Shared Leadership in Teams

Abstract

Shared leadership is an emergent team process defined by the distribution of leadership functions among multiple team members. Past empirical research on shared leadership has operationalized it as the overall quantity of leadership in the team, neglecting the essence of the conceptual definition – the distribution of leadership. In order to align the conceptual definition with an operational one, we examined shared leadership as network centralization using social network analysis. Using this operational definition, shared leadership was positively related to team performance. Additionally, longitudinal analyses revealed that shared leadership increased over time and was differentially related to antecedents of trust and team collectivism.

Shared Leadership Improves Team Novelty: The Mechanism and Its Boundary Condition

“…Therefore, if the conditions are suitable for leadership to emerge, a higher level shared leadership would be observed in the later stages of team development. A longitudinal analysis by Small and Rentsch (2010) revealed that shared leadership increased over time. In their study, students formed teams to complete a semester-long business simulation during which eight quarters of simulated business was conducted.…”

“…To eliminate the possible effect of vertical leadership on team creativity, the current study did not assign vertical leadership in the teams, following other researchers in the field (e.g., Small and Rentsch, 2010). In this way, we could focus on the function of shared leadership on team creativity and on the underline mechanism of the function.…”

Development and Preliminary Validation of the Shared Professional Leadership Inventory for Teams (SPLIT)

“…Moreover, the dimensions cover a broad variety of leadership behaviors, including long-term recognizable task-and relationorientation, as well as behavior especially relevant to modern work life, change-oriented leadership, and networking activities. Collectively, these behaviors go beyond those described in specific leadership theories, such as the theory on transformational leadership (Small & Rentsch, 2010). Therefore, we decided to include shared task, relation, change, and micropolitical leadership orientation as four shared leadership dimensions into SPLIT.…”

“…However, more recently researchers began to investigate "an emer-gent team property that results from the distribution of leadership influence across multiple team members" (Hoch, Pearce, & Welzel, 2010b: p. 105). This dynamic process, described as "shared leadership" in the literature (e.g., Pearce & Sims, 2002;Wang, Waldmann, & Zhan, 2014), is seen as a new form of management (Pearce & Manz, 2005) especially fit to encounter the increasing complexity of working life in which a single leader is unable to effectively perform all important leadership functions (Small & Rentsch, 2010). Shared leadership is not intended to replace vertical leadership (Hoch et al, 2010b;Pearce & Sims, 2002) but to enhance teamwork effectiveness (Ensley, Hmieleski, & Pearce, 2006;Carson, Tesluk, & Marrone, 2007).…”

“…So far, researchers have used different methods to assess shared leadership, all of which however suffer from limitations. Some researchers have used network analyses to assess shared leadership (e.g., Carson et al, 2007;Liu et al, 2014;McIntyre & Foti, 2013;Mehra, Smith, Dixon, & Robertson, 2006;Small & Rentsch, 2010). For example, team members were asked to nominate other team members whom they considered a leader.…”