Enabling Shared Leadership in Virtual Project Teams: A Practitioners' Guide

Many virtual project teams perform better when leadership is shared (rather than centralized with the formal team leader); however, team leaders are often neither prepared to identify shared leadership potential nor to actually share leadership responsibility. Based on a study of 96 globally dispersed software development teams we show that team leaders tend to underestimate the team members’ capacity to lead themselves. As a consequence, these leaders monopolize decision‐making authority and provide insufficient levels of autonomy for team members to tackle their tasks. Preventing the team members from unfolding their true potential, these leaders unconsciously jeopardize virtual team performance. Paradoxically, it is thus team leaders themselves hindering leadership effectiveness in virtual teams.     

Narcissism and Empowerment: How Narcissism Influences the Trickle-Down Effects of Organizational Empowerment Climate on Performance

The present study proposes a trickle-down model of employee empowerment in which empowerment climate at the organization level is positively related to the empowering leadership of team leaders and ultimately to individual task performance. Importantly, we hypothesize that team leaders’ and members’ narcissism can respectively inhibit and enable the cross-level empowerment process by affecting the intended distribution of decision-making authority and resources between team leaders and members. The analysis of data from 834 team members of 189 teams in 46 organizations reveals that organizational empowerment climate is positively related to team leaders’ empowering leadership when they are less narcissistic. Empowering leadership is positively related to individual task performance when team members are highly narcissistic. Finally, we observe that the combination of less narcissistic leaders and more narcissistic members is a condition under which the indirect effect of organizational empowerment climate on individual task performance through empowering leadership is positive.     

Can leadership compensate for deficient inclusiveness in global virtual teams?

Although the number of global virtual teams has been growing rapidly, it is still a great challenge to achieve internal collaboration across geographic, cultural, and linguistic barriers. Two factors that have been identified to improve productivity are inclusive group attitudes in the team and the right leadership from the team leader. Although there are strong indications that each of these concepts would have a favourable effect on team member performance, we set out to explore how they function in combination. More specifically, we hypothesise that inspirational motivation from a team leader can compensate for a lack of inclusive group attitudes in the form of team openness to language diversity. We also predict the positive effects of “inspirational motivation” leadership to be stronger than those of the “management by exception” style of leadership. Using responses from 174 team members and their 23 team leaders in the research and development department of a Danish manufacturing organisation, we confirm our hypotheses. This provides clear guidelines for HRM interventions in organisations using global virtual teams.     

Leadership in virtual teams: A multilevel perspective

Understanding leadership functioning in virtual teams becomes critical as organizations increasingly use dispersed teams for talent acquisition. In the current article I present a preliminary model that explicates how task- and relationship-oriented leader behaviors influence team and individual processes and outcomes in virtual teams. Further, I discuss cross-level relationships between virtual team and individual processes, as well as the boundary effects of contextual factors (i.e., task complexity, task interdependence, and virtuality) in virtual leadership functioning.     

Experiencing meaningfulness climate in teams: How spiritual leadership enhances team effectiveness when facing uncertain tasks

This study integrates social information processing theory with leadership and climate literature, and aims to produce novel theoretical insights into whether and how spiritual leadership and task uncertainty foster conditions to enhance meaningfulness climate and subsequent team effectiveness in China. Team effectiveness was operationalized as team performance and team organizational citizenship behavior (OCB). Based on data collected at three time points over 12 months from multiple sources of 123 teams in China, we found that spiritual leadership was positively related to team performance and team OCB through meaningfulness climate. Further, the relationship between spiritual leadership and meaningfulness climate was stronger for teams with high task uncertainty than teams with low task uncertainty.     

Socio‐demographic factors and shared leadership behaviors in dispersed teams: Implications for human resource management

Companies increasingly make use of geographically dispersed teams to capture knowledge residing at different locations. In this context, shared leadership is considered a key enabler of team performance. Taking a functional perspective on shared leadership, we thus investigate the relationship between shared leadership behaviors and team performance in dispersed teams. Furthermore, we analyze how socio‐demographic factors that are characteristic for dispersed teams (i.e., high female‐to‐male ratio, high mean age, and high levels of national diversity) affect shared leadership behaviors. Based on data from 96 dispersed teams, we show that shared leadership behavior fosters team performance. Further, we find the socio‐demographic characteristics typical for dispersed teams to foster shared leadership. Theoretical and managerial implications for human resource management are discussed. © 2012 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.     

Sink or Swim: Empowering Leadership and Overload in Teams' Ability to Deal with the Unexpected

The notion of improvisation has recently emerged in managerial studies as a viable solution to flexibly dealing with unexpected occurrences in work environments. However, past research on team improvisation has overlooked the contingencies that allow teams to effectively improvise. Drawing upon demand‐control theory, we investigate how empowering leadership and overload affect the improvisation‐performance relationship in the context of 48 work teams. Our results suggest that empowering leadership positively moderates the relationship between improvisation and performance, while overload attenuates the same relationship. Moreover, we found a joint effect of overload and empowering leadership influencing the improvisation‐performance link, such that improvisation is most positively related to performance when empowering leadership is high and overload is low. Conversely, we found that empowering leadership is particularly detrimental to the improvisation‐performance relationship when team members perceive high degrees of overload. Our findings make important contributions to the extant team literature as well as to the emerging literature on team improvisation. We outline several significant insights for HR managers and team leaders who are responsible for supporting teams that face unexpected events in the work environment. © 2013 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.     

Collective Dynamics of Citizenship Behaviour: What Group Characteristics Promote Group‐Level Helping?

A basic tenet of research on organizational citizenship behaviour (OCB) is that OCB aggregated across individuals improves organizational performance. Departing from the typical focus on individual-level OCB, the construct of group-level OCB (GOCB) recently emerged as a critical group function that affects various group effectiveness measures. Despite the clear link between GOCB and team performance, the existing literature provides a limited understanding with regard to the antecedents of GOCB, mostly focusing on leadership variables. Establishing helping behaviour (a core dimension of OCB) as a collective construct, this study substantially expands the antecedents of group-level helping, and empirically tests their effects using three different operationalizations of group-level helping. The results, based on a sample of 96 work units, show that membership diversity in gender and education decreased group-level helping, whereas diversity in tenure increased it. Group-level helping was also positively related to leadership characteristics (supportive unit manager, transformational top management) and perceived competence of unit members. In addition, the analysis further indicated that perceived competence is a positive predictor of group-level helping only when the unit members also believe that others are trustworthy in terms of integrity and benevolent motivation. From a methodological standpoint, the study provides important insights by comparing different ways of operationalizing collective constructs.     

Employee positive moods as a mediator linking transformational leadership and employee work outcomes

Past leadership research has demonstrated that transformational leadership has a positive effect on employee task performance and helping coworker behavior. However, among the research on the mediating mechanisms linking transformational leadership and employee work outcomes, little has been done empirically to examine the mediating effect of employee positive moods. This study extends previous research by examining the mediating role played by employee positive moods. Data were collected longitudinally from 282 employees and their immediate supervisors in 10 insurance companies in Taiwan. Results showed that transformational leadership both directly influenced employee task performance and helping coworker behavior and had an indirect effect through employee positive moods.     

Leadership substitutes and personality impact on time and quality in virtual new product development projects

Leadership, personality, and organizational factors were analyzed to measure their combined effect on virtual‐based product development time and scope‐quality performance. Over 1,000 team members were surveyed. MANCOVA was used to test if leadership, personality project, and/or organizational factors impacted performance. All realistic factors were included to detect leadership substitutes moderation, mediation, and prediction. Bias was reduced by not surveying leaders, by using reverse item coding, and by checking social desirability. Experimental control and common method variance were managed by including multilevel and multisource data. Performance was objectively computed from organizational data. The findings were that transactional leadership (not transformational) and some personality attri‐butes (leader substitutes) were significant factors, increasing project scope quality and time performance. This article was published online on September 29, 2010. An error was subsequently identified. This notice is included in the online and print versions to indicate that both have been corrected. See the correction noted on the seventh page of the print version of the article.     

Effect of Knowledge Leadership on Knowledge Sharing in Engineering Project Design Teams: The Role of Social Capital

Knowledge sharing is a precondition for engineering project design teams to achieve an efficient design; however, designers are not always willing to share knowledge with other team members. To improve knowledge sharing, this article investigates the effect of knowledge leadership on knowledge sharing in engineering project design teams by examining the role of social capital. Our results show a significant indirect effect of knowledge leadership on knowledge sharing through the mediating role of social capital. Therefore, effective knowledge sharing depends on knowledge leaders to develop a share vision, and promote a trustworthy and collaborative environment for designers.     

Cognitive and Behavioral Outcomes of Quality Improvement Teams: The Influence of Leadership and the Work Unit Environment

Data were collected from team members and matched controls on continuous quality improvement (CQI) knowledge, perceptions of empowerment, leadership, and constraints within the work unit at two points in time. Supervisors rated the subjects' organizational citizenship behavior (OCB) and job behaviors related to quality improvement. There was a significant increase in CQI knowledge among team members but no significant changes in perceptions of empowerment, OCB, or CQI job behaviors for either group. Increases in CQI job behavior was related to lower physical constraints within the work environment but greater increases in CQI knowledge.     

How to be an inclusive leader for gender-diverse teams

Gender inequity is globally present in the labor force and advocating for gender equality is not merely a fairness issue, but a benefit for organizations. In this paper, we identify common challenges for gender-diverse teams (i.e., turnover, discrimination, communication issues, conflict between team members, and low team cohesion). We also discuss the importance of inclusive leadership to overcome these challenges. Correspondingly, we provide practical actions for inclusive leaders to implement on their teams to address issues regarding diversity, and subsequently leverage its benefits.     

服务型领导力差异对团队绩效的影响研究

现阶段,服务型领导力在社会中的作用愈渐突出、影响的范围愈广,主要表现在积极的领导力能给企业发展带来积极影响,有效调节领导和员工之间的关系,发挥着调节团队内良性竞争氛围的重要作用。即服务型领导力差异越小,团队的绩效水平会越高,团队成员越团结。论文就服务型领导力差异对团队绩效的影响进行了探讨。     

Too many cooks in the kitchen? The contingent curvilinear effect of shared leadership on multidisciplinary healthcare team innovation

Shared leadership and multidisciplinary teams are advocated for their capacity to develop innovative solutions to important organisational challenges. However, research suggests that the impact of shared leadership is somewhat ambiguous, leading us to propose a curvilinear inverted U‐shaped effect on multidisciplinary team innovation. Furthermore, we posit that this curvilinearity is contingent on awareness of member profession, specifically the salience of professional identity. Using a sample of 60 multidisciplinary healthcare teams, we investigated a model in which shared leadership has a curvilinear effect on innovation contingent on professional salience. Support for our hypotheses attempts to account for ambiguities in the impact of shared leadership and provides guidance for human resource management strategies to enhance multidisciplinary team innovation.     

Global team members’ performance and the roles of cross-cultural training,cultural intelligence,and contact intensity: the case of global teams in IT offshoring sector

Abstract

This study investigates an unexplored form of global team prevalent in the Information Technology (IT) offshoring sector where IT service providers work alongside with client representatives in a global team context. Guided by theories of intelligence and intergroup contact, this study investigates global team members’ individual-level task performance. Specifically, this study examines the development of global team members’ cultural intelligence (CQ) following cross-cultural training. This study also determines the effects of improved CQ on individual-level task performance and examines the moderating role of contact intensity on the relationship between improved CQ and individual-level task performance. Data on the development of CQ, participation in cross-cultural training, and contact intensity were collected from 225 global team members while data on task performance were obtained from each of the global team members’ supervisors. The results of the statistical analyses reveal that: (i) CQ improved following participation in cross-cultural training sessions; (ii) improved CQ is positively and significantly related to individual-level task performance; and (iii) contact intensity moderates the relationship between improved CQ and individual-level task performance. These findings have a number of theoretical and practical implications for international organizations such as those in the IT offshoring sector.     

Organizing work to support relational co-ordination

Service operations that are highly uncertain, interdependent and time constrained require a competency that I call relational co-ordination – co-ordination that is carried out by front-line workers with an awareness of their relationship to the overall work process and to other participants in that process. Relational co-ordination is characterized by frequent, timely, problem solving communication, and by helping, shared goals, shared knowledge and mutual respect. Previous work reports significant positive effects of relational co-ordination on performance in such settings. This paper addresses how organizations achieve, or fail to achieve, high levels of relational coordination. I find significant correlations between relational co-ordination and the use of cross-functional liaisons, IT, supervisors, cross-functional performance measurement, employee selection, conflict resolution and flexible work roles. I explore the implications for team effectiveness and organization design, and for the theory of organizational social capital.     

Leveraging the employee voice: a multi-level social learning perspective of ethical leadership

Extending social learning theory to a multi-level perspective, this study proposes a theoretical model that investigates both individual and team-level mechanisms that mediate the effect of ethical leadership on employee voice. Specifically, in terms of an individual-level social learning perspective, we suggest that an ethical leader acts as a prototype of a moral person (i.e. an ethical role model). From a team-level social learning perspective, we propose that, as a moral manager, team ethical leadership will foster an ethical climate within the team which will create a moral context that impacts employees’ behaviors. In both instances, employee voice behaviors will be enhanced through these mechanisms. Evidencing the importance of the interaction between leader behaviors and context for leader effectiveness, we also show that employees are more likely to regard their ethical leaders as ethical role models in a team that highly values ethical conduct (i.e. high in ethical climate). Results obtained from 47 managers and 211 subordinates in China support our theoretical model. The theoretical and practical implications of our findings are also discussed.     

Five Steps to Leading Your Team in the Virtual COVID-19 Workplace

The emergence of COVID-19 has presented employees and employers new challenges as many employees and managers were forced to work in a remote environment for the first time. For many reasons, managing virtual teams is different than managing employees in a traditional face-to-face office environment. Although many managers have been learning how to lead their virtual teams over the last several months, we offer five steps for leaders to follow for how to maximize the effectiveness of a remote workplace. By taking specific actions and ensuring the organization has a culture to support their virtual workforce, leaders can improve the performance output and engagement of their teams. The five steps are: first establish and explain the new reality; second, establish and maintain a culture of trust; third, upgrade leadership communication tools and techniques to better inform virtual employees; fourth, encourage shared leadership among team members; and fifth, to create and periodically perform alignment audits to ensure virtual employees are aligned with the organization’s cultural values including its commitment to mission. All these steps start with the realization that managing a team is going to be different when the members are dispersed, and new leadership strategies, communication routines and tools are required.     

The effect of ethical leadership on purchasers’ unethical behavior in China: The moderating role of ethical ideology

This paper examines the role of ethical leadership in managing purchasing agents’ unethical practices. By focusing on the manager-purchasing agent relationship within a firm's purchasing function, we investigate the effect of the manager's ethical leadership on purchasing agents’ unethical behaviors, and explore the moderating role of purchasing agents’ ethical ideology in this relationship. Our scenario-based experiment and survey-based empirical study show that a manager's ethical leadership in a purchasing team plays a critical role in reducing purchasing agents’ unethical behaviors. More importantly, the results reveal that the negative impact of ethical leadership on unethical behaviors is strengthened when the level of purchasing agents’ idealism or relativism is high. In addition, we found that ethical leadership has the strongest negative effect on the unethical behavior of purchasing agents when the agents have high levels of both idealism and relativism.