(Lipman-Blumen, 2000) and distributed (Brown & Gioia, 2002; Gronn, 2002) leadership, social
network forces for leadership (Balkundi & Kilduff, 2006), as well as aggregates of leadership capacity
(Day et al., 2004a). These are just a few example approaches that attempt to go beyond the individual
leader in better understanding and studying leadership in teams and organizations. A deeper
investigation further reveals that although there are some central tendencies surrounding the meaning
of these terms, there is also a good deal of inconsistency, with some scholars using different terms
loosely and interchangeably and others adhering to narrower definitions (see (Bolden, 2011). Shared
and distributed are the most widely used adjectives describing this type of leadership (Fitzsimons et
al., 2011).
There are a few research partnership that dominate the domain of shared leadership (with a focus on
teams), namely between Manz and Sims (1987, 1991; 1980), Pearce and Sims (2002; 2000), Pearce
and Manz (2005) and Pearce et al. (2008; 2009). A review of the literature revealed six seminal
empirical studies (Avolio et al., 1996; Carson et al., 2007; Ensley et al., 2006; Mehra et al., 2006;
Pearce & Sims, 2002; Sivasubramaniam et al., 2002) (see Table 9.1 for the primary research question,
methodology employed and the reported findings).