Beyond Sufficiency: A Dual PLS-SEM–NCA Approach to Leadership Style, Psychological Safety, Team Trust, and Performance in Chinese Construction Teams

Construction leadership research has emphasized transformational and servant leadership but has paid limited attention to transactional leadership. This study compares how servant and transactional leadership relate to project team performance and team conflict/rework, with psychological safety and team trust as parallel mediators. Drawing on Path–Goal Theory and Social Exchange Theory, we analyzed data from 579 construction professionals in China using Partial Least Squares Structural Equation Modeling (PLS-SEM) and Necessary Condition Analysis (NCA). Servant leadership showed stronger associations than transactional leadership with higher performance and lower conflict/rework, and larger indirect effects. Psychological safety and team trust carried significant indirect effects in all eight mediation paths; mediation was partial, except that transactional leadership was linked to conflict/rework only through the mediators. Explanatory power was modest (R2 = 0.31 for performance; 0.25 for conflict/rework). In this sample, all four conditions showed medium but modest necessity effects for high performance, whereas for low conflict/rework only servant leadership and psychological safety did (trust marginally). Because the data are cross-sectional and come from a high-power-distance, guanxi-oriented context, the findings are associations whose generalizability requires testing elsewhere. Combining sufficiency and necessity analyses gives construction firms an evidence-based starting point for leadership development.