Linking Individual and Team Engagement in Agile Team: A 2-1-2 Mediational Multilevel Approach

This study examines how agile work practices (AWPs) foster team engagement through individual-level job engagement within a multilevel framework. It addresses a critical gap in understanding the psychological and social mechanisms that connect AWPs to engagement. Drawing on job demands–resources (JD–R) theory, self-determination theory (SDT), and social information processing theory, including concepts of team reflexivity and team episode model, the study integrates these perspectives to explain engagement processes. Two-wave survey data were collected from 210 employees nested within 66 agile teams in South Korea and analyzed using multilevel structural equation modeling. The results indicate that both agile taskwork and teamwork positively predict individual job engagement, which in turn positively predicts team engagement. Individual engagement fully mediates the effects of agile taskwork and teamwork on team engagement, with no significant direct effects remaining. These findings extend JD–R theory by demonstrating how AWPs satisfy basic psychological needs and shape social perceptions, thereby serving as tools for mobilizing resources. The study also advances multilevel engagement research by elucidating the micro-mechanisms through which individual engagement coalesces into a collective team state. Practical implications for optimizing agile transformations to enhance engagement at both individual and team levels are discussed.