Despite accumulating evidence supporting the importance of leader narcissism for follower outcomes, extant research has provided limited knowledge regarding the effectiveness of leader narcissism in influencing team proactivity. The present research aims to clarify this relationship by examining how and when leader narcissism helps or hurts team proactivity. Drawing on the Narcissistic Admiration and Rivalry Concept (NARC) model and social information processing theory, we propose a dual-path mediation model where leader narcissistic admiration and leader narcissistic rivalry differentially influence team proactivity by activating different collective regulatory foci. Moreover, we show that this process is moderated by team power distance value. Using a field study with multi-source and multi-wave data, we found that leader narcissistic admiration increased team proactivity through enhancing collective promotion focus, whereas leader narcissistic rivalry decreased team proactivity by triggering collective prevention focus. Furthermore, these two pathways were much stronger for teams with higher rather than lower power distance value.
