A Meta-Analysis of Shared Leadership: Antecedents, Consequences, and Moderators

Abstract

Many organizations are encouraging a shared leadership approach that meets the increased complexity of today’s working environment. It is therefore imperative for researchers to clearly comprehend the mechanism of shared leadership in teams. Contributing to the burgeoning research in the field of shared leadership, this study aims to advance our understanding along the many dimensions of the shared leadership phenomenon: its antecedents, moderators, and consequences. In this article, we provide a critical and comprehensive analysis of the extant literature and generate an integrated framework that presents seven hypotheses and five research questions. We then empirically test this framework via a systematic meta-analysis from 40 studies (team n = 3,019). Significantly, our findings reveal that the internal team environment and team heterogeneity are positively related to the emergence of shared leadership in teams. Moreover, we confirm the positive relationship between shared leadership and team outcomes. Our analysis also highlights how intragroup trust and task interdependence significantly moderate the shared leadership–team outcomes relations, with higher correlations observed in greater levels of intragroup trust, as well as larger levels of task interdependence. We also find the moderating effect of shared leadership measurement methods in such relations. Specifically, there is a stronger relationship when shared leadership is measured with social network analysis, rather than aggregating approaches. Overall, our study brings valuable insights into the shared leadership area and provides clear directions for future research.