9 IMPACT OF SHARED STRATEGIC LEADERSHIP ON TEAM EFFECTIVENESS
9.1 INTRODUCTION
As was mentioned in the introductory chapter, the last two and a half decades has witnessed a
remarkable transformation of organizational structures worldwide. One of its more compelling aspects
has been the on-going shift from work organized around individual jobs to team-based work structures
(Erhardt et al., 2009; Lawler et al., 1995). Increasing global competition, consolidation and innovation
have created pressures, such as the need for diverse skills, expertise and experience, and the need for
more rapid, flexible, adaptive responses that trigger the emergence of teams as basic building blocks
of organizations. Organizational outcomes therefore depend to a large extent on the appropriate design
and the proper functioning of work units and teams.
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leadership. The first source which has been the primary focus in the leadership literature is the formal
team leader (Burke et al., 2006; Gerstner & Day, 1997; Schriesheim et al., 1994). Given that there is a
hierarchical relationship between the team leader and the team members, leadership performed by the
team leader has also been labeled vertical leadership. The second source of leadership is the team,
where leadership is distributed among team members, also known as shared leadership (Burke et al.,
2003; Pearce & Conger, 2003a). The underlying notion is that team performance may be improved if
the team takes advantage of different leadership strengths of all team members. With the first source,
vertical leadership the influence is top-down, whereas the second source, shared leadership involves a
collaborative process (Ensley et al., 2006).
According to Pearce (2004) and Pearce and Manz (2005), with the greater prevalence of knowledge-
based organizations characterized by task complexity and highly qualified employees, shared
leadership has become a common source of leadership rather than the exception. While the
increasingly challenging organizational context makes vertical leaders want to share leadership
(Martin et al., 2007), highly skilled knowledge workers are also more inclined to take charge of
leadership roles and responsibilities (Lawler & Finegold, 2000). Shared leadership is thus both a
deliberate and an emergent phenomenon. This chapter elaborates the impact of both shared and
vertical leadership on team effectiveness.