Antecedents of shared leadership: empowering leadership and interdependence

Abstract

Purpose – Shared leadership describes leadership as a collective and reciprocal activity distributed among the members of a team (Carson et al., 2007). The purpose of this paper is to investigate variables assumed to be antecedents for this leadership approach. In particular, the authors examine the importance of external empowering leadership and task and goal interdependence for shared leadership as well as the relationship between shared leadership and team performance. Design/methodology/approach – In order to test the hypotheses, the authors applied structural equation modeling using a field sample of 81 knowledge and manufacturing teams from a Danish company. Findings – Results indicated that an external empowering team leader and interdependence in the team significantly predicted the extent of shared leadership, which, in turn, was positively related to team leader ratings of team performance. Research limitations/implications – Overall, the study supports previous findings that the act of sharing leadership in a team may contribute to increased team performance. In addition, the study provides an initial understanding of antecedent conditions for the successful development of shared leadership. However, as the study was cross-sectional and conducted within a single organization, care must be taken in making causal claims or in generalizing the results without additional evidence. Originality/value – Few studies focus on the antecedents of sharing leadership. The authors obtained evidence, which suggests that the development of shared leadership may depend on the presence of an empowering team leader as well as task and goal interdependence in the team.

Shared Leadership in Commercial Organizations: A Systematic Review of Definitions, Theoretical Frameworks and Organizational Outcomes

“…Thus, while there is a consistent use of aggregation approaches in researching SL, there appears to be a lack of consistency in terms of what specific measurements should be aggregated, raising the question as to whether researchers have developed a sufficient understanding of what it is they are measuring (Fausing et al . ).…”

“…Fausing et al . ), conceptualizing SL as a team‐level construct, i.e. each individual measures what the ‘team as a whole’ performs in terms of leadership.…”

Rethinking distributed leadership: dimensions, antecedents and team effectiveness

“…A number of other studies (e.g., Bolden 2011;Fitzgerald et al 2013;Fausing et al 2015) indicate a positive relationship between DL and significant aspects of organization performance. Kempster et al (2014) examine how DL can help to promote organizational change.…”

“…When the way of distributing authorities and responsibilities changes, the team will be confronted with varied challenges in coordinating team activities (Fitzgerald et al 2013), thus resulting in different team performance. Formal leader style, task characteristics, and -15 context will have extensive impacts on the distribution of leadership functions, leading to the situation in which certain dimension(s) of DL can be more effective than others in improving performance (Fausing et al 2015). We here consider team effectiveness as the outcome of the dynamic process from team input to output.…”

“…According to Nicolaides et al (2014) and Fausing et al (2015), SL emerges when leadership behaviors are performed by multiple members of the team. These studies, all on small teams, come out of small-group research on 'empowerment' and 'self-directed teams' (SDTs) rather than executive-level research.…”