Moreover, on the basis of the results from this dissertation, it seems very promising to study shared
leadership at different organizational levels. Given the differences in leadership dimensions displayed
at different organizational levels, there is a lot of potential to elaborate the notion of shared strategic
leadership across organizational levels. The sample of this study did not allow for the study of shared
leadership at multiple organization levels, yet we strongly invite other researchers to study shared
leadership in groups while mixing senior executives and middle managers. A debate published in
2007 in Leadership Quarterly between Pearce and Conger, on the one side, and Locke, on the other
side, confirms that this stream of work still struggles between an expanded and a confined
representation of shared leadership. Shared leadership could be however more or less redistributed
within the organizational hierarchy.
In addition to understanding the shared leadership construct, understanding its correlates is equally
important. Situational and contextual factors seem likely to affect the importance of shared leadership
in the explanation of team effectiveness (Pearce & Sims, 2000). Building on the findings of Littlepage
et al. (1997), one may speculate that shared leadership is likely to be more potent in mature teams in
which leadership skills of team members have had an opportunity to develop and the members
understand and DUHEHWWHUDEOHWRWDNHDGYDQWDJHRIHDFKRWKHU¶VVNLOOVAccording to Avolio, Jung,
Murry and Sivarsubramaniam (1996) as teams reach higher stages of development they exhibit a
greater tendency to share leadership responsibilities. Katz (1982), in contrast, found a nonlinear
relationship between team tenure and performance in the research and development teams he studied.
He explained that groups go through different stages: socialization, innovation, and stability. He
expected young teams to perform poorly because of poor socialization, but he also argued that teams
that have spent a long time together become committed to the status quo, experience selective
perception, and increasingly rely on the group's own expertise. He concluded that long-tenured groups
would eventually become less adaptive and innovative. It would be interesting to explore whether
team tenure is an antecedent for shared leadership.
Likewise, Katz and Kahn (1978) pointed out that leadership enacted in a social system is informed by
both norms (which prescribe and sanction behaviors) and values (which are the ideological
justifications for roles). Shared leadership enactment may be better understood by examining the
norms and values in which shared leadership is embedded. Two normative/value dimensions thought
to be related to shared leadership are the cultural dimensions individualism/collectivism and power
distance (Hofstede, 1984). These dimensions may be considered in further research endeavors.