Bi-National Tandem Leadership in German-Chinese Joint Ventures - A Context-Embedded Analysis

Abstract

Leadership researchers suggest plural leadership as effective mechanism to cope with increasing complexity outside and inside of organizations. This paper examines a special form of plural leadership: tandem leadership (TL) which means two persons formally share the leading function of an organization or an organizational unit. In particular, I study role divisions between tandem partners in the under-researched context of international joint ventures (IJVs) and middle management and integrate context explicitly in the explanatory framework for TL. Based on a qualitative-interpretative multiple case study in three German-Chinese JVs, I found that German- Chinese tandem partners divide their roles in configurations of complementarity and dominance. I also found that national culture and institutional environment at the macro level as well as organizational culture and structure at the meso level serve as important contextual influencing factors on TL. This paper contributes to the understanding of leadership practices by demonstrating both complementary, cooperative and asymmetric, competing relationship dynamics between tandem partners in their negotiation of shared leadership role space. It also contributes to the understanding of contextualizing leadership theory by showing both isolated and interrelated effects of the national and the organizational context on TL. This paper also shows that tandems are not only influenced by the organizational context, but also have an impact on it.