Shared leadership and team creativity: A social network analysis in engineering design teams

Abstract

This research explores the relationship between shared leadership and creativity in engineering design teams. To do this, a social network perspective was adopted using four measures to assess key elements of shared leadership networks. These are (a) network density, (b) centraliza- tion, (c) efficiency and (d) strength. Data was collected from a sample of 22 engineering design teams who adopt a shared leadership approach. Our results support previous findings that the density of a shared leadership network is positively related to team creativity. In contrast, we learned that centralization exerts a negative influence on it. Moreover, while we found that there is no evidence to support a positive correlation between efficiency and team creativity, we demonstrate an inverted U-shaped relationship between strength and team creativity in a shared leadership network. These findings are important because they add to the academic debate in the shared leadership area and provide valuable insights for managers. th 2016 / Approved: Approved: June 7 th 2016