Strategies and Challenges for Distributing Leadership in Communities of Practice

Abstract

A major concern of higher education in the United States and abroad is increasing the number of college‐educated citizens in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) fields. Researchers argue that innovative and empirically tested teaching practices will support STEM college student retention and degree completion. Promoting change in pedagogy reform among faculty is found to be successful in communities of practice (CoP) where individuals come together based on a common interest or passion in a distributed leadership model. In the CoP and distributed leadership literature, leadership is process oriented, shared, situated, and dependent on a positional or key leader, termed the community coordinator. What is not present in the literature is how a community, such as a CoP, manages to continue a distributed leadership model during critical leadership junctures. Drawing on interviews of over 112 individuals, three key themes were identified related to strategies leadership development and challenges for distributing leadership in CoPs beyond the core group. The findings identify the need for a new CoP leadership model that engages the multiple levels of CoP membership in the earlier stages of formation.

Sustaining change towards racial equity through cycles of inquiry

“…Other authors provide authoritative syntheses of organizational change in colleges and universities (Kezar, 2014), which we have not sought to replicate here. Recent works hone the findings of earlier studies by focusing on data use for particular purposes, such as improved teaching, learning assessment, and course design (Hora, Bouwma-Gearhart, & Park, 2017), and refining understanding of the role of shared leadership, college-based teams, and communities of practice in carrying out organizational change efforts (Gehrke & Kezar, 2017;Lester & Kezar, 2017). As with the action research literature focused on change towards racial equity, these studies more often document organizational change at a programmatic or departmental level, or at the level of individual instructors' practices.…”

“…Recent studies on sustained change carried out in communities of practice (Felix et al, 2015;Gehrke & Kezar, 2017;Lester & Kezar, 2017;Robinson-Armstrong et al, 2012) emphasize that local reforms have the greatest staying power when they involve multiple change agents in a variety of leadership roles over time. They are most impactful when leaders have the ability to combine technical knowledge of reform goals and methods with communication competencies that are essential to motivate attention among those outside the core group of change agents.…”

Leadership Role Effectiveness as a Mediator of Team Performance in New Product Development Virtual Teams

“…Given the fact that a face‐to‐face leadership role effectiveness construct was used in the study, further research should be conducted to examine if there are other types of leadership roles that are needed for VTs (Lester & Kezar, ). Also, VT leadership roles may be less recognized or identified by VT members due to perceived isolation (Connaughton & Daly, ).…”

Leading Networks Effectively: Literature Review and Propositions

“…Gronn (2002) is considered as the patriarch of the research stream in which the leadership role is dispersed across some, many, or all network members. Although several scholars excluded the presence of a focal leader (e.g., Fitzgerald, Ferlie, McGivern, & Buchanan, 2013; Gronn, 2002), others note that a focal leader, who often plays an important role in distributing leadership within the network, may be present (e.g., Bolden, 2008; Lester & Kezar, 2017; Spillane, 2005). Studies on distributed leadership often transcend the team levels (e.g., Gronn, 2002; Heck & Hallinger, 2010), but they hardly focus on interorganizational contexts.…”