Shared leadership and commonality: A policy-capturing study

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Abstract

Although research has extensively examined the relationship between shared leadership and performance outcomes, little is known about the interaction with other team variables such as commonality and communication mode. Moreover, nearly all research on shared leadership has adopted a cross-sectional approach. Accordingly, this research examined the effects of shared leadership, commonality, and communication mode on work performance and satisfaction. Using an experimental policy-capturing design, shared leadership, commonality, and communication mode were manipulated. Students (sample 1) and employees (sample 2) evaluated their performance and satisfaction. The results of multilevel analyses revealed that both shared leadership and high commonality had positive effects on team members' intended performance and predicted satisfaction. Moreover, we found that commonality and communication mode had interactive effects. Interestingly, commonality was more important for face-to-face teams than for virtual teams. The results both emphasize the importance of shared leadership and prompt significant recommendations for virtual teamwork.

Section snippets

Collective and shared leadership

Recently, attention has shifted from hierarchical leaders to more collective forms of leadership (Contractor et al., 2012, Cullen et al., 2012, Yammarino et al., 2012). Collective leadership is defined as a process of influence in which multiple members of an organization simultaneously perform leadership behaviors (Carter and DeChurch, 2012, Yammarino et al., 2012). Collective leadership theories were developed to contrast with the leader-centric view, and they include a variety of leadership

Methods

To investigate the proposed hypotheses, we used a policy-capturing method with two samples. In this study we examined two separate samples because we wanted to ensure the external validity of our results.

Pre-analyses

Descriptive statistics and correlations are reported in Table 2. In sample 1, teamwork experience and country of participants were significantly correlated with predicted satisfaction and the other control variables. Thus, we decided to control for all of these variables in the subsequent analyses for sample 1. In sample 2, age showed a significant correlation with predicted satisfaction. Thus we decided to use our control variables in the subsequent analyses for sample 2.

Common method bias.

Discussion

The purpose of this study was threefold. First, we wanted to replicate the results for the relationship between shared leadership, on the one hand, and performance and satisfaction, on the other hand. Second, we wanted to examine the role of commonality as one important condition for shared leadership. Third, we wanted to identify the relevance of virtual teamwork for shared leadership and commonality. In a policy-capturing study across two samples, we demonstrated that shared leadership

Conclusion

This study provides the first comprehensive investigation of shared leadership, commonality (i.e., commonality of personalities), and communication mode, suggesting that these constructs are related to each other, and they conjointly influence team members' intended performance and predicted satisfaction. The use of an experimental design builds on the literature on shared leadership by offering insights into causal relationships. Specifically, our findings provide a first step toward better

Acknowledgment

We thank Dr. Ed Hirt for the assistance with data collection. Subsets of these data have been examined in the diploma thesis of the first author. However, the hypotheses and set of variables examined here have not been published previously. Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to the first author.

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