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Emergence of shared leadership networks in teams: An adaptive process perspective

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Abstract

Adaptive leadership theory suggests that shared leadership networks grow in a complex manner. We propose that leadership decentralization (the dispersion of leadership), leadership density (the total amount of leadership), and situationally-aligned leadership (SAL: leadership transitions to those who fit situation requirements) are distinct aspects of a shared leadership network and should be examined together to capture the development of shared leadership process. Through a study of 450 participants in 90 teams, we find that each of these three aspects of shared leadership plays a different role during shared leadership network emergence. Specifically, transactive memory systems (TMS) contribute to decentralized leadership structures, which in turn precipitate more dense leadership networks. We also find that TMS contributes to the most situationally aligned team member engaging in leadership. Both leadership density and SAL predict team performance. We discuss the theoretical and practical implications of these results.

Introduction

Effective leadership is critical for team success (Morgeson et al., 2010). As organizations have become more complex, relying increasingly on empowered and adaptive teams, researchers have realized that our understanding of team processes is incomplete without considering informal leadership behaviors initiated by individuals without designated managerial titles (Neubert & Taggar, 2004). At the meso level, this idea is conceptualized as ‘shared leadership,’ representing an emergent team capacity in which multiple members assume leadership roles, leading one another either simultaneously or by rotating leadership roles (Carson et al., 2007). In organizational teams, such leadership is best represented as a network of leadership influence ties, consistent with a social network perspective (Wasserman & Faust, 1994). Several meta-analyses provide consistent evidence that shared leadership networks are positively associated with overall team performance (D’Innocenzo et al., 2016, Nicolaides et al., 2014, Wang et al., 2014). In such networks, various patterns of leadership influence within the team are possible, with unique patterns holding different implications for performance (Mayo et al., 2003).

Given shared leadership’s implications for team effectiveness, it is important to understand when and how such informal leadership can emerge within teams. However, studies of this phenomenon have been relatively sparse (Lorinkova & Bartol, 2020), perhaps because it has been challenging to fully and accurately model the emergence of shared leadership due to its nature as a multi-faceted construct (D’Innocenzo et al., 2016). These different aspects of shared leadership, such as density and decentralization, are almost exclusively studied independently, in their own theoretical siloes. As a result, although we have developed a substantial body of knowledge regarding how these aspects each work on their own, we have limited understanding of the roles they play alongside each other, and specifically how they can emerge together to create an effective team state of shared leadership. Theoretically, shared leadership is generally understood to develop as leadership roles transition across team members, evolving into a dense structure with most members participating in leadership roles, especially when their expertise and skills fit team needs (Contractor et al., 2012, Pearce and Conger, 2003). However, the precise temporal nature of this process, and exactly how the aspects of shared leadership co-develop, has yet to be well theorized and tested, limiting both our theoretical understanding of the shared leadership process and teams’ abilities to put it into practice.

To address this concern, we develop and test a temporal process model of shared leadership development, involving the manifestation of all three of shared leadership’s important aspects. The first and most commonly studied of these aspects involves the overall amount of leadership in teams, empirically demonstrated by network density (e.g., Carson et al., 2007). A second aspect of shared leadership involves the decentralization of team leadership networks, in that shared leadership involves networks with status equivalence rather than influence concentrated mostly on a single, often-hierarchical leader (e.g., Mayo et al., 2003). Finally, core theory on shared leadership suggests that it is most efficacious due to emergent matches of leaders with situations (e.g., Conger and Pearce, 2003, Erez et al., 2002), or ‘situationally aligned leadership’ (SAL). That is, individuals with the right knowledge, skills, and abilities for particular situations are theorized to emerge and lead the team in their areas of expertise (Contractor et al., 2012). Theoretically, it is clear that all three aspects are essential to understanding the full scope of the shared leadership concept. However, researchers rarely consider their joint relationships and capabilities. When density or decentralization is examined, usually only one is modeled and treated as if it represents the totality of shared leadership (e.g., Carson et al., 2007; D’Innocenzo et al., 2016; Mayo et al., 2003). When they both appear, they are treated as independent despite extant theory suggesting that they should relate to one another (DeRue et al., 2015). Meanwhile, the situationally aligned aspect of shared leadership has never been empirically demonstrated or linked to the other aspects despite its nature as essential to shared leadership development and effectiveness (Contractor et al., 2012). Therefore, a comprehensive examination of shared leadership, particularly the interrelationship between its aspects, is necessary to best align theory with methodology and fully understand how shared leadership can develop in teams.

To resolve these issues, we propose and test a dynamic temporal model of how leadership density, decentralization, and SAL logically emerge in teams and build upon one another, ultimately impacting team performance. For this investigation we draw upon adaptive leadership theory (DeRue, 2011, DeRue and Ashford, 2010), which proposes that team members assume short-term leader or follower roles based on factors such as expertise and credibility as the team adapts to dynamic situations. This perspective suggests that TMS, or the meta-knowledge of team members’ expertise and a transactive process of utilizing the distributed expertise (Moreland, 1999), may serve as a key factor impacting the emergence of shared leadership processes. Using a time-lagged multi-wave study design built in a team task simulation, we decompose the temporal process of leadership structure emergence by modeling how the three aspects of shared leadership develop over time and eventually affect performance. We propose and find evidence that team TMS sparks a team’s SAL and contributes to a more decentralized leadership network, which, in turn, has a positive effect on team leadership density. We also find that leadership density and SAL predict team performance.

The main purpose and contribution of this research is to comprehensively examine the shared leadership development process, through its eventual impact on team performance, by examining all three of its aspects in a temporal process model. Whereas previous research has built substantial knowledge on how each individual aspect of shared leadership might precipitate team performance, we answer calls to examine the more nuanced nature of shared leadership (D’Innocenzo et al., 2016) by modeling how all three of its aspects develop and interact over time, culminating in their impact on team effectiveness. In this manner, our model serves as the first to simultaneously model multiple aspects of shared leadership networks and their connections with each other, while accounting for the essential dynamics of leadership transition across team members (Contractor et al., 2012). We explicitly unpack the process of shared leadership emergence by applying adaptive leadership theory to build and test an overarching leadership network growth process. Echoing the original conceptualization of shared leadership that emphasized its time-varying nature (Pearce & Conger, 2003), our findings detail distinct roles of the three shared leadership aspects in different phases of its development and explain their contributions to team performance. As such, our study provides a more nuanced understanding of shared leadership emergence and development.

Section snippets

Theory and hypotheses

There has been growing interest in studying leadership as a relational phenomenon, specifically through a social network approach, as it provides a more comprehensive perspective on relationships among individuals in a social context such as in teams (Balkundi & Kilduff, 2006). For instance, previous research has demonstrated that a formal team leader’s centrality in the team advice network impacts how leader-like (Chiu et al., 2017) or charismatic (Balkundi et al., 2011) he or she may be

Methods

We tested these hypotheses in the context of the Mount Everest Leadership and Teamwork Simulation (Roberto & Edmondson, 2008) with 90 teams worked on a multi-part collaborative task. We used a teamwork simulation rather than field design in order to sample newly formed teams, to ensure that member expertise would be distributed such that leadership transitions would be desirable, and so that we could precisely monitor changes in networks over time. To maximize variation in TMS, we conducted an

Results

We first tested the fit of the model, which showed the model fit the data well (Chi-square value = 12.57, df = 7, p = .08)3

Discussion

Drawing on the tenets of adaptive leadership theory (DeRue, 2011, DeRue and Ashford, 2010), the goal of this study was to propose and test a model exploring how the three aspects of shared leadership emerge and contribute to performance over time. We examined the structural development of shared leadership through a longitudinal design and tested our hypothesized model against an alternative temporal sequence. Our findings suggest that the three aspects of shared leadership – leadership

Conclusion

Despite the well-established beneficial impact on team performance, the theoretical conceptualization and empirical examination of shared leadership have not yet well-aligned in shared leadership research. Our study strives to provide a comprehensive view of shared leadership by bringing together its three aspects – leadership density, leadership decentralization, and SAL – in a dynamic temporal model. The results of our study provide new insights regarding shared leadership emergence and

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