Growth-mindset leadership and engineers' learning agility: psychological safety as mediator and algorithmic HRM intensity as moderator

Purpose This study examines whether leader growth mindset is associated with engineers' learning agility and idea implementation through team psychological safety, and whether that climate pathway is weakened when human resource processes are more intensely mediated by algorithmic and artificial intelligence (AI)-enabled systems. Design/methodology/approach A multi-source, multi-wave field study was conducted across 60 research and development teams over four months. Leaders reported growth mindset and algorithmic Human Resource Management (HRM)intensity at Time 1, engineers reported team psychological safety at Time 2 and learning agility at Time 3, and idea-implementation counts were obtained from leaders and available organizational records. Hypotheses were tested with multilevel models and bootstrapped indirect-effect estimates. Findings Leader growth mindset was positively associated with team psychological safety, which in turn was positively related to engineers' learning agility and idea implementation. Higher algorithmic HRM intensity was negatively associated with psychological safety and attenuated the positive relationship between leader growth mindset and team psychological safety. Conditional indirect effects were stronger when algorithmic HRM intensity was lower. Originality/value This study extends leader goal-orientation and psychological-safety research by conceptualizing growth-mindset leadership as a leader-level belief about employee developability that shapes team climates for learning and implementation. It also clarifies algorithmic HRM intensity as a contextual boundary condition that can weaken the translation of developmental leader cues into psychological safety.