The building blocks of shared leadership: The interactive effects of diversity types, team climate, and time

Abstract

AbstractDespite the wealth of empirical studies and recent meta‐analyses demonstrating the positive performance effects of shared leadership, knowledge regarding antecedents is limited. We draw upon a collective approach to leadership identity construction theory and team diversity in order to understand the member attributes that impact leadership sharing. We suggest that both informational/functional and social categorization diversity types are important dimensions when considering shared leadership antecedents. First, we suggest functional diversity will result in higher levels of shared leadership but will only be realized when teams elicit a cooperative climate. Second, we suggest that gender diversity, a salient social category, will have a negative impact on shared leadership, particularly in a low cooperative climate. We further hypothesize these effects will change over time as the positive effects of functional diversity strengthen and the negative effects of gender differences weaken. We test our hypotheses, including the impact on team performance, in a time‐lagged sample of 267 undergraduate students in 73 teams competing in a complex business simulation and a constructive replication with 142 MBA students in 41 teams. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed.