is an important step in bridging the gap between the trend to organize horizontally and the leadership
literature holding on to a stark demarcation across organizational levels.
III. To what extent is leadership effectiveness (in terms of subordinate’ job satisfaction) moderated
by organizational level?
The manifestation of behaviors does not tell us anything about the desirability of those behaviors at
different organizational levels. There are two different perspectives on this. The continuity perspective
posits that skills associated with leadership effectiveness at lower organizational levels are also
important at higher organizational levels. In contrast, the discontinuity perspective theorizes that
effective leadership behaviors at a certain organizational level can become ineffective for the next
level. 6XERUGLQDWH¶ MRE VDWLVIDFWLRQ LV RQH RI WKH PRVW ZLGHO\ XVHG HIIHFWLYHQHVV PHDVXUHV LQ
leadership research. A different impact of VWUDWHJLFDQGVXSHUYLVRU\OHDGHUVKLSRQVXERUGLQDWH¶MRE
satisfaction would once again further support the argument that these are two distinct concepts. Even
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relative relevance of strategic and supervisory leadership across different organizational levels.
IV. To what extent does shared strategic leadership predict team effectiveness?
Strategic leadership is aimed at the interaction of the organization with its environment, hence the
effectiveness measure cannot be captured merely by the internally oriented effectiveness measure of
VXERUGLQDWH¶ MRE VDWLVIDFWLRQ Strategic leadership does not only surpass supervisory leadership in
terms of levels of analysis (having an impact on team effectiveness), but potentially also in terms of
unit of analysis. Within teams, there are two potential sources of leadership, which are defined by
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received considerable attention and support in the literature. Leadership performed by the formal team
leader has also been labeled vertical leadership, due to the hierarchical relationship between the team
leader and the team members. The second source, the team, has been the focus of an emerging stream
of research that views the team as a potential source of leadership, also labeled as shared leadership.
The leadership literature only recently took this alternative source of leadership seriously. Given the
complexity of organizational environments and the burden on single leaders, this notion of shared
strategic leadership requires further exploration.
The structure of the research is three-fold. Following the two introductory chapters, chapter 1 (on
shared leadership) and chapter 2 (supervisory versus strategic leadership), Part I contains the three
conceptual chapters, chapter three covering the relevance of organizational level in leadership