Enabling Shared Leadership in Hierarchical Groups.

Abstract

Despite the long-recognized importance of informal influence processes in organizations, leadership researchers have traditionally assumed that the designated managers of groups fulfill all of the groups’ leadership responsibilities. However, scholars are increasingly acknowledging that leadership may be more accurately conceptualized as an emergent property that can be shared by multiple members of a group and across levels of formal hierarchy. Although early studies hint at the potential value of adopting a more holistic perspective on leadership, extant research does not provide the theoretical or empirical tools necessary to fully describe group-level leadership activity, nor does it consider how informal processes interact with formal hierarchy in determining leadership emergence. In this dissertation I develop a conceptual model of shared leadership in hierarchical settings that addresses these gaps. I explain how leadership structures emerge at the group level as a result of the leading-following interactions that develop between group members, and identify three properties that can be used to describe the nature and configuration of these interactions. Next, I argue that formal hierarchical differentiation is likely to encourage the consolidation of leadership influence in the hands of designated managers, but identify several conditions under which hierarchically organized groups will more fully share their leadership responsibilities, to the benefit of the groups and their members. The results of a survey-based field study and a lab experiment confirm that under some conditions hierarchy does restrict informal leadership emergence, but reveal that this relationship is weaker and more contingent than has been previously assumed by leadership scholars. Moreover, they suggest that groups may benefit from adopting hybrid leadership structures characterized by a blend of formal and informal properties.