The influence of shared leadership on taking charge behavior: Dual perspective of cognition–affection

Improvisation is an effective way to cope with rapid changes and obtain unexpected opportunities in a complex environment. Based on the cognitive-affective system theory, this study investigates the dual mediating role of cognitive flexibility and emotional intelligence between shared leadership and improvisation and the moderating role of promotion focus. We used multilevel and multi-sourced data to test the theoretical model and used a social network approach to measure shared leadership in teams. Our sample was comprised of 40 teams and 240 team members. The empirical findings indicated that cognitive flexibility and emotional intelligence mediated the relationship between shared leadership and improvisation; promotion focus moderated the relationship between shared leadership and improvisation, and the mediation effect via cognitive flexibility. This study contributes to expanding on improvisation research from the perspective of shared leadership and incorporating both the cognitive and the emotional process of the generation of improvisation into a theoretical framework from a compound perspective, which will open the black box for the mediation mechanism from shared leadership to improvisation. Furthermore, promotion focus is introduced into the research and creatively corresponds to the cognition-affection mediation mechanism, which expands the applicable scope of the regulatory focus theory.

Dispersed innovation teams rely upon team members who share leadership responsibilities to attain high levels of team performance. Although this concept of team shared leadership is receiving increasing attention, this dissertation shows that especially research on team-level antecedents of shared leadership has major deficits regarding a basic framework for analyzing antecedents, depth of theory, context-specific arguments, and empirical validation. This dissertation tries to fill these research gaps, thus shedding light on the question: How can we foster the important process of shared leadership in dispersed innovation teams? This dissertation introduces a theoretical framework into shared leadership literature to structure the antecedents of shared leadership according to their mode of functioning. As such, this dissertation argues for the first time that to establish high levels of team shared leadership the basic dimensions of motivation, opportunity, and ability for shared leadership should be addressed (motivation-opportunity-ability framework or MOA framework). Based on this notion team-level antecedents providing motivation, opportunity, and ability for shared leadership are operationalized and hypothesized as antecedents of shared leadership in dispersed innovation teams using acknowledged theories. Moreover, all discussed hypotheses are verified in a sample of 96 dispersed real work teams with innovative software tasks. Thereby, empirical results are drawn from 96 team leader responses (used to assess team-level antecedents of team shared leadership) and 337 team member responses (used to assess team shared leadership). Motivation for Team Shared Leadership. Based on the perspective of shared leadership as a risk-taking behavior for team members in dispersed innovation teams, trustworthiness is argued as a facilitator of the willingness, thus motivation to engage in risky shared leadership actions with others. This argumentation based on trust theory was supported by empirical results showing that team member trustworthiness in terms of benevolence and integrity was positively related to team shared leadership. Surprisingly, the proposed positive relationship between ability-based trustworthiness and shared leadership could not be confirmed, thus ability-based trustworthiness could not be validated as a facilitator of shared leadership in dispersed innovation teams. Opportunity for Team Shared Leadership. Opportunity for team shared leadership is addressed by discussing team reflexivity as an antecedent of shared leadership in dispersed innovation teams. Team reflexivity is argued as opportunity providing antecedent of shared leadership as it gives team members a clear information basis in the complex and constantly changing environment of dispersed innovation teams, thus making leadership needs identifiable. In support of this argumentation based on goal setting theory and shared mental model theory team reflexivity was positively related to team shared leadership. Thereby, the relationship between team reflexivity and shared leadership could be shown as even stronger under conditions of high team role breadth self-efficacy and high team empowerment. Ability for Team Shared Leadership. Ability for shared leadership is addressed in terms of social and project management skills. These two skills are argued as basic and complementary skills needed for shared leadership in dispersed innovation teams based on socio-technical systems theory. Underscoring the importance of interpersonal competence the empirical analysis showed that social skills were strongly positively related to team shared leadership. Contrary to the hypothesis of this study project management skills were not related to team shared leadership. Structural Team Properties and Team Shared Leadership. Moreover, several structural team properties are discussed as team-level antecedents of shared leadership, namely female ratio, mean age, age diversity, and national diversity. Thereby, structural team properties are argued as potentially affecting team shared leadership through several MOA dimensions. In the empirical analyses female ratio was positively related to shared leadership in dispersed innovation teams, while mean age was negatively related. Age diversity showed no significant relationship and national diversity was marginally positively related to shared leadership in dispersed innovation teams. Based on these findings, important implications for practice, related to the three stages of a project team (establishment, forming, and performing stage), are provided. As such, team leaders of dispersed innovation teams is given a check-list of how to foster shared leadership in dispersed innovation teams based on the results of this dissertation. Future research is especially suggested regarding the “non-findings” of this dissertation, interaction effects, additional team-level antecedents, the vertical team leader’s role within shared leadership evolvement, antecedents of shared leadership in other contexts, and other levels of antecedents (e.g., organizational-level antecedents).

Over the past three decades, research on shared leadership has flourished across a myriad of academic disciplines. In this time, researchers have offered clarity into the antecedents, consequences, and moderators of shared leadership—while also considering measurement and conceptualization questions that are foundational to this discipline. Shared leadership has suffered from the proliferation of definitions, construct labeling, and measurement approaches. Despite this proliferation, meta-analyses have tended to define shared leadership as a dynamic and emergent phenomenon whereby leadership responsibilities are distributed across team members. Scholars have commonly used two different approaches to measuring shared leadership—the aggregate and social network approaches—both of which have garnered criticisms. Research on the nomological network of shared leadership has outlined antecedents, consequences, and moderators. Scholars have demonstrated that the composition of team members (e.g., team diversity and team personality), the properties of the team (e.g., psychological safety and intrateam trust), and the properties of the formal leader (e.g., leader humility and empowering leadership) can each impact the propensity of teams to share leadership. Shared leadership has been found to impact several proximal (e.g., team satisfaction, team resilience, team confidence, team conflict) and distal factors (e.g., team learning, team performance, team creativity, team proactive behavior). Lastly, temporal considerations, methodological factors, and characteristics of the team or task have each been found to moderate the nomological network of shared leadership. Several future areas of research inquiry include the downsides of shared leadership, cross-cultural implications, multilevel considerations, and technological advancements.

Given the recent focus on team process and outcome improvements, shared leadership is a promising avenue of research for Global Virtual Teams (GVTs) in terms of its potentially mitigating effects on performance decrements often associated with virtual teamwork. However, effective shared team leadership can be difficult to achieve in global and virtual environments because the geographic distribution of members reduces the ability of individuals to exhibit such influence. Therefore, understanding the factors that may improve the likelihood of successful shared team leadership in these environments is critical. Thus, the purpose of this chapter is to discuss how shared leadership in GVTs can improve team performance. In doing so, the authors define GVTs, discuss how shared leadership can be implemented in a GVT setting, address specific challenges GVTs might encounter in the implementation of shared leadership, and present recommendations for practice drawing on team cognition models and trust research.

Given the recent focus on team process and outcome improvements, shared leadership is a promising avenue of research for Global Virtual Teams (GVTs) in terms of its potentially mitigating effects on performance decrements often associated with virtual teamwork. However, effective shared team leadership can be difficult to achieve in global and virtual environments because the geographic distribution of members reduces the ability of individuals to exhibit such influence. Therefore, understanding the factors that may improve the likelihood of successful shared team leadership in these environments is critical. Thus, the purpose of this chapter is to discuss how shared leadership in GVTs can improve team performance. In doing so, the authors define GVTs, discuss how shared leadership can be implemented in a GVT setting, address specific challenges GVTs might encounter in the implementation of shared leadership, and present recommendations for practice drawing on team cognition models and trust research.

PurposeThis paper aims to examine the effect of shared leadership on both quantity and quality of team performance, predicting that shared leadership enhances performance by affecting quantity (level of performance) as well as quality (team errors). In addition, this paper also investigates the role of perceived task complexity in moderating the effect of sharing leadership on team performance.Design/methodology/approachIn total, 26 teams (N = 78) were asked to work on an interdependent team-task, where they engaged in a laboratory team decision-making exercise.FindingsResults revealed that teams sharing leadership made fewer errors. They achieved higher levels of quality of performance. As predicted, this effect was stronger when team members perceived the task as highly complex, even though objective task difficulty was constant.Research limitations/implicationsThis study extends current literature on shared leadership by documenting that sharing the lead in teams can also improve the quality of team performance and that perceived complexity of tasks is an important moderator of this effect.Practical implicationsBased on the findings, influencing perceptions of task complexity can be considered as an important strategy to stimulate shared leadership in teams.Originality/valueUsing social network approach, the authors showed that shared leadership is an important tool for preventing team errors and offer a new explanation for inconsistent findings from recent meta-analyses by showing that perceived task complexity moderates the effects of shared leadership. Additionally, this study offers an original team task for investigating shared leadership in teams.

Revealing the balancing act of vertical and shared leadership in Teacher Design Teams

PurposeThis paper aims to examine the effect of shared leadership on student project team processes and outcomes. The authors focused on shared leadership and its association with team processes (coordination, goal commitment and knowledge sharing) and team performance.Design/methodology/approachTo examine the shared leadership, team processes and performance model, the authors conducted two separate surveys of 158 graduate and undergraduate students working in project teams at a large southwestern university.FindingsResults showed that shared leadership positively affected coordination activities, goal commitment and knowledge sharing, which in turn positively affect team performance. Each team process factor had a mediation effect, although shared leadership had no direct effect on team performance.Research limitations/implicationsThis research adds to the knowledge of important team process factors through which shared leadership indirectly affects team performance.Practical implicationsBased on the findings, the authors provided implications for students and instructors that shared leadership can facilitate team performance by enabling team members to coordinate activities, commit to goals and share knowledge effectively.Originality/valueThis study presents an initial understanding of the shared leadership-team performance relationship by introducing influential variables, such as coordination activities, goal commitment and knowledge sharing in a team.

PurposeDrawing on power approach-inhibition theory, this study aims to theorize a cross-level model to examine how team member personal power (i.e. expert power and referent power) impacts shared leadership through activating their taking charge behaviors in R&D teams, as well as the moderating effect of team learning orientation on the relationship between team member taking charge behaviors and shared leadership.Design/methodology/approachWith multisource data collected from 264 employees in 58 R&D teams from 13 companies, this study tested the hypotheses of the cross-level theoretical model using Mplus 7.4.FindingsThe results showed that team member expert power was positively related to their taking charge behaviors, which in turn led to shared leadership, while team member referent power was not significantly related to their taking charge behaviors. Furthermore, the positive relationship between team member taking charge behaviors and shared leadership was strengthened by team learning orientation.Practical implicationsThis paper offers suggestions regarding how vertical leaders should pay attention to team member power to promote their change-oriented taking charge behaviors and address team learning to strengthen the effect of team member taking charge behaviors on shared leadership.Originality/valueBy echoing the changing focus towards a shared leading process among team members in leadership literature, this paper provides important insights for both scholars and practitioners to understand the role that power plays in activating team member taking charge behaviors which in turn improves shared leadership.

The present study was designed to produce novel theoretical insight regarding how leader humility and team member characteristics foster the conditions that promote shared leadership and when shared leadership relates to team effectiveness. Drawing on social information processing theory and adaptive leadership theory, we propose that leader humility facilitates shared leadership by promoting leadership-claiming and leadership-granting interactions among team members. We also apply dominance complementary theory to propose that team proactive personality strengthens the impact of leader humility on shared leadership. Finally, we predict that shared leadership will be most strongly related to team performance when team members have high levels of task-related competence. Using a sample composed of 62 Taiwanese professional work teams, we find support for our proposed hypothesized model. The theoretical and practical implications of these results for team leadership, humility, team composition, and shared leadership are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record

Shared leadership has been shown to enhance processes, effectiveness, and performances in interprofessional teams. While earlier studies suggest the association of internal team environment (ITE) and transactive memory system (TMS) with shared leadership, the relative influence of these team conditions vis-a-vis team characteristics (such as team size, stability, and interprofessional roles) on shared leadership is not well understood. This study aims to examine the comparative influence of team characteristics versus team conditions of ITE and TMS on shared leadership during interprofessional team meetings (IPTMs). We compared interprofessional teams from two departments, namely larger and more diverse teams of Geriatric Medicine versus the smaller and more homogeneous Palliative Medicine. We administered a questionnaire survey to healthcare professionals who attended IPTMs in both departments (N = 133). Our results revealed significantly higher scores in shared leadership, ITE and TMS in Palliative Medicine (p < .05). Using hierarchical regression analysis adjusting for team conditions, department and number of IPTMs attended were not significant in the final model (both p > .05). Instead, TMS (β= 0.250, p < .01) and ITE (β= 0.584, p < .01) outperformed team characteristics as conditions that are highly associated with shared leadership, explaining an additional 29.8% and 19.0%, respectively, of model variance. Further analysis revealed a stronger correlation between shared leadership subdomains with TMS in Geriatric Medicine and with ITE in Palliative Medicine. Our results demonstrate how a positive working environment with a high level of shared memory engendered a perception of shared leadership, and how these team conditions can be tapped upon to circumvent differences in team characteristics to facilitate shared leadership. Identifying key conditions that are highly associated with shared leadership is critical for the teaching of dynamic leadership roles to junior clinicians which in turn, can enhance patient care.

In the past few years, the concept of leadership has shifted from the solitary leader to the team as a potential source of leadership. This shift from a single person to a “shared leadership” model requires new concepts and methods to capture the nature and structure of leadership by teams (Yukl, 1998). In this chapter, we argue that a social network approach helps to provide the conceptual framework and methodological tools to support a shared leadership perspective. To articulate this approach, we first outline some of the basic principles of social network analysis. We then discuss the nature of leadership networks, based on the traditional distinction between transactional and transformational leadership. Next, we discuss the distributional properties of these leadership networks, describing and applying the concept of network centralization. Finally, we discuss the implications of a network conception of shared leadership for research and theory development.

We study the processes of firm growth in the evolution of the Japanese cotton spinning industry during 1883-1914 by integrating strategy and historical approaches and utilizing rich quantitative firm-level data and detailed business histories. The resultant conceptual model highlights growth outcomes of path dependencies as firms evolve across periods of single vs. shared leadership, establish stability in shared leadership, or experience repeated discord-induced TMT leader departures. While most firms do not experience smooth transitions to stable shared TMT leadership, a focus on value creation, in conjunction with talent recruitment and promotion, enabled some firms to achieve stable shared leadership in spite of discord-induced departures, engage in long term expansion, and emerge as "centers of gravity" for output and talent in the industry.

Research Summary We study the processes of firm growth in the evolution of the Japanese cotton spinning industry during 1883–1914 by integrating strategy and historical approaches and utilizing rich quantitative firm‐level data and detailed business histories. The resultant conceptual model highlights growth outcomes of path dependencies as firms evolve across periods of single versus shared leadership, establish stability in shared leadership, or experience repeated discord‐induced top management team (TMT) leader departures. While most firms do not experience smooth transitions to stable shared TMT leadership, a focus on value creation, in conjunction with talent recruitment and promotion, enabled some firms to achieve stable shared leadership despite discord‐induced departures, engage in long‐term expansion, and emerge as “centers of gravity” for output and talent in the industry. Managerial Summary We demonstrate stable shared leadership is at root of firms who emerge as centers of gravity in an industry and account for the lion's share of output. Stable shared leadership enables growth strategies such as talent recruitment, product diversification, downstream integration, and acquisitions. Stable shared leadership, however, is extremely difficult to maintain. Most firms experience discord‐induced departures in TMTs due to politics and power struggles. Firms that deviate from this norm to become industry leaders achieve stable shared leadership by adhering to fundamental principles related to long‐term value creation as opposed to short‐term gain, adoption of merit‐based promotion systems in defiance of stereotypes, sharing of power within TMT leadership to enable efficient division of labor, and honorable resolution of conflicts and ethical breaches.

More companies have started to adopt a model of self-managed team as their primary work design. As work environments get more complex, an appointed leader alone cannot fulfill all the necessary leadership responsibilities of a team. In this manner, the shared leadership within a team is of great importance for today's work environments. The primary purpose of the present study was to examine an antecedent of shared leadership. Focusing on leadership motivation, this study investigated how team members’ motivation to lead affects shared leadership of the team. This study also examined the effects of shared leadership on team performance using an objective team performance measure, which little previous studies have investigated. Data were obtained from 57 teams consisting of 3 to 5 members. They performed a computer-based business strategy game. Findings showed that the teams consisting of members with a high level of motivation to lead scores were positively related to shared leadership and shared leadership significantly predicted team performance. Theoretical and practical implications of this study are also discussed.