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PurposeThis study aims to investigate the relationship between shared leadership (SL) and decision quality, utilizing shared leadership theory (SLT) and behavioral decision theory (BDT). The authors will explore the mediating role of “decision comprehensiveness” in the SL–decision quality linkage. Additionally, the authors will examine how individual “self-leadership” and “debate” among team members moderate the relationship between SL and decision comprehensiveness.Design/methodology/approachThe authors tested the hypothesized moderated mediation model using a sample of 506 professionals employed in 112 research and development (R&D) teams, along with their direct managers from large Italian firms. To examine the relationships, the authors employed confirmatory factor analyses and path analyses. In order to address endogeneity concerns, the authors incorporated an instrumental variable, namely delegation, into the analysis.FindingsSL positively influences decision quality, mediated by decision comprehensiveness, where teams include comprehensive information in decision-making. The level of debate among team members positively moderates the SL–decision comprehensiveness relationship. High levels of self-leadership can harm SL by reducing decision comprehensiveness, indicating a downside. However, low or moderate levels of self-leadership do not harm decision comprehensiveness and can even benefit SL.Originality/valueThis is the first work to investigate the relationship between SL and decision quality, shedding light on the mechanisms underlying this association. By integrating SLT and BDT, the authors provide insights into how managers can make higher-quality decisions within self-leading teams. Moreover, this research makes a distinct contribution to the field of self-leadership by delineating its boundaries and identifying a potentially negative aspect within the self-influence process.

Promoting shared leadership in teams and enhancing team creativity is aided by complementarity between leader and team member characteristics. We integrate insights from social learning theory and dominance complementarity perspective with the team leadership and creativity literature to explore the facilitating role of formal participative leadership for enhancing team creativity indirectly by promoting shared leadership. The relationships among formal participative leadership, shared leadership, and team creativity are bounded by team voice behavior and team creative efficacy. To test our theoretical model, we collected multisource and multiwave survey data from 382 members of 73 teams. Results revealed a significant positive relationship of participative leadership with shared leadership in teams, which in turn was positively associated with team creativity. Team voice behavior and team creative efficacy moderated these relationships, respectively, by strengthening the positive relationships. We discuss the theoretical contributions, practical implications, and future directions of our findings.

The traditional “great man” approaches to leadership emphasize qualities of individual leaders for leadership success. In contrast, a rapidly growing body of research has started to examine shared leadership, which is broadly defined as an emergent team phenomenon whereby leadership roles and influence are distributed among team members. Despite the progress, however, the extant literature on shared leadership has been fragmented with a variety of conceptualizations and operationalizations. This has resulted in little consensus regarding a suitable overarching theoretical framework and has undermined developing knowledge in this research domain. To redress these problems, we provide a comprehensive review of the growing literature of shared leadership by (a) clarifying the definition of shared leadership; (b) conceptually disentangling shared leadership from other theoretically overlapping constructs; (c) addressing measurement issues; and (d) developing an integrative framework of the antecedents, proximal and distal consequences, and boundary conditions of shared leadership. We end our review by highlighting several new avenues for future research.

This research note addresses the substantial theoretical and empirical gaps in understanding event leadership and highlights the need for urgent scholarly attention in this area. In both the events industries and event studies there still exists a prevailing view that leadership is conducted only by those in formal leadership positions. In the wider frame of leadership studies, this view has been largely dismissed. We therefore challenge the conventional view of leadership in the event sector, and call for engagement with contemporary, rather than traditional, perspectives of leadership, and a shift in understanding of leadership as an integral aspect of the creation and delivery of event experiences. Specifically, we propose that one of the contemporary theories of leadership, that of shared leadership, provides an effective model that could be developed further by other scholars to empirically understand how this theory can improve working practices in events.

Research has mostly focused on how formal leadership can shape a climate for innovation, but we know little about how informal leadership, such as shared leadership, may affect this process. Departing from this dominant focus, we examine how shared leadership may have a positive influence on team processes and performance. Based on social information processing theory, we develop a moderated mediation model that examines the indirect effect of shared leadership on team creativity via a climate for innovation and further investigates the moderating effect of task uncertainty. Two survey-based field studies using multisource, multiwave data support the hypothesized model. The findings reveal that (1) shared leadership positively predicts a climate for innovation, (2) this relationship is stronger when the team faces task uncertainty, (3) a climate for innovation positively predicts team creativity, (4) shared leadership predicts team creativity through the mediating effect of a climate for innovation, and (5) this mediation effect is stronger when task uncertainty is high. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed.

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.

Using conservation of resources theory, we challenge traditional unity of command models of leadership and propose that a dual-leadership framework can serve as a potential solution to the inherent challenges of innovation. Leading for innovation demands are depicted as uniquely disparate from other forms of leadership, resulting in several types of conflict and resource depletion for individual leaders. We contend that this exploration–exploitation role conflict and the resulting need to manage incongruent role identities produce stress, strain, and resource depletion that in turn hamper innovative goal achievement for both a single leader directly and via subordinates more indirectly. We propose, however, that as an extension of the resource investment tenet of the conservation of resources theory, a dual-leadership approach may alleviate many of these challenges for innovation. Specifically, the addition of a second leader can add resources to innovation and in turn decrease the role conflict inherent in managing the generation and implementation of creative ideas. Limitations and areas for future research are offered.

Leadership has been suggested to be a key factor in gaining a competitive advantage as a team, with shared leadership being a better predictor of team functioning than vertical leadership. Although the benefits of shared leadership are well-documented, evidence about how to implement a shared leadership structure remains sparse. This leaves coaches with three key challenges: (1) identifying the best leaders; (2) defining what roles those leaders should fulfill; and (3) developing their leadership skills. Solutions to these challenges have been proposed in the 5R Shared Leadership Program (5RS) — a leadership development program that seeks to implement an effective structure of shared leadership within sports teams. To test the effectiveness of 5RS program, we conducted an experimental-comparison group intervention in which eight national-level basketball teams (N = 96) completed a questionnaire at two points in time (i.e., pre- and posttest). The teams in the intervention condition completed the 5RS program, in which we identified the leadership structure in their teams (through Shared Leadership Mapping), appointed the best leaders in their leadership role, and then developed their identity leadership skills. The results revealed that the 5RS program was successful in strengthening athlete leaders’ identity leadership skills, and as a result also team members’ identification with their team. Furthermore, in contrast to athletes in the comparison condition, athletes in the 5RS condition were able to maintain their levels of intrinsic motivation and commitment to team goals, while also reporting improved well-being. The present study provides encouraging evidence that, by implementing a structure of shared leadership and by promoting athlete leaders’ identity leadership skills, the 5RS program is able to improve the team’s functioning and the well-being of its members.

In this study we investigate how shared leadership is coordinated in global virtual teams and how it relates to team effectiveness. Based on 71 interviews with team members and leaders from eight teams from two global software development companies, we found that shared leadership had a more positive effect on team effectiveness when shared leadership was coordinated both implicitly and behaviorally. Implicit leadership coordination is about members sharing same perceptions or cognitive schemas regarding who has leadership over what, and influences whether leadership actions are acted upon. With a mix of national cultures in the team, members are less likely to share the same leadership expectations, which may make shared leadership less effective. In turn, behavioral leadership coordination is associated with the explicit actions aimed at coordinating the leadership activities taking place in the team. This behavioral coordination increases in importance with a higher degree of shared leadership. Our findings contribute to theory and practice by showing that when leadership is highly shared in the team and uncoordinated, it may actually lead to detrimental effects in terms of lower team effectiveness. In contrast, shared leadership may reap its potential benefits if it is well coordinated.

There is ongoing debate in extant empirical work on whether vertical leadership acts as a facilitator or an inhibitor of shared leadership teams and whether shared leadership acts as a substitute for vertical leadership. This study adopts role theory to clarify formal leaders’ role in shared leadership teams by simultaneously considering both transformational leadership and laissez-faire leadership. Using a sample of 68 work teams varied in functions in high-tech firms in Taiwan, the results support most of our predictions. Specifically, this study provides empirical evidence that transformational leadership can significantly facilitate activities of shared leadership teams that are highly goal-committed. Our findings also suggest that shared leadership does not substitute for transformational and laissez-faire leadership to influence team adaptive performance. Instead, a high level of transformational leadership would strengthen the effect of shared leadership teams on adaptive performance whereas a high level of laissez-faire leadership would result in shared leadership teams decreasing team adaptive performance.