Kirkman and Rosen, who obtained ratings of team performance as well as leader behaviors from the leaders. The second possible reason is that the pathways linking a distal concept such as leadership with organizational performance are more complex and indirect than the pathways linking leadership and team performance in the type of work teams studied by previous research. This means that theories of team effectiveness may need further refinement, especially when applied to management teams.